NOTES - Part 01

NOTES:

1 “History of the Macedonian people”, book three, INI 1969, p. 263.

2 The adherence of our people to the CPG, indeed (as always) was great. To illustrate my point I will talk about a characteristic episode from my childhood.

My uncle Iovan, my father’s brother, as I mentioned earlier, had a horse and a cart of the sort that was turned over to unload. Iovan delivered sand to the new buildings being built in Lerin. I went with him to help him speed up his work. I was not even fourteen years old at the time. I recall it was November 1926 and the election campaign for the parliamentary elections was already under way.

One day when we were somewhere outside of the city looking for sand to dig on the riverbed along the road, Uncle Iovan stopped the cart and took a bunch of leaflets out of his breast pocket. The leaflets had a large red sickle and a hammer stamped over the text. He then placed a number of those leaflets in my hand and said:

“Run up over there, spread them around and leave them. Put a pebble on each so that the wind doesn’t blow them away…!”

The place where he sent me to leave the leaflets was a sandpit, where some other workers who were digging sand had just left with their load of sand.

“This is our Party,” he said to me while tapping his index finger at the red sickle and hammer on the leaflet. “This is a party for all the poor people... It will be good if we get one of our candidates elected in the Greek parliament …!”

Just seven months ago, my uncle Iovan and my father were living in the village. They were plowing the fields in Dolno Kleshtina. When they moved to Lerin they took on general labour work. They were the most ordinary people, more ordinary than most Macedonians living in the city. They were not communists. Far from it...! But they, like many others, instinctively strove to attach themselves to the Party of the oppressed and exploited and that was the CPG. They did this regardless of the CPG leadership’s provocative and treacherous maneuvers towards the Macedonians. Namely, as was well-known, the CPG entered the pre-election campaign with a program or official document in which not a single word was mentioned about the completely disadvantaged Macedonians. Under the leadership of Elefterios Stavridis, a famous provocateur, the CPG postponed the struggle for the democratic rights of the Macedonian people.

However, out of the ten communist MP’s elected, six were elected in Macedonia and the other four in all of Greece...

2 Solun was the second largest city in the Greek state, labeled by the Greek propaganda “sympathetic”, which means, Solun alongside Athens was also a capital of Greece.

3 This was the Coalition of the then Left formed by the Communist Party of Greece. It included the Agricultural Party of Greece, the Socialist Party of Greece, the Workers’ Social Democratic Party, the General Confederation of Workers, the United Confederation of Workers, and the Independent Workers’ Union. An Agreement for a joint struggle against the ruling reactionaries was reached and signed on October 5, 1934, under the name “Laikon Metopon” (People’s Front). (Rizospastis, October 6, 1934.)

4 Elefterios Stavridis, “Behind the scenes of the CPG”, Athens 1953, p. 493.

5 The initial needs for adopting the decision to establish a Macedonian unit were as follows:

With their cruelty and inhumanity the Greek bourgeois authorities forced the Macedonian people to leave their homes and move around the world outside the Greek state. As for the Macedonian people who were unable to do so, the Greek authorities, with their policies, permanently destroyed all sympathy and attachment to the Greek state and nation and imposed a need for resistance.

The autonomist counter-movement with the slogan forward for a “free autonomous Macedonia” IS DANGEROUSLY WIDENING on the basis of the absence of attachment to the Greek state and the strong aspiration to be free from slavery in this country.

The CPG party line is “full equality of minorities”. The situation created in our country imperatively demands that we impose a CONSISTANT APPLICATION of that line, turning equality from words into action... A Macedonian military unit has appeared in Kaimakchalan. It has appeared as a Macedonian national military and political centre that would attract many young Macedonian revolutionaries from Voden and the wider region. We can use this to destroy the autonomist movement with its military formation as well as the hated Greek gendarmes, which receive their arms from the German repositories and which served the Germans. We have sufficient reasons to destroy them.

Creating a separate Macedonian military unit in Voden Region within ELAS, even though it is consistent with the application of the party line, both for equality and for mobilizing the people in an armed struggle, is still a matter for which we don’t have a separate directive. But if our regional committee, that is why we are here, is to raise the people in an armed struggle against the occupiers, no one will be looking to cut-off our heads, for a consistent and successful implementation of the party line...

We need to pay particular attention to the struggle against the counter-band autonomist movement… that is against Ohrana. This struggle must not be led on the basis of old divisions – Patriarchates against Exarchates and vise versa. No, it should not be a partisan unit of “Grkomani” fighting against the Ohrana “Bugaromani”. That would be a tragedy. Our Macedonian military unit should appear as a material force of the Macedonian national ideal…!

We will act in that spirit.

The mobilization was started in the village Dolno Pozharsko (known as an Exarchate village), and continued in the village Baovo (known as a Patriarchate village). The mobilization was a success. And as is well-known, the ELAS Voden Macedonian Battalion recruited most of its volunteer fighters from these two villages. (Glasnik XXVI, No. 2-3, Skopje 1982, pp. 250-251.)

6 In June 1943, Svetozar Vukmanovich-Tempo, a delegate of the CPY Central Committee in Macedonia, made contact with representatives of the CPG, EAM and ELAS in an attempt to negotiate a military and political cooperation agreement. Tempo also raised the question of launching and developing a Macedonian national liberation movement in the Greek part of (Greek occupied) Macedonia by creating separate Macedonian units within ELAS. But none of that was accomplished. According to Tempo the Greek side “annulled all conclusions reached… especially those relating to Macedonia”. (Sources of Freedom, War and Revolution in Macedonia 1941-1945, Volume I, Second book, p. 236.) Later, at the beginning of September 1943, representatives from the CPG Central Committee met with representatives from the CPM Central Committee near Solun and reached an agreement which called for

the Greek side to create separate Macedonian units within ELAS. (Ibid. p. 320.) This time too nothing happened. This Agreement was also ignored by our Greek friends. That is how things were done in those days. So, when news arrived at the CPG District Committee for Voden Region, that many Macedonians were going to Kaimakchalan… the CPG’s response was that this was an illegal act committed by Macedonians from the Yugoslav part of Macedonia...

7 Vangel Aianovski-Oche, “Aegean Storms”, INI 1975, p. 136.

8 In connection with this, here are some specific details. The stories told were true; the battalion grew larger by the hour. The influx of new fighters from the villages and from the city Voden was so great that our Greek friends had to find a way to slow it down. They created a “medical commission” and ordered it to examine the new recruits and send them back to their homes declaring them incapable of fighting, despite their excellent health. But, despite the rejections, about a month and a half later, sometime at the end of July 1944, the battalion consisted of 750 fighters in six units. The battalion had its own organization, supply chain, and weaponry workshop. About the same time an order was issued from ELAS X Division directing the battalion to stop recruiting volunteers! Given the circumstances of what was actually happening the order meant stop mobilizing Macedonians and stop creating a Macedonian military force!

The covert or silently implemented embargo on news coming out of Lerin and Kostur Regions regarding the development of the Macedonian national liberation movement there… the establishment of SNOF in only these two regions… the inability to create SNOF in Voden Region… the dissolution of SNOF in Lerin and Kostur Regions… and, on top of that ordering the battalion to stop recruiting volunteers, I interpret as anti-Macedonian acts…!

The battalion stopped growing. Without waiting for help from anywhere, and feeling the urgent need to do something, I fended off the blow against developing and strengthening our Macedonian national liberation movement by creating a Macedonian alphabet. Specifically, here’s what brought me to that idea: the existence of the six Macedonian units, the sound of the Macedonian war songs

everywhere, wherever the units appeared, acted spiritually and admirably towards the people. With that in mind, I realized:

We will have even greater success if, besides speaking and singing in Macedonian, a Macedonian alphabet appeared, and people began to read and write in Macedonian… (up until then they were used to “borrowing” the Greek and the Bulgarian alphabet, but it was clear that neither the one nor the other could be accepted as their own).

The new alphabet was first taught to the fighters. Down to the last one… To make it easier to learn it, the alphabet was painted in colours on a large placard and hung on a beech tree in the centre of the camp. The idea for painting it on a placard and the actual painting was done by comrades Petre Sarakinov and Dinko Deliov, both from Voden. Each fighter then copied it into his or her notebook with their combat songs. Many made copies and sent them home to their parents, friends, relatives…, in the Macedonian villages. On top of that I printed convenient leaflets with the alphabet and with the Macedonian combat songs and distributed them in the villages. At the same time, I was looking to find the necessary people and technical means to publish a Macedonian newspaper.

I am not a linguist. But I knew what I wanted and how to achieve it. It is true that the Macedonian people from this part of (Greek occupied) Macedonia, from the second half of the last century (1850-1900), found themselves under armed threat from Greek propaganda on one hand and from Bulgarian propaganda on the other. Even when I was a student in the gymnasium I knew that the churches St. Georgi and St. Nikola in Lerin were seized by the Greeks, and the church St. Panteleimon and the gymnasium building were seized by the Bulgarians. The school building in the village Buf was taken over by the “Bulgarians” and the people of Buf were mainly under Bulgarian influence. The village Rakovo, on the other hand, was mainly under Greek influence. Besides the large passive population living in our villages and towns in general, there were active rival groups commonly known as “Patriarchates” and “Exarchates” or as the Macedonian people called them “Grkomani” (Macedonians loyal to the Greek cause) and “Bugaromani” (Macedonians loyal to the Bulgarian cause) operating. And while

being scornful of each other, they were mainly responsible for propagating Greek and Bulgarian propaganda. This was done mostly in the past but is still present to this day. Namely, apart from the elderly people, like it or not, the Macedonian people were forced to learn the Greek alphabet. But, on the other hand, we can’t underestimate the effort of the Bulgarian propaganda during the fascist occupation... The alphabet I compiled was tailored to combat this situation and remove the Greek and Bulgarian influences. The conditions during the struggle were right for the Macedonian alphabet to be easily and quickly accepted and adopted without too much resistance and thus be transformed into an instrument of the Macedonian antifascist national liberation movement…

At the same time, for the sake of quick and greater success, I started with the living Macedonian language, my mother tongue, to which I was introduced when I was a child in my own village, in the surrounding villages in Lerinsko Pole, in the city Lerin and later in Voden Region. Namely, the letters sounding: Б(B), З(Z), Ж(ZH) и Н(N), С(S), У(U), Ш(SH), Ч(CH) are sounds of the Macedonian language, and as Slavic letters, are also found in the Bulgarian alphabet. The rest of the letters: А В Г Д Е К Л М О П Р Т Ф Х (14) (A V G D E K L M O P R T F H) are sounds of the Macedonian language, and are found in both the Greek and Bulgarian alphabets.

The Greek alphabet, of course, was more widespread in this part of (Greek occupied) Macedonia. It was known everywhere, practically in every Macedonian home. But from it the letters Iota (ι), Epsilon (ε), tough (τ), Zita (ζ), Ni (ν), Sigma (σ), psi (ψ), Omega (ω), I left as unnecessary for the Macedonian language and alphabet. Also, I left out the Greek letters (ξ) and (ψ), which could be replaced by the double letters (ks) and (ps).

I have included the letter (ь) in the alphabet, starting from the fact that this short silent sound is present in the Macedonian language, in many words. And as they say here in Voden Region and in Lerin Region in: K’lan, K’lkam, P’lnam, K’sam, G’ltam, M’lzam, V’lk, K’lk, S’lza, S’ntse, K’chevski, K’chishta, ‘rsh, ‘prgia, etc...

The alphabet was printed on leaflets and distributed with a flyer in the Macedonian villages on behalf of the Voden ELAS Macedonian Battalion. The caption on the flier read:

BROTHER! The Macedonian army is the strength of the Macedonian people. The Macedonian army is struggling to provide freedom for the Macedonian people as a separate nation, with full rights where our mother tongue can be spoken in our churches and schools.

The Macedonian army is guarantee that our people will freely speak their native language forever. Our villages should now open Macedonian schools and teach Macedonian with Macedonian teachers.

The Macedonian army is fighting against the tyrants, not only with weapons in hand, but also with enlightenment. It brings self-awareness to our people and fights against other people’s propaganda and influences.

We believe that all Macedonians want to read newspapers and proclamations written in their mother tongue. So we believe that they will immediately learn the following 24 letters:

А Б В Г Д Е З Ж И К Л М Н О П Р С Т Ф Х У Ч Ш Ь.

This, for now, will be the Macedonian alphabet. It is very easy to learn. It is not too short for our language and it is not overloaded.

All Macedonians who want to read newspapers and leaflets in their mother tongue should learn the alphabet. Soon we will begin sending them to you...

Long live the name Macedonia! September 5, 1944

The above text was taken from my manuscript which has been preserved in the Macedonian archives in Skopje. The language it appears in here has been slightly changed to correspond to the modern Macedonian language. The original was written in the

dialectal language corresponding to the Lerin and Voden Region dialects. You can say that it was written in my original “Slavophone” Greek language. Namely, it was written in a mixture of words and expressions from the Lerin and Voden Region Macedonian dialects, which today linguists and historians will find very interesting...

One day an old man, a parent of a fighter, came to the camp to see his son. He wanted to see what his son looked like as a partisan, as a soldier of the Macedonian army. While looking at the placard with the alphabet written on it he asked: “Why didn’t you use the entire Bulgarian alphabet, with all its letters? With it you could have written any Macedonian word.”

I explained to him as simply as I could that even though our two nations have much in common, there are some things that are different. The words “people” and “father”, for example, are basic words in the life of every particular nation. Every special nation, in its language has its own special names for them. The Bulgarians call “people” “hora” or “horata” and “father” “bashta”. Here they differ from us Macedonians. We Macedonians call “people” “lugie” and “father” “tatko”. Accordingly, even although both languages have common Slavic roots, our language and the Bulgarian are different branches… in other words they are different languages. This means that our and the Bulgarian language and our and the Bulgarian people have been individually developed and shaped.

Yes, indeed, the Bulgarians do say that we Macedonians are Bulgarians. But it’s just a policy for their ill-gotten gains. Can you imagine Bulgarians agreeing to partition their lands with their neighbours the Serbians and Greeks if those lands were indeed Bulgarian…? Of course not! There is no Bulgarian who will agree to that! However, the Bulgarians in 1912 did agree to divide Macedonia with the Serbians and Greeks after they snatched it from the Ottomans. Even then, during the division, they started the Second Balkan War and fought amongst one another… as a result of that division.

We are definitely a unique people, with our own unique language and therefore we should have our own separate Macedonian

alphabet. The time will come when Macedonian scholars will compile a complete Macedonian alphabet. This is only temporary, for now... I concluded.

The old man thought for a moment and then walked away…

Unfortunately my plans to further the spread of the Macedonia language did not come to fruition. The publication of the planned Macedonian newspaper never materialized. Soon afterwards, while I was absent, (I believe it was) Petros (Hristos Moshos), an ELAS and Party official, arrived at the camp and tore up the placard. After inquiring and finding out what the letters were he got very angry and ripped it up...

He then said: “Now is not the time for such things!”

On October 12, 1944, the same day the Germans were leaving Athens, I put myself in charge of the battalion and, through a number of maneuvers, managed to avoid colliding with the ELAS forces sent to disarm and dissolve our battalion. This took place on the night of October 12th to October 13th... On the morning of October 12th, Dzhodzho took it upon himself to “detach” himself from Levertis Foundoulakis, his Greek officer in charge of “assisting in military matters”. Dzhodzho caught up with the battalion at Tikveshia at the Vatasha... (For more information on this event and about the alphabet in the quotation, see “In the deep night, dawn is born”, pp. 31-36 and in v/k “Communist”, May 7, 1971.)

9 However, only an investigative historian will seek and find it, and not an ordinary reader. Besides that, this is a biography and such a big and important event cannot be absent. Here I will outline some of the most important details:

On October 10, 1944, a villager took me aside to speak to me privately. I accepted. He told me that an official from that Macedonia behind Kozhuv Mountain was on vacation and for treatment in the free territory in Karadzhova, Meglen Region. He was now located in Sarakinovo. He rode on a strong and beautiful horse. He wanted to know if I would agree to secretly meet with him, to speak in private, without telling anyone anything…

It was very interesting and unusual. But what was all this about…?

I agreed.

Was it a provocation…? No. I did not think so. At that moment I was in Krontselevo, writer Tashko Georgievski’s village. I needed to go to Sarakinovo, a neighbouring village, the village of Georgievski’s hero, Done Kielavio the leading character from his book “Black Seed”... This was also the Battalion’s place of birth and where it grew. The villagers and the Battalion of 750 fighters were one and the same. And I can tell that no provocateurs can survive here under these conditions. Neither Greek nor Bulgarian...

A got on a horse around midnight and took to the road for Sarakinovo. With a big stick in his hand, the villager led the way. When we arrived in Sarakinovo we went into his yard. We climbed up the stairs and went into a guest room. The lamp was lit and was shining bright. The official was sitting at the end of the long table.

It was Rochko from Vatasha.

The villager closed the door behind me and left. I sat at the other end of the table. We were alone sitting opposite to each other. He spoke slowly and carefully, in circles, a little like a diplomat. He was unsure; he did not know how I was going to react. Then it became clear to me that they, from that part of our homeland (Republic of Macedonia), were concerned about the fate of the Battalion and about our liberation movement in general...

It was wonderful to know that…!

And, as the expression goes, I decided to show him all my cards. Yes, I said, our relations with our Greek friends are not good at all. The Party leaders act like provocateurs… They are openly anti-Party and anti-Macedonian. There is no longer anything in the party line that supports equality. SNOF was dissolved last May and they have generally banned all Macedonian organizations. They rejected our new volunteers in the Battalion and stopped us from creating a Macedonian revolutionary military force. We now expect that they

will dissolve the battalion any day. The trainers from Voden Region recently had a conference in Krontsedevo. They received a directive to open schools in the free territory. And only Greek schools… everywhere…. also in the Macedonian villages… The same way it was before. In short: they are struggling with all their might to stifle the Macedonian national liberation movement. That’s how things are here with us…!

We had no problem coming to an agreement. We decided it was best if the battalion temporarily took shelter in them (Republic of Macedonia). It will be well-armed, as much as possible, and, at a suitable moment it will come back and organize a mass Macedonian uprising against the occupiers and fight for the freedom of the Macedonian people.

This is how it was with Dzodzho. He was an ambitious person. He received directives and blindly followed them… without thinking. He was arbitrarily appointed in the wider composition as member of the Provincial Bureau for Macedonia and Thrace. His position was CPG District Committee organizing secretary for Voden Region. He would not even take a step without a directive, let alone secretly transfer the battalion to the other part of Macedonia (Republic of Macedonia) in the territory of another Party... I believe it was a good decision but, obviously, I was the one who had to find a solution. And I found it. I then asked Rochko if he could, as a member of the Macedonian National Liberation War Main Headquarters, see Dzhodzho and present him with the full directive:

a) The battalion will be placed under the command of the Macedonian National Liberation War Headquarters and will be proclaimed as the 21st Brigade of the Macedonian National Liberation War,

b) The battalion should immediately transfer to the territory of Vardar (Republic of) Macedonia, where it would be reorganized and properly armed,

c) After it returned to its own territory, the battalion would organize a Macedonian general uprising...

Rochko said he would do it.

After our quick agreement was concluded I returned to Krontselevo. The next day the villager appeared again. He said he had something important for Goche (Rakovski) and Dzhodzho. Dzhodzho and I went to see him together. When Dzhodzho found out what this was all about he began to turn his head. The conditions… the secret meeting with a representative from that part of Macedonia… were all a shock to him...

While the villager waited outside, Dzhodzho and I had a talk and decided it was unfair to deny the man the contact he requested. I said to him let us first hear him out and then we will see what happens...

We arrived in Sarakinovo around midnight. We went to the same house. Dzhodzho listened to Rochko very carefully. Not knowing how to answer, he asked me to go down to the courtyard with him and have a discussion. Rochko waited in the house...

It was not hard for me to convince Dzhodzho to accept the proposal. If we are going to start a revolution, I told him, then let us start a revolution and not follow this nonsense of a directive “not to accept volunteers…!” Think about it: We will go there and come back fully armed with good weapons and ammunition ready for a general uprising! In a short time we will have one, two brigades, and maybe an entire division. The Party has opted for an armed struggle against the occupiers. No one will hold it against us if we carry out the party line with much success. Obviously, the moment is right and critical for a revolution. The moment calls for an extraordinary revolutionary initiative and revolutionary consistency. If we accept, our Macedonian revolution will become massive. Our revolution will be able to break all restrictions imposed by the provocateurs. Our revolution will be recognized and affirmed... If we don’t accept, there will be no revolution. SNOF was disbanded… they will also disband our battalion and there will be nothing else. Our people will be nowhere. The other side will not want to hear a word about any rights for the Macedonians. They will be saying where were you? Where did you disappear? Do you remember, nine years ago at the CPG V Congress they insisted that a Macedonian national question

did not exist for the Party and that was because supposedly no Macedonians existed as a separate people?

So, I asked him: “Are we going to be revolutionaries and show everyone first, that we are here and, second, that we and those people behind Kuzhuv and Kaimakchalan Mountains (in the Republic of Macedonia) are one and the same people, or are we going to be cowards and, fearing the provocateurs, betray our own people…?!”

I had his ambition in mind when I said this. And I was not wrong… He obediently followed his ambition… But at a given moment, only revolutionary disobedience could have elevated him to become something and someone, even a historical figure.

We went back to the room where Rochko was and shook hands on it...

The next day, October 12, 1944, we concentrated all five units in the camp above the village Gorno Rodovo. (The first unit, the best one, was absent, detained at Paiak Mountain, under direct command of the 30th ELAS brigade). During the night, I spoke to all the commanders and commissars and told them:

“Without rushing I want you all to get the troops ready to leave in thirty minutes. The direction and goal will be communicated to you in time... Any question? No. You are dismissed…!”

I kept Giorgi Iakata-Gushi from Voden behind. Iakata was the commissar of the second unit. I told him that his troops will follow at the end of the column. The third line, the bottom one, will be strengthened by adding five or six fearless fighters and all the machine guns and automatic rifles from the other two lines. The other lines will remain with rifles only. Your task is to protect the column from enemy forces that may attempt to break us up.

Iakata smiled with understanding. He knew that under the given conditions the only enemy forces we would be encountering would be Greek ELAS units.

A detailed plan was worked out: What distance to follow behind the column, how long to protect it, how to maintain permanent contact with me personally, how long before abandoning his position and, in the end, how to get away and join the column above the village of Zborsko...

When we were returning from Sarakinovo, Dzhodzho asked me how were we going to handle his “assistant in military matters” Levertis Foundoulakis, the Greek officer. What will we do with him? We should not let him see anything, nor should we allow him to suspect anything. We should get away from him. Shall we kill him…? he asked. No. Far from it..., I said. It’s pure meanness. The man is an anti-fascist (Dzhodzho had confirmed that Foundoulakis was a Communist, a member of the Party) but we do have to get away from him.

I proposed a plan, and Dzhodzho accepted it:

Dzhodzho was to call Foundoulakis in the morning (October 12) and inform him that he had received information that the Germans were planning to re-occupy Karadzova (Meglen Region). The Germans were planning to attack and destroy our units in order to secure the railway and the road passing through the Voden-Ostrovo pass and that we needed to give the Germans an appropriate welcome. For that purpose, both of them (Dzhodzho and Foundoulakis) needed to leave right away and spend the whole day looking for suitable places along the Voden-Supotsko road to organize an in depth resistance -three strong ambushes, one after another and some distance from each other.

In the evening they were to go to Supotsko for a well-deserved rest. Dzhodzho was to visit his fiancée Katina, and Foundoulakis’s his wife. The next morning they were to return to the camp… That was what they had to agree to. But while Foundoulakis was resting at night, Dzhodzho was to take Katina to the village Zborsko and from there travel over Kozhuv Mountain and join the battalion at Tikveshia...

This plan was hatched to the last detail without any difficulty …

Transferring the battalion, however, was something completely different. Unbeknown to us, we had official enemy agents among our fighters who had joined the partisans as “volunteers”. One of those “volunteers” was a beautiful woman who had recently escaped to Voden. She had come together with a larger group of people from Voden Region. I believe she was the child of immigrant parents from the Turkish part of Thrace. All the time she tried to hang around headquarters, especially around me. One evening she asked me to explain the Macedonian alphabet to her. She wanted to know how I composed it and how each letter was pronounced. Then, with a seductive look, she asked:

“Please write it down for me, I want to have it as a souvenir from you!”

I did what she asked and immediately sent her to her unit. Whether she was frightened or simply finished her task, the next day she deserted and, through enemy channels or connections, found herself in Voden.

We also had many cases of “volunteers” reporting to the corresponding services such as the ELAS X Division, the XXX Brigade, the District Committee, etc. There was no escape from them so the only thing left for me to do was to hold off on informing the commanders of the battalion’s real motive.

First, I ordered a slow preparation for the movement…

If I ordered a more urgent preparation it could have led them to think that it was a more serious situation which needed to be performed unexpectedly, unnoticeably and under disguise.

I said nothing about the direction we were taking or about the purpose of this movement.

The officers and fighters were left uninformed. They had to wait a long time before they could figure out on their own which direction the battalion was headed and what its mission was.

Instead of going north, the initial heading for the battalion was south.

This, I figured, would undermine their vigilance, and suggest to them that we may be going to perform some kind of night action on the rail line or on the road at the Mauem An (Voden-Ostrovo) pass, or we were transferring the battalion to the opposite side of Mount Karakamen (Vermion).

The weather was cloudy which made the night very dark. I used the cover of darkness to change the battalion’s direction which made it unnoticeable. We took to the southeast, then east, northeast and north, avoiding populated areas. We arrived in the village Zborsko at dawn on October 13, 1944. After a short break, we set off for the Tikveshia overpass...

Just as the fighters figured out where we were going some of them suddenly took “ill” and were unable to follow the column...

I decided to pace back and forth inside the column and somewhere under the village Baovo, in the flat area, I found a grouping of fighters who had stopped moving. The reason for that, I was told, was because of the hurdle they ran into attempting to cross a brook that had flooded from the rain. There was no bridge to cross, only two logs that substituted for a bridge. Everything was wet and very slippery. It was raining gently. It was also dark and visibility was very poor. The whole mission could have failed because of this so I decided to cross the brook myself by walking through the running water. It turned out to be knee high. I came back to the bank and ordered the fighters to march through it. We threw the two logs into the water and sent them down the torrent. They disappeared into the darkness...

We were wet for many hours. I knew that hardly anyone complaining of being sick was actually sick but I decided to “help” them anyway. I gave orders that each sick person be accompanied by his or her closest friend to help them go back…!

I was certain they would go back running.

I saw no harm in doing that. By the time these “sick” fighters informed the ELAS units, sent to disarm and dissolve the battalion, where the battalion was, it would be too late. They couldn’t even reach us or cut us off with motorized vehicles, if there was a way to do that...

We arrived at the first village under Mount Kozhuv in Tikveshia just before noon. I immediately prepared a leaflet informing everyone why we were withdrawing and that we were doing it in protest... I immediately sent back five fighters to the villages in Karadzova, Ostrovo Region in Voden to distribute them to the people.

I then called a special meeting with the unit commanders and commissars. Our Party, I said to them, is in support of an armed struggle against the occupiers. And in the name of the Party, we are forbidden from taking part in this struggle. Our volunteers who came to join our units were sent back to their villages. They (the Party) have disbanded SNOF in Lerin and Kostur Region and they were ready to disarm and dissolve our battalion. They have suppressed the Macedonian national liberation movement. This is a policy of discrimination and suppression, an anti-Macedonian and anti-Party policy. This is apparently being done by provocateurs. We withdrew here in this part of Macedonia in protest and to resist. So, for the time being, with help from Tito’s Macedonian Army, we will continue the struggle against the occupiers here. This is the only way we can safeguard our Macedonian battalion without bloodshed. Let the central party leadership consider our case. We believe the provocateurs will be exposed! And so on, in that spirit...

I then sent them to gather their fighters and bring them to the churchyard.

The fighters listened attentively while I told them what I had told the officers and finished my talk as follows:

We will expose the provocateurs in the ranks of the Party. Long live the Party. Long live the name Macedonia…!

The fighters were happy with the news and valiantly approved…

As I looked through the crowd of fighters I noticed some sort of violent and artificial austerity visible in three of the battalion commanders. 1) Georgios Kondilis, unit commander; 2) Nikos Kantardzhis, unit commissar; and 3) Sotirios... (I forgot his surname), member of the headquarters.

These three were sent to us by Petros (Hristos Moshos) from ELAS X Division to help with the reinforcement of the battalion. Clearly, they were Petros’s eyes and ears, that is, they worked for the Bureau at X division headquarters. I decided to let them see for themselves that we had nothing to hide. We demanded equality from them and we made our demands publicly. So it was only fair that we granted them the same. I appointed them to important but harmless command posts where they could not reject any of our young revolutionaries who strove to find themselves in the ranks of the battalion. But they could still pose danger in the new situation. EAM, CPG and ELAS provocateurs, through them could try to speculate, with a vague and problematic perspective, what the battalion was doing outside of Greece. And they did… But with others… with much smaller caliber… their agents...

Their agents worked against us spreading negative thoughts to our fighters: “Where have you gone…! Goche (Rakovski) sold you out to strangers. You will die for someone else’s interests, as traitors. Goche is a traitor…!” And so on…

They tried to influence the fighters in the battalion with these and similar slogans but they were not effective because their agents were not influential fighters and, in time, I removed them from their posts. I called them in and “secretly” sent them back to Karadzhova with a “special task”. I told them to inform the people of our battalion’s “historical maneuver” so that they could “raise the morale” in the Macedonian villages. I then asked them to come back here about ten days later. I gave them fifty leaflets each to distribute. So, I got rid of them painlessly...

And as I was sure, they did not return. I did not hear from them or about them for decades. Only recently I found out what happened to them. They immediately went back to report to those who sent them to the battalion and... they were arrested. When those in Greek

command found out that they had come from across the border and that Goche himself had sent them back, they arrested them. And as to why the battalion defected? They said nothing. They were charged for being part of the defection and suffered as if they were Goche’s people who “sold out to the Serbians”. And from how it looks, it appears that Sotir or Sotirios, as leader of this “group of spies”, paid with his own head. He was gone and never heard of again… Georgios Kondilis on the other hand is still alive and, I believe, lives in Poland. A few years ago Nikos Kantardzhis moved to Skopje and now calls himself Kole Kantardziev. He came to possess an apartment and a high paying job incredibly fast and easy. He lived comfortably until recently when he died. Meanwhile, back in the village, Rochko informed me that everything was prepared for the battalion to be accepted and placed on rest in Batasha. We arrived there in the afternoon and organized the fighters to stay in the various houses.

Dzhodzho caught up with us and joined us there.

The next day, Lefteris Foundoulakis, Dzhodzho’s “military assistant”, arrived in the camp and saw that it was empty. He found out what had happened after the “sick” fighters caught up with him. After that he insisted and begged us to bring him with us and give him his old position...

We explained to him that we had nothing against him. But, at the same time, he could not be in command of Macedonian fighters. Even though he was one of those rare communists among us, we could not accept him. He had no psychological link to the vast majority of our fighters, which was understandable, because he belonged to the oppressive nation. He was... like an English officer who was appointed by the colonial authorities, commander of the Hindu soldiers. Like before, even now, after the clash with the people who appointed him here, his presence had specific meaning. We asked him if this was clear to him…

Lefteris Foundoulakis nodded his head. It was clear to him. Then, with a heavy heart, he climbed on his horse and left. After that things did not go well for him. He was a commander who had “lost” the confidence of his soldiers...

Barba Nikos (Takis Papadopoulos), Secretary of the Voden Party District Committee arrived here in the afternoon of the same day. He brought with him Kiriakos, Karadzhova District Committee secretary, known for being a violent killer. He was responsible for murdering many people. His motto was: “Shoot first then ask questions…” There was another person with them.

They asked for Dzhodzho.

Dzhodzho came out and welcomed them. They requested a private audience with him and went inside a house to discuss the return of the battalion.

I was terribly anxious. I was amazed and shaken by Dzhodzho’s attitude. He completely ignored me...

He told me this was what the Greek comrades wanted and there was no need for me to know what was said between them…

Dzhodzho reverted back to his old self being accustomed to obedience and doing things without thinking...

This happened on October 14, 1944 and reminded me of something very sad and bitter that took place just a couple of weeks after the Macedonian battalion was formed in Voden Region, when the CPG, with quick action on the part of ELAS XXX Regiment in the Voden Region Macedonian villages, on the night between June 26 and 27, 1944, arrested many Macedonian villagers accused of possessing hidden weapons. Included among the villages attacked were Zhervi, Chegan, Rusilovo, Drushka, Gugovo, Nisia, Teovo, Vladovo and Mesimer. Most of these villages were organized by the resistance movement, especially Chegan, Zhervi, Rusilovo, Drusko, Teovo, Vladovo, which were organized 100 per cent by the Resistance movement, and there was no doubt that there was anything suspicious going on, especially hidden weapons. Nevertheless, these people, most of whom were partisans, communists, members of the CPG, were taken hostage and many liquidated. Included among those liquidated were; Dimitar Leska from the village Chegan, an old communist who spent many years in the infamous Akronavlia

prison, and Gele Popov, an old communist from the village Vladovo.

A small number of those captured and taken hostage were released.