A VIRTUE ENCOUNTERING THE REALITY OF THE PAST

A VIRTUE ENCOUNTERING THE REALITY OF THE PAST

Hristo IVANOVSKI, “Memories and thoughts”, Self published, Skopje, 2001

Ivanovski, with his exceptional text, proved to be an objective author and historian. He told us the bitter lesson and the basic reason for the Greek Civil War phenomenon which often characterized the dictatorship of totalitarianism at the time attached to the structure of globalization. Ivanovski also spoke as a critic of every essential value from our historical past. In his autography, Ivanovski is merciless to himself, as only a pure man could be. With an analytical approach to a chaotic time (from the first half of the 20th century) at these Balkan crossroads, he was able to give us an abundance of historical details; he showed us that the past never completely dies. Ivanovski is real and at times unbearably cruel, he digs deep in those ruins that give a person the confidence to see the humanity and (self) sacrifice in the Macedonian people in Greece. Ivanovski, knowingly and factually has opened the problem for a firm belief in the foundations of those ruins, dividing the world into good and bad, positive and negative, and terrible and wonderful. All those dealings with the real world, and personally being taken in by the progressive utopia, showed how all this could become synonymous with revolution. He explains that utopia, no matter how unrealistic and fanatical it is, could not have been so influential at the time of his conceptual thinking and the guiding primordial ideas that made him join that war. The power of these personal thoughts and memories exactly and convincingly paint a mental picture of the ideals of that time in which the power of ideological activists was manifested (1940 - 1949). But the question is “why did people wait to look for the key”, to speak and assess how to present life, how to present people in such a way that would touch the intimacy of every person who went through that continuous, impossible, contradictory and non-unique world.

With his noble memories, armed with extraordinary strength and wisdom, Ivanovski decided to write a book entitled “Memories”

which is exclusively about his native people in Kostur Region and about his past, which in its entirety testifies to a larger part of the history of the Macedonian people living in Greece. He devoted himself exclusively to the past, to the dignified feeling that does not erase that power or terror, but is swallowed up and turned into ghosts, ghosts of the past, a flash of a time, of a tragedy, of a memory, which naturally fades, not because of forgetfulness or because of the passage of time, no, it may erode only in the inspirational feeling of life. Ivanovski, probed into those experiences, but now hidden, seemingly non-existent, unacceptable spaces in his own soul, but also in the souls of every wanderer. Ivanovski is different in his (not) typification of the victims and (not) friends, but he will see the human and the beautiful in everyone, both in the most ignorant and in the most cruel, he will see it where we least expect it, but is tolerant with condemnation and acceptance or non-acceptance.

The most touching confessions in Ivanovski’s book is the abandonment of his native land:

“July 1944... the Greek gangs that cooperated with the German occupier, who had been robbing and killing throughout the Macedonian villages, were activated... our property was looted... it was June 1944, we were herded into a truck: with my mother and two sisters and together with my uncle’s family we left for Bitola. And so began our wandering around the world.”

The pain and crying of parting from his native land was great. There, his childhood and everyone he loved disappeared, and he didn’t know how or where to find them! Everything from which his life was once torn disappeared, everything disappeared without explanation and justification; there was nothing there from those Ilinden fighters who fought and gave their lives… there was no hope... (65)

Ivanovski, wished to speak virtuously before the court of history about the (self) sacrifice of the Macedonians in the Greek Civil War, which was the most tragic event for the Macedonian people in Greece (but also for the entire ethnic group), because it uprooted as from that part of Macedonia and instilled in us a sense of alienation

with those merciless expulsions. Ivanovski speaks of life, of humiliation and dignity, of piety and loyalty, of contempt and delight, of fear and courage, of the greatest possible suffering in wars, gradually exposing its horrific and regenerating inhuman dimensions.

“My return to Aegean Macedonia... it was an open secret that all the young Aegeans who defected to Yugoslavia were mobilized as volunteers by NOF activists and sent back to Greece to fight in DAG’s ranks. I was a student in the 7th grade... So, on February 4, 1948, we found ourselves at the railway station in Bitola... Several times a day, the NOF cadres told us not to wear anything with Macedonian and Yugoslav writings, we were specifically ordered to hand over all documents and all our money and valuables. We were also informed that we should change our names and surnames from Macedonian to Greek, so I became Hristos Yanakis... so at age 17 I became a DAG soldier (andartis) and a direct participant in the tragedy of my people…” (70 - 71).

As a direct participant this is exactly how Ivanovski recounted the Greek Civil War to us. Ivanovski was torn between his aggressive instinct and the anarchist structure of the army, which in general did not have a single Macedonian mark, because we Macedonians were not in the two pillars that lead the war: the political and the military. Namely, in that war, the Macedonian organizations NOF and AFZH lived (imagined themselves) in a virtual world, with directed reflection and propagated to the Macedonian people that that war was a revolution and a continuation of the famous Ilinden Uprising. The NOF model of political action, which was installed as early as April 1945, following the suggestions of the CPM/CPY, was projected with major elements from all previous models that turned out to be directed against us Macedonians. It was precisely this political concept in which there was a built-in conflict between the Macedonians and the Greeks, and it was with a different target national program, but never officialized, but with a changing direction. After the Macedonians were totally mobilized, as it turned out, NOF was forced to play a big game against its own will - it started to agitate for a change in the rating in the interest of the CPG, and this brought it to a gradual collapse in the depths of its own political functioning. Under the power of a CPG dictatorship, the

main leader of the Greek Civil War, all Macedonian organizations were oriented in the service of improving DAG’s military resources. There were many pitfalls, both from the Greek government’s reaction, from the CPG and from the CPY, but whether NOF had the strength to perceive all that was a question that requires deeper analysis, since our historiography, the “history of the Aegeans” is without many details (without the secrets of the CPM/CPY and CPG secret ideological activists and the truth is defended by totalitarianism). This book however says that the time is coming when we can no longer run away from the truth, and we need to revise our consciousness.

Ivanovski has noted that after DAG was liquidated on August 28 -30, 1949, infighting began to take place not only on a national basis but also on an ideological basis. The CPG began to accuse people of betrayal calling them “Tito’s agents in DAG…” And who could those agents be? The Macedonians or Slavo-Macedonians as the Greeks called us, of course. I remember the gatherings attended by members of the CPG Central Committee and by many of our Macedonians who somehow or other defended the theses and attacked their comrades and leaders as Tito’s agents... The NOF and AFZH leaderships were condemned and exiled to the Siberian prisons, and the Macedonian fighters were left with a one-way ticket to roam the world... (130).

But Ivanovski as a true patriot, not a historian by vocation, confirmed himself as one of the most knowledgeable historiographers. He is also a true friend. Ivanovski has told us the truth even when it was not pleasant and that is exactly how he wrote about what had happened to him in his life (but so true, as if it also applied to thousands of Macedonians who were DAG participants). Ivanovski told us that he was not spared, not even a moment, from the horror of the war, but he did express doubts about the justification of the sacrifices we made in that war. He speaks directly about the most terrible things and manages to describe those psychological moments so clearly that the reader will think: how could there be such a devaluation of human life, precisely from those who we did not expect it, in those extremely cruel events and returned to us with communist irony with giving and taking away rights and freedoms, until self-determination for the formation of

“United Macedonia” in some kind of Balkan federation (1949). Events that surprise and confuse… that create horror due to the lack of clear Macedonian representation of what was actually planned and what happened in that war. Events in which the fighters were thrown into total delusion and devalued, without any reason and in which we slowly and slowly realized that the only way out was to bring our own non-existence (thrown into the ideological waste).

In that respect, Ivanovski showed us and spoke about the entire absurdity of war, but also about the fate of man, the individual whose life in war has no value. In his writing Ivanovski has conveyed to us the then view of man (in the war), of life that was lived in a different way, a way that we cannot imagine now, when the author himself became his own accomplice, who was overwhelmed by the national feeling and therefore it was normal: it was important to bravely die for our Macedonian homeland or for the ideology.

So, the question that comes out of all this is: was there another side to the war or was there no other side?

What is the human value and happiness that awaits us in the future? What is its power? Is there justice for us Macedonians, the kind the Greek fighters received?!

Is the (Self) sacrifice and resistance to horrors based only on the strength of one’s own ideological belief that is invisible but omnipresent and reaches the most hidden regions of our hearts and in the most secret spaces of our human soul? And does it remain in a person until their death? For some - YES! People like that do not recognize the (self) sacrifice of others and manipulation skillfully perpetrated against us Macedonians at that time by the politicians from the powerful centers. But even today, this continues even after half a century later.

Reading Ivanovski’s confessions simply leaves you breathless.

“Battle for Lerin February 2, 1949... During the descent, after a gully, unexpectedly, as if he had sprung from the ground, an enemy soldier appeared who did not notice us earlier than we did, and from

8 - 10 meters fired a burst into me. Fortunately for me, most of the bullets hit my machine gun, which was hanging on my chest, and only a few bullets hit me in the upper part of the thigh of my right leg... The soldier standing in front of me was surprised… He wondered how I was still alive after he emptied an entire magazine of bullets on me. I too was surprised by his appearance and that I was still standing and alive. I don’t know how long the daze lasted, but when I looked at my machine gun, I saw that it was broken - the cartridge and the holder had fallen. Meanwhile, the soldier took out another magazine in order to finish me off. Then I remembered my “Valter” (machine gun) that had saved my life...” (110).

Everything was dead in ten minutes, corpses of people and animals were mixed together. A person cannot imagine a more shocking picture. The stream in the gully was literally flowing with blood. (111).

This was the kind of strength a young man who went out to fight for Macedonia had in his own belief in the ideology and utopian intentions. A man wearing a uniform, who stepped firmly and accurately hit the opponent on the temple with a sniper shot and was promoted to a DAG officer. But it should be known that he did it as an ideological soldier, because at that time ideology usually fed us with political ideas inspired or supported by the system of government in that army, but no less utopian (our Macedonian) intention referred to those landmarks that transcend reality. He showed that we Macedonians, as ideological soldiers, risked our lives for an honest and morally acceptable humanity. It speaks of one of the greatest evils of human history. And he wonders: what about the homeland? Is it just a place where we happen to be born and raised? Isn’t that the homeland of our ancestors whose graves are still there today? Yes! Like it or not, we were born there and that there is our motherland. We were born from those parents and that place was where our fate was decided for centuries. Unfortunately even today when we live in a civilized world we still keep silent! We never ask about our homeland. Why!?

Ivanovski kept living afraid, confused and traumatized fearing that all the world’s value principles, all principles, all basic humanistic categories were simply compromised, because he and many others

like him did not get any satisfaction, but instead after that cruel war they got a one-way ticket out of their homeland simply because they were Macedonians and they didn’t even have the right to return to die on their fatherland.

In his memoirs, Ivanovski opened up the painful question (return to the Republic of Macedonia under the same regimes and paths as his previous comrades): “... Again back to my homeland. Immense joy and delight... It was the beginning of April 1962... We stayed at Idrizovo Prison for 8 or 9 days, where every day for 4-5 hours an inspector with a typewriter interrogated me and opened a file for me... Our stay in Idrizovo Prison was about testing UDBA’s power and psychological effects on the returnees like me.”

Ivanovski told us the entire truth about how it was to live in exile and how he desired to remain a Macedonian. But with his return to his homeland it was unclear to him and to others like him, why he had to “not look, not listen, not speak… but accept to be our collaborator and deliverer”. He had a half a century to think of how to get out of the margins of the political Yugoslav historiography in which there was desired to create a new category for us returnees called “prisoners of consciousness”. The idea was to divide and value our comrades from “how big” or “how small” Macedonians they were into “how big and small” traitors they were. This reminded Ivanovski of the NOF slogans promoted during the Greek Civil War that went something like this: “Do you really want to be a patriot? Then join DAG’s ranks!” And of the constantly repeated phrase: “If we have to we will all perish for the CPG which speaks the truth out loud,!” Well, as we can see no compact Macedonian nation was ever built with subject consciousness… And now this is what is done to the people who gave their lives convinced they were doing it to free their homeland. This is what Ivanovski discovered in his search for the truth. But in his search he unearthed even more questions such as: what is happening to our destiny? What is the future of our nation and its history? Who will care about the fate of the Macedonian people living in Greece?

Ivanovski composed his memoirs in order to free himself from the nightmares he went through during and after the war. He also did this in order to contribute to the “Testimony for the Truth” and to no

longer look for meaning in silence. He did this to combat the historic distortion about “The Aegeans”.

What is the truth? What is its human value? There is another fascinating point in this book, and that is the unburdenedness of hatred. That exactly which we (the people from Vardar, Pirin and Aegean Macedonia), I don’t think, will learn in a thousand years. Ivanovski did not speak of nationalists, but of people with a national consciousness. This is truly an extraordinary study of a micro cultural society, of the sociological and psychological elements that created Kostur and Kostur Region, Lerin and Lerin Region, Voden and Voden Region. And suddenly it became clear to us why, since the beginning of the 20th century, Hellenism fueled the migration movements of these people, either through wars (especially in the period (1900 - 1908) or because of economic problems.

The book is amazing, honest, and well organized. Given the scant information we have it is well presented and covers a large part of the tragedies our people experienced. It is a faithful record of our destiny.

April 12, 2003