CHAPTER NINE – Kuzmian Piurkovski Professor of Anthropology

CHAPTER NINE – Kuzmian Piurkovski Professor of Anthropology

Kuzmian Piurkovski, Professor of Anthropology, smiled at Dobrin and said:

“All you communists want to do is be celebrated like you are true gods, saviours, like you are the initiators of history and everyone’s luck and happiness depends on you…”

Every evening he went with Dobrin… holding his hands behind his back. The Professor did this until July 1952, when Dobrin was taken to Eastern Siberia to camp O-41.

By then 52 months had passed since October 3, 1949, when Dobrin was arrested by the Greek CPG leaders in the stormy camp in Albania. The first three months he spent in solitary confinement in Tirana. The rest he spent in Moscow but only three months with Professor Kuzmian Piurkovski. The moment Dobrin introduced himself and said that he was a communist, the professor smiled and said:

“All you communists want to do is be celebrated like you are true gods, saviours, like you are the initiators of history and everyone’s luck and happiness depends on you. Your birth places, the objects with which you served yourselves, the tombs and monuments, all become “holy” works which not only point to respect, but to a real religious cult, the kind of cult on which vows and oaths are taken. Public holidays are created and even museums are raised in your names...”

That day, quite suddenly, the door flung open and a Chechen guard, strong like a gorilla, appeared. The professor stopped talking about the communists and presented a friendly face. The Chechen then sharply ordered Dobrin to go with him. He must have forgotten to tie his hands behind his back, but out of habit Dobrin put them behind his back anyway. The guard took him to an office where Greek Captain Ioannidis, captain of the MVD troops, and special interrogator Colonel Nikitin were waiting for him. Ioannidis showed him a “legal” document that he was holding. Dobrin asked if he

could read it himself. Ioannidis replied: “No! We are judging you here, not you us...” Ioannidis then began to talk in a high and temperate tone of voice. He said: “We are here representing the USSR Supreme Court by which, according to Act AO – 238, you are condemned to ten years imprisonment with deprivation of personal freedom to be served in the Re-Educational Labor Camps – ITL, and to declare that the formal part of this investigation is completed as of May 30, 1952...”

This was done on the basis of Article 58, paragraphs 4 and 11 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code. “For being liaison to American and international reactionaries and for having organized activities in their favour...”

Dobrin felt a sharp pain cutting inside his stomach. He was greatly disappointed in the judicial system because he had different ideas of what the judicial system would be like in the Soviet Union. He thought justice here in a socialist society would be fair, just and more humane… Dobrin suddenly felt as if someone had just lifted a veil that had been covering his eyes and kept them from seeing reality...

No court… no trial… He was just sentenced…!?

Dobrin found himself without the right to see his indictment, without the right to challenge the witnesses or question statements made by his associates who testified against him. He was never given the right to defend himself. Not even the “Holy Inquisitions” acted this way with their accused. Dobrin wondered why such methods were still in use now after they had been long condemned by history. Even after this he could still not understand how he could have violated the Criminal Code of the USSR? How a Macedonian, fighting his mortal enemy in Greek occupied Macedonia, could have broken the law in the USSR? Clearly the communists were no better than the Greek chauvinists in this regard…

Dobrin sat in his cell in the train car and listened to the rhythmic clatter of the wheels hitting the rails all the way from Moscow to Eastern Siberia. The journey was part of his sentence. A special guard sat behind the iron bars in the hallway above his head. Once

in a while the guard took a couple of steps away and then returned again. He never spoke to Dobrin but stood by him, hugging his machine gun. He did not look menacing, not like the other guard. This reminded Dobrin of Professor Piurkovski who, on Dobrin’s departure, was left alone in the cell back in the prison in Moscow. Dobrin parted without saying goodbye to the professor. Piurkovski hated the Communists because they killed his brother in “Katinska forest”. He was a senior officer. His father educated them in Paris and as Professor Piurkovski said: “We just wanted to be loyal to our homeland Poland...” and did not want to kneel before anyone or take any oaths. Not like us, the leaders of NOF, who did exactly that when we all spoke the well chosen words: “We swear that we will follow Nikos Zahariadis, who is our destiny and our future. We will believe whatever happens and we will defend him with our lives.”

This is what Professor Piurkovski told Dobrin and then asked: “Why did you, as a people, take that route and where did you think it was going to take you?” He spoke to Dobrin during the night and Dobrin, of course, wanted to hear more of his thoughts.

“You communists sure know how to find faults with words of international importance, and a person is left to blame himself or even to admit that he is an agent of Anglo-American imperialism, even though he himself did no such thing or had no inclination of doing such a thing. First the Communists will make you obedient to a point of being euphoric and then you will do anything in the name of the people, even if you yourself participate in your own genocide. It happened to you Macedonians didn’t it?” asked the professor.

He then added: “It happened to you, the people of NOF! Right?!”

The professor paused for a moment, looked at Dobrin and said: “It happened to you Suvogorski didn’t it?! You communists, you are a kind of people who never asked yourselves: ‘Why did the Greeks change the ethnic composition in your indigenous country? Why did they change your personal names? Why did they rename your identity and call you “Slavo-Macedonians”? And why did they drive all of you en mass to participate in this crazy war? Why, Suvogorski, why, why? Why are these Asia Minor settlers and colonists the Macedonians now and you, the real Macedonians, are

outside of your homeland roaming the world? And after all that was done to you by these communists you still remain loyal and faithful to them and to their communist ideals? Are you going to trust them to continue to decide your fate and that of your people? You, you Suvogorski and the people of NOF, you are the ones responsible for driving the Macedonian people in this mindless war, a war that was invented by someone else! I believe that you, the leaders of NOF and AFZH, were responsible for unleashing this…” concluded the professor. “Yes it was us; we unleashed the psychological terror in our homeland… We did this under orders from others…” Dobrin thought to himself. This was also an attack on his inner peace... But then why were we sent to Siberia? Was it to remove us so that the real criminals of this crime would never be revealed? Why were we the good soldiers of this war being punished for following orders?

The wheels of the train car stopped clattering and a voice was heard yelling: “Novosibirskaia”.

They lined up the prisoners and led them into the prison showers. The showers were steaming like volcanoes. They could hear the flow of clear Siberian water. They were handed liquid soap and were unsure of how to use it, until they realized they should soap themselves away from the gushing water first before stepping under the shower. This was the first time Dobrin had seen so many deformed bodies, impoverished, chewed by scabies and with recessed bottoms… But in the shower they all looked like they were having fun being splashed by the squirting water while playing with their genitals... While looking at Dobrin through the gushing steam, wide-eyed Lazar Rogozharov said: “Did you ever imagine that a person from NOF could be having a shower in Novosibirsk?” He then cracked up laughing and laughing until a loud voice was heard yelling: “Enough!”

The hot water seemed to have relaxed Dobrin because he quickly fell asleep in the train car traveling on the Trans-Siberian rail line. He thought he heard a loud voice yelling: “People! Hey, you good Macedonians! Go back to your homeland, this is not your revolution, this is a scam for your genocide! Here you won’t be dying for your fatherland. I am not the one who invented all this

evil! Go back to your homeland; this is someone else’s sinister deception!”

Dobrin woke up when the train arrived in the city Taished in Camp O-41. This is where Dobrin was renamed to number AO-238 (O-41).

“Oh my God what have I done? I was one of those who told our people that this war was a continuation of our Ilinden struggle, our iconic ideal worth dying for... Oh my God my tormented brain is going to explode…” Dobrin thought to himself.

At camp they immediately cut his hair and after that they gave him two servings of “borch” (sauerkraut) which he ate with satisfaction.

Suddenly Dobrin became more curious than worried.

He began to read the slogans. He walked through the entire camp from end to end like a daft person. He then went to listen to a choir, to watch a theater group and later he joined an orchestra. He practiced playing the violin but when the drummer Igor Vasilievich Kedro died, Dobrin was appointed drummer by decree of the maestro Ivan Petrovich Kokotkin. Kokotkin said to him: “If you are a true communist then you will be the best solution to this problem...”

Dobrin was like a stray dog in the camp. When folk music was played the folk dancers yelled “Davai siline!” (Strike harder!) Dobrin did, he beat the drum harder and faster. Kokotkin often got angry at him but not the Russian musicians; they were satisfied with his performances. They all danced the “robiashi”; Russians, Germans, Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, Macedonians, Mongols, Chinese, Koreans and Yugoslavs, who sometimes addressed Dobrin with the words “Udri burazeru (Strike storm maker)! Let it be heard far and wide that we communists are dancing together with the fascists, here in this camp…”

The city Taished looked like a campsite loaded with locomotives and smoke. Dobrin’s skin was dry, cold and odorless; perhaps it was

from the locomotive smoke. One day Dobrin was taken to the O-25 encampment, searched and photographed. They were neither angry nor happy with him; they just invited him to an office and gave him food for three days. They then took him outside. There was a black dog sitting opposite Dobrin at the exit watching him motionlessly.

Dobrin’s eyes were sunken deep into his eye cavities and did not have a spark. Someone with a creaking voice addressed Dobrin from behind. He said “Gatov”! Dobrin replied “Davno!”

Dobrin felt some satisfaction when the old doorman told him: “Nu molodoi chelovek, schaslivogo puti I vse haroshova... (Young man, have a safe journey and all the best…)”

There was a new life in front of Dobrin. He had his documents and he was free!?

Dawn in Taishedskata was gray and stormy. He cheerful sat under a Berioza and repeated the words that he had composed in his cell, which to this day he has not written down… this way he could carry them as a burden in his soul...

* * *

Strogov had difficulty hiding his ironic smile when he saw Dobrin writing on the last page. Perhaps he would have written more if someone had given him more pages.

Strogov kept looking at Dobrin and waiting for him to hand him everything that he had written. There was silence. They were both silent while staring at the pile of pages. Dobrin thought: “What nonsense. Words without meaning… These are my own personal thoughts… my poems… they don’t belong to the police…” Dobrin then raised his head while looking at Strogov and, with sparkling eyes, said: “I will only recite a verse from some of my poems…”

Without waiting for Strogov’s approval, delighted he began...

“The Slavs left us in dead guard waiting; being thrown into oblivion since before Samoil and we lived in the cramp of time that secreted venom...”

“From us they created a hand endless in the world of the future indefinitely strict and bleak...”

“The wind blows on us taking strange paths and our graves have no logical order...”

“We wake up wet from the endless rains of evil and the next day we pave the way to find ourselves...”

“On our hills we have left eternal guards and in forgiveness, and in premonition we filled their graves with songs...”

While sitting in his cell Dobrin sometimes screamed out loud. One time the Russian guard outside said to him: “You in there! Stop raving…” He then turned to the guard next to him and said: “I don’t understand a word he is saying! Hey, Shiort, do you know what he is saying?” The guard then yelled at Dobrin and said: “Rave all you want… it has nothing to do with me.” He then turned to the other guard and said: “Perhaps the man has gone mad and what of it... He is a Greek political immigrant, and he rattles some things that are not Greek... He is completely mixed up; Slavs, dead guards, Samoil. Maybe it’s his father, who the devil knows... I repeatedly reported this to my Greek boss. One time he came here and listened. He then told me that this man was Greek, and the Greek bosses say he was a traitor at an international level... They fought together in Greece. But I can do nothing to help him. Right now the Greek bosses are our brothers in communism and we should trust them. The chief told me that this man betrayed the revolution in Greece and that I must guard him well, but he has already gone mad...”

Hearing this from Dobrin made Strogov laugh out loud. But all Dobrin wanted to do was tell Strogov that the Russians and the Greeks were working together in “fraternal service”. This made Dobrin think. He thought to himself:

“What can I do? Perhaps not now... Is being an “internationalist” still in fashion or has that phase passed…?” That’s how it was before and after the revolution, when Dobrin and the Macedonian people were shouting: “Hey, you, you there! You can be imitators of Homer, do you hear? But we Macedonians want our national freedom!” And they, in front of their diplomatic commitments, raised their hands and shoulders up in the air, as a sign of peace, and everyone except for us was left with was a clear conscience, and they, the epigones, were left with a blissful smile on their faces. In fact, when they were forcing us to crawl in their trenches, their psychologists and historians were saying that this was done for our religious rite.

They were telling the world that we did not cooperate with them, not because of fear but because of conscience... Yes, Dobrin remembered rejoicing under the Russian berioska like a little child... A Korean was looking at him. His name was Kim Lan. He said to Dobrin, we Koreans have a saying: “If you put a fish in a bowl with water it will think you have given it freedom... You, Dobrin, you should know that you and I will spend our lives in a bowl of water”.

In May 1957, after spending several months in the camp, Dobrin found himself inside the gates of the Alma-Ata Interior Ministry. They read him a new sentence at the military college in the USSR Supreme Court. It read as follows: “The earlier verdict against you (AO-238) read in the earlier hearing has been canceled due to lack of evidence.”

Many people suffered and died in this way, which leads a person to ask: “How and why were so many people falsely accused of being traitors and sent to prison?”

“Maybe there are no such cases here…?” Dobrin asked Strogov.

Not expecting a question like that, Strogov felt as if he was seemingly now facing an interrogator.

“Dobrin, I have often asked myself the same question. And of course it is time to tell the truth. The truth is destined to fight against falsehood. And the greatest friend of truth is time. But you are

already in your homeland, so leave it to time to show you the truth.” replied Strogov.

“Dobrin, these are the rules... We can’t make claims because we have no evidence, but we think maybe you have been re-educated... We think that you came here as an agent!” added Strogov.

Dobrin was shocked by the comment and his eyes opened wide.

“Meaning, reason cannot prevail… And here I am… I came back because I wanted my child to learn my native language and to be raised and grow among my people...” Dobrin thought to himself and blurted out: “I am no ones agent!”

“Listen here, I would sacrifice ten Dobrins for our Yugoslavia!” replied Strogov loudly with a strange tone of voice and an emphasized sense of patriotism.

“Do I still have to wait? Here too in my homeland? Is justice delayed for me again? Rumena was right when she said: ‘I look like a tattered hermit... like an old, polished stone with a naked back...’

I understand, it will be just like it has been. Joy and evil will continue to welcome me in the shelters, in those hatcheries of strange misfortunes… in those eternal cold healing places of ours... and perhaps they will allow me to pick my own grave? It is a heavy offense waged against me. Strogov certainly knows that ‘there can be no guilt without proof’, yet he is ready to ‘sacrifice’ ten like me! Only in the interest of Yugoslavia, for which I too became a Siberian captive...” Dobrin thought to himself.

“Has it been forgotten that we, the leaders of NOF, on April 23, 1945, were given a piece of paper on which was written the task to go back to Greek occupied Macedonia and raise the Macedonian people in a socialist revolution? Who asked for this? We, the Macedonian people, did not ask for this! We were told! Is it not known that we the leaders of NOF were convicted of being Yugoslav agents? Do they not know that…! Doesn’t Strogov know that I am only a Macedonian and not a Yugoslav Macedonian?! He should know that only I, from all of us, wanted to return to my

comrades and show them that the Greeks had no right to manipulate our people.

Why did I take this path and where am I going next? I have now become an enemy of both the CPG and the CPY...

It turned out that we had no idea how to die for our fatherland, because one cannot defend his homeland by abandoning it and by uprooting his people.

As a communist I never believed that communists from other nations could push and sacrifice a small nation to a point of genocide for their own interests! Never! Never have I believed that!” Dobrin thought to himself.

It has been raining. Now the sun is shining. One was being exchanged for the other… rain then, suddenly, sunshine… Dobrin was returned to the barracks number 4 room 13.