CHAPTER FIFTEEN – Memories of a bitter past

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – Memories of a bitter past

Alma-Ata is a city in Kazakhstan where all convicted members of NOF were temporarily taken after serving their punishment in the Siberian camps. After returning to Yugoslavia, Dobrin Suvogorski became known as the “Russian spy”.

I don’t know. I don’t understand anything about our misfortune. They say death is not as frightening to be crucified or to be buried alive, than it is to have your whole family sentenced to death by your own co-fighters and like-minded communist comrades.

Well, it would appear that those few who had difficulty becoming “Loyal Yugoslavs” had committed “sins” and needed to be punished. Those who punished them knew that the punished would seek revenge - Communist justice in the “name of the people”.

This also happened again in Alma-Ata. *

What happened to us?!

* Alma –Ata is a city in Kazakhstan where all the convicted NOF leaders were temporarily taken after their sentences, partly served in the Siberian camps, were annulled. There was disagreement between the NOF leaders of whether to go to Tashkent or return to Yugoslavia. The idea was to go to Tashkent and join the many Macedonian DAG fighters who were relocated there and prove to them that it was not them but the Greek communists who were to blame for the failure of the Greek Civil War. But at that time relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia were not at their best and almost all the NOF leaders wanted to return to Yugoslavia, leaving only one behind. Then when he returned to Yugoslavia they accused him of committing treason and named him the “Russian spy”.

“I know nothing of what happened to my father and mother. No one seems to know what happened to them except for where my father was buried and that he was buried in another man’s grave. If someone were to ask me to tell them what happened to them I would not be able to… because I don’t know myself. I now rarely think

about them but I always remember what they said: ‘Delian, you must remain silent! Because you don’t know anything and you don’t need to know anything about these things and about the Party…’ and so reprimanded I remain in the shelters.

I now understand what they could not understand.

My mother had a squeaky voice, especially when she yelled at me and my father. Sometimes we all grieved, we were always sad. Discontentment seemed to be our usual companion in life. People avoided us and went the other way to hide from us… Even the weather bothered us.

My mother used to say: ‘Our Aegeans (former CPG Communists), now Yugoslav Communists, are ruthless, worse than the Holy Spirit...’

It was a blow of fate that my mother met her end from the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease. She could not go anywhere or do anything because of her illness. Little by little she forgot everything; the disease destroyed her brain cells.

I never dabbled in history and I am not versed in it. That was a subject for my parents Dobrin and Rumena, and look what happened to them.

Up to the point when he died, Dobrin used to say: ‘I am a Macedonian communist and I am paying my debt...’ And Rumena, always with her cynical smile, showed her dignity differently when she used to say: ‘Courage is the ability of the soul to unflinchingly meet its obligations and decisively struggle with the difficulties and perils of life against bold liars...’

She was a recognizable woman with swollen, bloodshot eyes looking like those people who have difficulty sleeping. She had a greyish looking face looking like those people who are bleached by the wind. Her hands were constantly restless. She gazed at people when she looked at them and stared at their faces. She constantly changed her facial expression making it challenging to understand what she was thinking and feeling. Her mood also changed often,

from being uncertain to being confused, to being distrustful, to being unpleasant. One time a man from the veteran’s association came towards her at my fathers’ grave. He looked agitated and his hands were trembling. He looked like he had forgotten something important that he was expected to remember but he could not remember what it was. My mother good-naturedly smiled at him but when she saw an older woman standing beside him, she stopped smiling. The woman was fat and had a red and ugly face. She was wearing a black dress, the kind of dress that mourners wear, that was too small for her. She circled around in front of my father’s grave tightly clutching a bouquet of flowers against her chest. The flowers looked wilted. It was a hot day and the scorching sun was beating down on them. The woman apparently knew my father and wanted to take part in the ceremony together with the man, who introduced himself as a representative of the Veterans Association of Macedonia. She said that my father was rehabilitated now and asked if they could read a few words that were written on a piece of paper for this occasion. Here is what was written:

‘...In addition to being an organizer and a champion of national rights and freedoms, you also created a Macedonian alphabet with 24 letters for the spiritual flourishing of your people in the midst of the war in Aegean Macedonia.

Your national feelings and love for your people came to a peak in the summer of 1944, with the formation of the Voden Macedonian battalion.

In addition to your contribution in the formation of the Macedonian army, you also created the alphabet with which the proclamation to the Macedonian people in Voden, as well as many songs and the march for the Voden Battalion, were written.

You were and remain to be a fighter and a cultural activist for the Macedonian people. They accused you of being an ‘agent working for Tito’ in the Siberian prison camps but that was only a communist delusion concocted by the CPG.

You dedicated your life to your homeland and to all of us, your comrades. You were never ‘Tito’s agent’ or a ‘Russian spy’, yet, today, here you are REHABILITATED!”

After the speech was read my mother was both happy and sad. Meeting these people and hearing what they had to say both encouraged and energized her. Her eyes became focused and she began to stare at the wilted flowers. She remembered something… She remembered my father’s funeral ten years ago. The only people who attended the funeral were me, the gravediggers and my mother...

Now she had a full smile on her face. Her heart began to beat faster and she felt a burning and itching sensation in her throat which made her swallow several times. She walked in front of the gathering and said:

“What can I say about his sins and repentance…? You say the offender has been rehabilitated… And by that you mean he does not need his reputation, honesty and honour restored… But let me say this: His comrades are the real criminals here who, with the power of the Party, through institutions, destroyed my husband’s life by falsely calling him a ‘Russian spy’. And for his punishment to be even harsher, his comrades depersonalized him. From a Macedonian they ‘upgraded’ him to an ‘ineligible’ Yugoslav. Hundreds of people like him suffered and died only because they wanted to see a free and independent united Macedonia. Many of them never returned to their families because they perished in the cells of foreign prisons.

They never lost their reputation in the eyes of their people, even though they were tried in ‘the name of the people’. They never lost their honour either… It was only elevated to new heights…!”

None of this makes any sense to me. These people are now saying that we have not been humiliated? And that we should stand proud alongside them? Stand alongside with the same people who “rehabilitated” my father? A man who died in grief and despair and who was buried in someone else’s grave… in a desolate place…?

Suddenly we all felt the meaninglessness of our own misfortunes and suffering.

Maybe now someone from the Lerin Region villages might recognize who Rumena and Dobrin Suvogorski were… in their deserted homeland where now only ruins remain...