Slav Macedonian autonomists in the Greek civil war

By John Koliopoulos and Thanos Veremis

Another aspect ofthe civil conflict, underestimated m left-wing revisionist studies, was the role of the Greek Slav Macedonian autonomists in  both the outbreak and general direction ofthat war. The KKE and EAM journals referred to them as 'persecuted Slav Macedonian ELAS fighters', while Greek Slav Macedonians called themselves 'Makedontsi'  the name used at the time in the People's Republic of Macedonia to identify those belonging to the new nation. As already seen they had served, in quick succession and even simultaneously, more than one master and cause until the time when Tito gave them a new Identity and a new cause to fight for. These Makedontsi began intruding in the sprmg of 1945 into the Greek frontier highlands in small bands to avenge past or current wrongs. Their numbers increased as more and more Slav Macedonians were prosecuted in Greece, nominally for collaboration with the Axis occupying forces but in essence for having eventually opted for the KKE or the People's Republic of Macedonia. Of some 8,000 Slav Macedonians estimated to have crossed between 1944 and 1945 Into the Republic The Makedontsi raiders perhaps did not exceed 1,000. Later, in 1947 the Yugoslav government maintained that as many as 24.000 Slav Macedomans from Greece had sought refuge in Yugoslavia in the post-Varkiza period. but this number almost certainly included Slav Macedonians who had fled before the December 1944 rebellion.

Of these initial Makedontsi raiders, whom the KKE party journals represented as being 'persecuted ELAS fighters', perhaps not more than one-third had really served with ELAS. They had generally led a precarious existence in refugee camps which the government of the People's Republic of Macedonia had set up for the purpose. Their leaders men like Paschalls Mitropoulos, Mlichael Keramitzis and Naum Peios  were doing odd jobs for the government of the Republic, and most of them were members of the KKE and at the same time of the Republic's ruling Communist Party. These refugee raiders projected Macedonianism among Greece's Slav Macedoians and heralded the imprudent 'liberation' of 'Egqska Makedonza' (Macedonia of the Aegean), I.e. Greek Macedonia. It soon became clear that avenging past or current wrongs was not their ...

Tragedies of the abducted Greek children of 1948: the reality of the FYROM claims

In 1948, Cominform, the first official forum of the international communist movement since the dissolution of the Comintern, put into action a plan to take hostage to communist countries children from Greece during the Greek civil war. The aim was to re-educate the children as well as blackmail the populace and the Greek government towards reaching a settlement leading to a partition of Greece and the subsequent creation of an internationalist "Macedonian" Republic. This move has favoured by the Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito and had been a Comitern policy aimed at destroying the national states of the Balkans through the creation of internationalist republics. Today several FYROM sources claim or at least believe the abducted children were FYROMacedonian. Indeed that they were not abducted, rather they were refugees fleeing the Greek army.

It was in the month of November 61 years ago when the United Nations issued a resolution condemning the abduction of the Greek children. The text of the resolution and its context have been presented in my last article. The tragic stories of the abducted children that follow defy belief.

Last week a conference took place at the University of Utah, sponsored by the United Pseudo-Macedonia Diaspora (UMD), a lobby group campaigning against "Greek atrocities" in Cyprus and other out of touch with reality issues. There was....

Unexpected Initiatives/Towards the resettlement of a Slav-Macedonian minority in Macedonia?

by Evangelos Kofos [1]
(“To Vima”, June 25 , 2003)

Two recent government announcements have unexpectedly raised the matter of the “repatriation” of the Slav-Macedonian exiles from the period 1941–1949.[2] Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Andreas Loverdos and Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Panagiotis Beglitis have both indicated — the former more obscurely, the latter quite clearly — that before the end of the summer legislative arrangements would be in place providing not only for easier visitor access (visas, etc.), but also for “repatriation”. Given that these announcements coincided with rumours that Greek citizenship was to be offered to “300,000 Northern Epirotes” who would then probably be able to vote in the up-coming Greek parliamentary elections, it is natural that the announced “repatriation” of the “Aegean Slav-Macedonians”[3] should have set off similar trains of thought.

What is surprising is that such a serious issue, a matter of great national sensitivity that had been addressed as such by every successive post-war government and by Georgios and Andreas Papandreou personally in the1960s and 1980s, should have been thus reversed without convincing reasons. Why are historical facts being suppressed or distorted in order to present the “Aegean Macedonians” as the latest victims of the Greek Civil War? And why is Greek public opinion not being given the true dimensions of the problem? Let us list a few of these facts:

• Today, according to their own calculations, the number of “Aegean Macedonians” in FYROM, together with their descendants and mixed-marriage families, is in the neighbourhood of 100,000. And there are several thousand more in Bulgaria, Australia and Canada.
• The collaboration of significant numbers of these people with the Bulgarian and German occupation forces during World War II, and afterwards, during the Greek Civil War, with the Slav-Macedonian National Liberation Front (NOF), was used as a lever to claim areas of Macedonia from the Greek territorial state. Moreover, in the case of the Greek Communist Party, the defection of significant numbers of “Aegean Macedonians” from the ranks of the Greek Democratic Army to Tito’s Macedonia was a painful stab in the back.
• This doubly negative role played by the “Aegean Macedonians” in Greece was seen in Belgrade and Skopje as an absolute positive. Their action in Greece was recognised as military service, performed not during the Greek Civil War but during the “Macedonian National Liberation War”. Thus, those who fled to the then People’s Republic of Macedonia were granted special benefits [Yugoslavian citizenship, “Macedonian” identity, free housing, honours and distinctions] and, most important of all, military pensions.
• Since then two new generations, children of the original exiles, have been educated in an environment of values that considers the “Aegean Part of Macedonia under Greece” — that is, Greek Macedonia — to be still “unredeemed”.[4]
• With FYROM’s declaration of independence in 1991, “Aegean Macedonian” activists in FYROM and elsewhere found themselves in the forefront of extreme anti-Greek nationalist manifestations.

On the basis of these facts, the return to Greece of thousands of people with a deeply entrenched Slav-Macedonian consciousness and attitude cannot logically be a “repatriation”. It is rather the arbitrary transplant of an alien nationalist minority to the frontier districts of Greece’s Macedonian prefectures.

Let me point out three consequences of such an action:

• In the first place, we will be moving towards a re-drawing of the ethnological map of our border districts, at a time when the nationalist and ethnic conflicts in the immediate neighbourhood of Greece have not yet subsided. Eventually, these suitable conditions will foster the southward spread of such conflicts inside Greece.
• In the second place, it is inevitable that there will be similar pressures for the “repatriation” of tens of thousands of Albanian Cham refugees (1944-45) from Thesprotia, Bulgarian political exiles (1944) from Eastern Macedonia and Thrace and Turkish Muslims from Western Thrace.
• In the third place, the implantation of thousands of fervently nationalist “Aegean Makedonci” in the Greek Macedonian communities will inevitably provoke a mini cultural war for the prize of the history, the culture and the very name of Macedonia. And the good climate of bilateral relations that has been cultivated with such effort these past years could well be undermined from within Greece.

We must recognise, however, that over the years the Macedonian Question has created traumas, both collective and personal. Greece has not been generous enough, prohibiting for decades thousands of “Aegean Macedonians” from even visiting the Greece. Lately the situation has improved significantly, but the process is still incomplete. A number of matters that are still in abeyance, such as outstanding property claims on both sides, must be addressed on the inter-governmental level with a “new package”. For the sake of peace and good neighbour relations, this package should extend to cultural disputes, including the thorny question of the name.

Notes
[1]-Dr. Kofos is a former Minister Counsellor, Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
[2]-Interview with Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Andreas Loverdos in "Kyriakatiki Eleftherotypia" (8.6.2003); Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman P. Beglitis’ press conference on 9.6.03 (see website www.mfa.gr 9.6.03).
[3]-The term "Aegean Macedonians" — or "Egejiski Makedonci" — is used in FYROM to designate those originating from Greek Macedonia — "Aegean Macedonia" — and their descendants.
[4]-The author has in his possession documents and recent video interviews in history classes of schools in FYROM.

Macedonia: it's not just the name

by Aristede Caratzas

via e-mail

Photos are mine

The dispute regarding the official name by which the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is known appears to many policy makers to be anything from arcane to trivial. Yet its mishandling during the last 15 years, and especially in the last few months, has had political consequences for some of the world’s major players and has increased tensions and the potential for instability in the Balkans - referred to by historians and diplomats as Europe’s “soft underbelly”.

The case in point is the unprecedented defeat of a United States president at a NATO meeting - the much touted Bucharest summit in April of last year. President George W. Bush proclaimed the US’ “strong support” for the Republic of Macedonia’s bid for NATO membership, only to have it denied under the threat of a veto by the Greek government. Nor did the NATO Secretary-General’s visit to Athens and Skopje - the capital of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - following the NATO summit, increase the likelihood of a positive result, while the mediation process currently under way under the direction of US diplomat Matthew Nimetz finds progress elusive.

Given the complexity of the situation it is useful to consider some of the elements of this case that make it much harder to resolve than the cursory (and sloppy) assessments that some foreign policy “professionals” have suggested. Until now some of these professionals, especially those based in Washington, have approached this process mechanistically, hoping somehow that the implicit threat of American displeasure would sway the Greek government. Although Greece has caved in many times in the past, there is little flexibility on this issue; After repeated polling over many years, it has become clear that more than 85 per cent of the Greek public consistently demands a hard line on the issue.

This writer remembers a meeting in mid 1992 between Nicholas Burns, then State Department Spokesman and later Ambassador, and a group of Greek-American leaders. In answer to a question about the precedent affecting the European border system that would result from the recognition of the Skopje regime under the name of “Macedonia” (it then had explicit claims on Greek territory not to mention the history that is outlined below), Burns slammed his notebook shut and refused to discuss the implications. Some of the Greek-American leaders appeared more annoyed with the questioner than with Burns’ evasive little tiff. Yet this question has, as does the entire dispute regarding the name of the tenuous state, its foundation in the settlements following World War II: in short, in recent history.

In trying to understand the issues that are thrust upon the stage of international affairs, it is ironic that diplomats, other foreign policy professionals and political scientists often opt to ignore history. But it is treacherous to wade into the Balkans - where human experience has been recorded for millennia and folk memories are long - and not to be sensitive to recent historical traumas.

To be fair, much of the discourse of those most immediately involved has related to realities of the 5th-4th century BC, or cites mythological ethnogenetic constructions, which may be obscure to diplomats and policy makers. Many Greeks argue their case by making reference to 4,000 years of the Hellenicity of Macedonia; while the Skopje regime’s mythology increasingly expands its symbolic pantheon to include Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great, even though the Slavic culture and language, which are the axes of its purported identity, appeared a little more than a millennium later.

Yet the history that matters most, even if it largely has been ignored so far, refers to recent events, those taking place before, during and after World War II. In the Balkans these fall into three major categories:

1. the unresolved issues regarding ethnic and linguistic minorities before World War II;
2. the Axis occupation and policy of collaboration with minority groups; and
3. the successful shift from collaboration with the Nazis to alliances with Communists by some of these minority groups.

In order to set a broader historical context, one only needs to recall the use of ethnic minorities by the German National Socialist regime to destabilise Eastern Europe in the 1930s. In practice that meant that the Nazis encouraged the Sudeten German minority in Czechoslovakia and the German minority in Poland in order to put pressure on those states. These minorities were encouraged to make allegations of, what we would today call, human rights violations against the Czechs and the Poles: this provided the justification for the interventions that led, first to the collapse of the Czech state, and then to world war, when the Germans attacked Poland.

In Greece, after the Germans invaded in 1941, they established occupation zones for their forces and those of their Italian and Bulgarian allies. In Macedonia (the Greek province only used that name at the time), the German High Command under Field Marshal Siegmund List approved of the presence of Slavophone “liaison officers” to be attached to the occupying forces. These were mostly Bulgarian officers, linked to the nationalist VMRO group (Slavic for “Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization”), whose agenda was to mobilise and co-ordinate the activities of the Slavophone inhabitants in Macedonia for the benefit of the Axis occupiers.

The leader of VMRO was Ivan “Vancho” Mihailoff (also known as “Mihailov” in some the literature): he was a major figure in the history of southeast European extremist nationalist movements, though little studied even by experts. By 1930 Mihailoff had prevailed in the bloody power struggles (which included dozens of assassinations and other terrorist acts) for the leadership of VMRO.

VMRO's main goal had always been the creation of an independent “Macedonian” state; it had built an extensive network in Bulgaria, which was used to provide financing for the organisation and an operational base from which the offensives into Yugoslavia and Greece were conducted.

Mihailoff had close links to Ante Pavelic, whom he assisted in the formation of the Ustashe (the Croatian Nazis, whose ardour and cruelty embarrassed even their German allies) and, with Heinrich Himmler, to whom he introduced the Croat leader.

Mihailoff co-operated with Pavelic in the spectacular assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in Marseilles in 1934. The triggerman, Vlado Chernozemski, a close associate of Mihailoff, had been attached to the Ustashe on his order for the preceding two years. Between 1941-1944 Mihailoff settled in Zagreb, using it as his base of operations.

Meanwhile, the region of western Macedonia in Greece was occupied by the Italians, who were still smarting from their defeat by the Greek forces. They developed a policy of exploiting the grievances of linguistic minorities, of which some members of the Slavophone group proved most responsive.

This was the result of a visit to Rome by Pavelic, who personally persuaded Mussolini and Ciano of the wisdom of such a policy and of the intention of Mihailoff to implement it. Thus the Italians were assisted by VMRO, which sent out agents of its irredentist “Kostour [Kastoria] Brotherhood” headed by a Spiro Vasilieff to Kastoria in order to set up the foundations. Detachments of Slavophone volunteers were first formed in 1943 and they accompanied Italian units searching for arms from the stores of the retreating Greek forces, which the country people often were hiding.

These volunteers joined the Italian sponsored the “Axis Macedonian-Bulgarian Committee,” which became better known as the “Komitato” (or “Komitet”). It was first founded in the Kastoria by Anton Kaltchev, a Bulgarian officer of Slavo Macedonian antecedents connected to Mihailoff’s VMRO, who enjoyed the respect of the Germans. Soon, a military arm of this organisation was formed and came to be known as the “Macedonian Bulgarian Command,” or less formally the “Ohrana”.

Led by Kaltchev, the Ohrana was able was able to mobilise significant forces, recruited from Kastoria, Florina and Edessa and the surrounding villages, i.e. central and west Macedonia. This probably fielded about 5,000 men by mid 1943. These forces assisted the Italians in operations against the Greek resistance organisations, and in intimidating and terrorising the local population opposed to the Axis occupation.

Mihailoff travelled to Berlin in early August 1943, where he was received by Reichsführer-SS Himmler at the Sichercheitsdienst (Security Service) headquarters: he also appears to have met with Hitler. Mihailoff apparently received consent to create two to three battalions of volunteers which would be armed and supported by the Germans and be under the command and disposal of Himmler’s organisation (i.e. the SS). There is extensive evidence that Himmler’s office followed up in order to implement the terms of this agreement, appointing SS Major (Hauptbahführer) Heider to co-ordinate the arming and equipping the VMRO volunteers.

In March 1944 the village companies of Kastoria, were reorganised into militias, and were armed and prepared for service by the Germans; and Kaltchev’s loyalists based in around Edessa and Florina also were included in this project. After some initial skirmishes with the Greek ELAS resistance forces, beginning on May 4 several VMRO volunteer companies from Kastoria and Edessa participated in the anti-guerrilla “Operation May Thunderstorm”, as part of the “Battle Group Lange,” spearheaded by elements the Nazi 4th SS Mechanised Infantry Division.

The German forces assisted by their Slavophone collaborators launched the last co-ordinated attack against organised Greek resistance from July 3 to July 17. The “Operation Stone Eagle” took place in the northern Pindus area with the objective of containing elements the Greek Resistance forces’ ELAS 8th and 9th Divisions. According to testimonies of the time the objective was partly achieved.

When the Germans withdrew from Greece, and Bulgaria declared war on Germany, the Ohrana and the Slavophone collaborationist effort collapsed. Anton Kaltchev fled Greece, but was apprehended by Yugoslav communist partisans and delivered to ELAS. He ended up in Thessalonica, where he was tried by the Greek government for war crimes and was executed.

It is ironic, but not altogether surprising, that FYROM, the present successor state to the People’s Republic invented by Tito, is ruled by one of VMRO’s factions. While the Skopje regime formally rejects Mihailoff, it has resumed a not-so-couched irredentist, nationalist, extremist, rhetoric reminiscent of the discourse of its collaborationist predecessor namesake. It draws much of its support from the Slavomacedonian diaspora in the US, Canada and Australia. The regime is the ideological inheritor of Ivan Mihailoff, close friend and ally of Anton Pavelic and Heinrich Himmler.

In this reality, borne of a bitter historical experience, is to be sought the reason for the nearly instinctive reaction of Greek popular feeling (cutting across party lines) against FYROM’s claims, whether as to its name or its revived irredentist claims about minorities and properties. The Slavomacedonian collaborators and their children, who fought twice against the Greek state, should no more expect recompense by that state than the children of the Germans of the Sudetenland expect from the Czech Republic or those of Danzig from Poland. When they accept that truth, it will be the first step for a genuine rapprochement with the Greek people.

Realism however dictates that we should not be optimistic in the short term. Hijacking the name of Macedonia, arbitrarily seizing cultural symbols (i.e. Philip II, Alexander the Great, Saints Cyril and Methodius, among others) and now claiming “minorities” and properties in Greece, demonstrates that Prime Minister Nikola Gruevsky, heading the present day VMRO and the Skopjan leadership, have inherited Mihailoff’s nationalist extremist vision.

Meanwhile, Bush and those of his supporters in Washington and elsewhere who have been studiously ignorant until now, should come to understand that the Greek people (supported not only by most Greek-Americans, but many other people who experienced the wrath of totalitarian extremists) are not likely to agree to terms proposed by a regime which revives the discourse of its dark past.

THE PROPERTIES QUESTION(Slav Macedonians Political Separatists)

This chapter  is  from a book in Greek, (Macedonia in non-Greek archives, pages 22-37), a collection of timely specialist essays, published  on line by Society of Balkan Studies . The present work makes available - for the first time in Greece or elsewhere - confidential documents from Yugoslav and Bulgarian state archives that reveal how and for what purposes the governments of Greece’s two neighbours handled the Macedonian Question from 1950 to 1967, the crucial period that followed on from the Greek Civil War, where Greek Macedonia was the main theatre of operations.FYROM has even tried to reopen World War II issues that European countries have put behind them for good; issues that have no place in our common journey towards ever closer union.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

In Greek Macedonia during the 1940s two Slav Macedonian activist organizations went to work to achieve the union of Greek Macedonia with the Yugoslav Federation, either by becoming an autonomous region or by seceding from Greece. SNOF, and its successor NOF, exploited a fluid situation - the Triple Occupation and then the Greek Civil War – to pursue their goals. Their leaders trimmed their sails to the wind, siding with the Bulgarian conqueror and then with the Yugoslav Communists as it suited them.

When the Triple Occupation of Greece ended – in Autumn 1944 – quislings were were brought to trial, in a series of legal proceedings, on charges of collaboration. Among the accused were a large number of Slav Macedonians who had made themselves useful to the Bulgarians and had subsequently left Greece. The same went for those who had worked for the secession of Greek Macedonia during the Civil War. These individuals were stripped of their Greek nationality and had their estates confiscated - normal official practice followed in all countries against collaborators with the Axis Powers in World War Two.

The question of the properties of fugitives and refugees from Greece was one that was already on the minds of the Yugoslav authorities in the early 1950s. Initially it was widely thought that the negotiations with Greece should include a demand for indemnities. Nevertheless, this line of thought was soon abandoned; the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry’s legal department had given its opinion that anything of the sort would be legally null and void, for various good reasons. This ruling was of course known to PRM’s regional government. Eventually it was decided to handle the matter purely politically. The sequel is of considerable interest. Yugoslavia could have dumped the whole problem in the lap of a joint Greek-Yugoslav Commission, set up in the late 1950s, whose job it was to look into the matter of properties owned by Greek and Yugoslav subjects resident in these two countries, but abandoned during the 1940s. Instead, Yugoslavia once more deliberately refused to do this, precisely in order not to lose a valuable bargaining counter. The documents below are revealing as to the aims and methods of Yugoslavia’s federal

chiefs and the local leaders in PRM.

Click the images to view them  in higher resolution.

The Role of (Tito's) Macedonia*

ONE of Marshal Tito's major innovations was the setting up of "Free Macedonia" as one of the independent states in Federative Yugoslavia. The five other constituent units are Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Two of the six units, namely, Slovenia and Macedonia, are involved in very serious international difficulties. The "Macedonian Problem" is one of the most explosive and dangerous in all Europe, implicating not only the small Balkan states, but the Old World's two major empires. Macedonia is the vortex of a whirlpool of bitter conflicts. If Tito could find a way to resolve them he would deserve the gratitude of mankind. But did he achieve this by creating "Free Macedonia"? Perhaps he accentuated the conflicts. Let us see.

The term Macedonia was in common use even before the time of Alexander the Great, also called Alexander the Macedonian. The region embraced by the term may have changed some during the last two thousand years. In any case, it now includes territories incorporated into or claimed by four states, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Albania. It is inhabited by representatives of those four nations, with some Turks and a few Aroumanians added. The total area is about the size of West Virginia and the population about two million five hundred thousand.

Macedonia passed under Turkish domination more than five hundred years ago and remained a part of the Turkish Empire until 1912, when a military coalition of the small Balkan powers drove the Turks out. During that long period of foreign rule, the various nationalities inhabiting Macedonia became almost inextricably mixed. Greek, Latin, Slav, Turanian, and Albanian lived side by side in the dozen larger towns, while Greek villages lay near Slav villages and Albanian hamlets were found just across the gully or around the mountain from Turkish hamlets. Naturally the claims of the various nationalities egregiously overlapped and ambitious states aggressively backed one or another of the conflicting claims. No similar area has been the center of more irreconcilable, irredentist longings.

The principal modern claimant, or perhaps one should say the most aggressive claimant, was Bulgaria and the Bulgaro-Macedonians. Up until 1912, a majority of the inhabitants of Macedonia were Slavs. The second largest group was Greek. Naturally the Slavs were in conflict with the Greeks. But they were also engaged in a furious internecine Slav fight, because the Bulgars claimed the Slav Macedonians as Bulgarians, while the Serbs claimed them as Serbs. Consequently, there was a fierce, five-cornered struggle among Turks, Albanians, Greeks, Serbs, and Bulgarians, with Bulgarians often pitted against the field, and with Turkey playing one Christian group off against another. And above these bloody combats were the Great Powers, frequently intervening to restore harmony and each trying to protect its own interest. The Teutons and Russians both wanted to dominate Salonika, Macedonia's chief port, while Great Britain and France were determined to prevent them from doing it.

The rival local claimants maintained conspiratorial organizations for the purpose of realizing their aims by force. These organizations and the Balkan states supporting them provoked revolutions, wars and many acts of terror. For fully fifty years Macedonia has been a scene of violence, a classic stage for political murders, plunder, treachery, and the burning of villages. Helpless, homeless peasant refugees have constantly fled across Macedonia, with mothers car rying babies on their backs and with burning homes lighting midnight skies. In 1903 there was a major revolution and during the following decades frequent raids, assassinations, massacres, and bomb outrages. There were wars about Macedonia in 1912, 1913, 1915, 1924, 1941-1945. Wherever Macedonia appears on the pages of history, the word is written in letters of blood.

And the recent cause of much of the blood was Bulgaria. It was the chief aggressor because it believed Macedonia was inhabited by Bulgarians, whom it must free. "Freeing Macedonia" was the main aim of Bulgaria's foreign policy and was considered the holy duty of almost every Bulgarian patriot. Macedonia was imprinted deeply in Bulgarian hearts, it echoed in Bulgarian songs, and gleamed bright or grim from Bulgarian poetry. At one time or another, almost every modern Bulgarian boy has dreamed of being a Macedonian revolutionist or chetnik. "Freeing Macedonia" has also been almost as vital an element in Bulgaria's internal politics as in its external politics. Many a Bulgarian government has been overthrown because of the Macedonian question.

The strongest, bloodiest, ablest, and most famous--or notorious-Macedonian revolutionary society was a Bulgarian creation called the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization or IMRO, which came to be a symbol of terrorism. Its greatest revolutionary act was the uprising of 1903, beginning on August 2, or "Ilin Den." This was a bold attack on the Turks and was accompanied by many brave deeds. However, in the course of a few weeks it was suppressed with characteristic Turkish cruelty, which left burned villages and nameless graves and sent thousands of Macedonian refugees rushing toward Bulgaria. Nevertheless, in spite of all the suffering, frustration, and defeat, Ilin Day came to be an almost holy date among Bulgaro-Macedonians. They consider the leaders of the uprising, especially Gotse Delcheff, the greatest of the great. He is the Macedonian Patrick Henry, while Ilin Day is the Macedonian Fourth of July--which failed.

And the most significant aspect of these vital but sad events, indelibly imprinted in the hearts and spirits of Bulgaria, is that IMRO, Ilin Day, and Gotse Delcheff were Bulgarian. They are part of Bulgaria's drive toward Salonika and beyond. They are a symbol-the most explosive symbol--of Bulgarian expansion and Bulgarian irredentism. They have been synonymous with Bulgarian antipathy toward Serbs and Greeks.

As a result of the wars and revolutions that took place after 1903, Macedonia was repeatedly divided and when Hitler attacked Greece through Bulgaria in 1941, 50 per cent of the area was in Greece, 40 per cent in Serbia or Yugoslavia, and 10 per cent in Bulgaria. Naturally, these were contiguous areas. By that time, because of purges, massacres, and exchanges of populations, most of the inhabitants of Macedonia in Greece were Greeks; all of the inhabitants of Macedonia in Bulgaria were Bulgarians; and most of those in Yugoslav Macedonia were Slavs or Albanians, with some Turks. Until the middle of the 1930's, most Bulgarians claimed the Slavs in Yugoslav Macedonia as Bulgars and IMRO continued to work for their liberation--not from Turkey now, but from Yugoslavia, or more specifically from Serbia. However, IMRO's terrorist activities gradually dwindled and by 1941, the terrible Macedonian problem had been tentatively settled by cutting the Gordian knot. Bayonets had established the borders. The Serbs were coercively making Serbs of the inhabitants of their Macedonia, and the Greeks had settled Greeks in their Macedonia.

I am not pretending that from the ethnological point of view this was the right solution. I have followed Macedonian developments intently and on the spot for a third of a century and believe that in 1912 most of Bulgaria's ethnological claims were just. Most Macedonians were Slavs, most Slav Macedonians were more nearly Bulgars than Serbs. However, vast changes took place during the three decades after 1912 and the forcible solution of the Macedonian problem by Serb and Greek swords, along with the diplomatic de cisions of the Great Powers, had been accepted, even by the Bulgarian government.

Many Bulgarians had grown tired of fighting all their Balkan neighbors because of Macedonia and were inclined to let bygones be bygones, in spite of the great sadness in their hearts. They still sang and talked of Macedonia and they cried and prayed about it. They felt as the Jewish exiles in Babylon and they reverently watched grand Ilin Day processions which were annually held throughout Bulgaria, but by 1941 most Bulgarians did not want to provoke a war for Macedonia any more than Mexico would provoke a war for southern California. The Macedonian question was more nearly closed than it had been for half a century.

But Hitler opened it up again. When he attacked Yugoslavia and Greece in the spring of 1941, he used the Bulgarian state as a base of operations and the Bulgarian nation as an ally. In payment for this help he gave Bulgaria all of Yugoslav Macedonia and much Greek territory. The Bulgarians immediately occupied the areas, formally annexed them, set up civilian administrations, re-established Bulgarian civilians there, and built roads to connect the "liberated provinces," permanently, with the Bulgarian "motherland." When the Germans were expelled from the Balkans late in 1944 and Bulgaria capitulated, Greece and Yugoslavia received back their lost territories. Consequently Macedonia's boundaries were re-established as they had been at the beginning of 1941. Thus, at the beginning of 1945, Macedonia, which had changed hands many times and been the scene of countless battles, was back about where it was in 1918 and the situation appeared once more to have been stabilized.

But that appearance was deceptive because an extremely dynamic new element had entered the situation. It was the creation of "Free Macedonia," a federal unit in Tito's Federative Yugoslavia. This new creation is a political bomb--time bomb, not atomic one. "Free Macedonia covers 10,230 square miles of territory, which makes it a little larger than Massachusetts. It has about one million inhabit ants, most of whom are Slavs, but beside them is a large Albanian minority. Free Macedonia has a government of its own and claims for itself the attributes of a sovereign state. Its capital, the city of Skoplje, or as the Bulgarians call it, Skopie, is rather pleasantly situated on the Vardar River, about one hundred miles from Sofia and two hundred from Belgrade.

In it is a new radio station which is said to be one of the most powerful in the Balkans. And its function is not merely to serve the peasants in the narrow valleys and on the rather barren mountains of Free Macedonia in Yugoslavia but to serve the whole of Macedonia, including both Greek and Bulgarian areas. Indeed, it is to keep all Balkan Slavs daily and nightly aware of Macedonia, its problems and its aims. A daily paper called New Macedonia appears, a university functions with Macedonian professors, schools flourish with new Macedonian textbooks, a Macedonian army fills the barracks, the Macedonian language is in official use, and a rigid control is exercised over all economic activities. Skoplje or Skopie and the Macedonia of which it is said to be the queen, are undergoing a revival unique in the history of that area. A dream has come true. For decades Macedonians have shouted, "Macedonia for the Macedonians," and now at last the vision is a reality. Macedonians run Macedonia--that is, the part in Yugoslavia.

This is an exhilarating sight! One is thrilled to see dreams come true and is inspired to see a people freed. But even in one's exhilaration, he must not fail to study the situation carefully. Who are the Macedonians that now run Macedonia and whither are they directing it? Among them are old revolutionists. They have revived the spirit of IMRO and are trying to complete the old Ilin Day uprising. They are turning Macedonia toward Salonika. They want an integral Free Macedonia. And in this they are backed by the Yugoslav Communists.

Free Macedonia is doubly revolutionary. Its leaders are rabidly nationalistic and fanatically Communistic. This is a mighty com bination. Macedonia offers an unusual opportunity for the study of social dynamics. Its government is a combination of IMRO, Communism, Bulgarian nationalism, Yugoslav expansiveness, and all-Slav solidarity. Every one of those elements is notoriously explosive. Combined, they constitute a political block-buster ever ready to go off.

Note for a moment the IMRO ingredient in this explosive mixture. The President of Free Macedonia, Dimiter Vlahoff, is the most famous old Macedonian revolutionist alive, and a number of his colleagues have also been active Macedonian conspirators, shooting guns and throwing bombs. They consecrated their lives long ago to the liberation of Macedonia in solemn, mysterious night meetings, before a Bible. They signed their oaths with their blood and went into the hills to kill or be killed. They have repeatedly demanded an "integral Macedonia." They have promised the liberation of all Macedonians. They have stressed the necessity of "freeing Macedonian Salonika, of restoring to Macedonia her God-given seaport." And they have often told eager young Macedonian admirers how they once threw bombs and blew up buildings in Salonika. They and their friends have sent Macedonian revolutionary songs tingling down every glade and reverberating through every mountain cluster.

These men are now attempting to complete that old "sacred task." They have made the chief official day of new Macedonia that glorious old "Ilin Den," which they are now determined to avenge --as the American defeat at Bunker Hill was eventually avenged.

The Macedonian State Printing Office in Skoplje is named "Gotse Delcheff," in honor of the famous revolutionist. An army brigade is named "Sandanski" after another noted member of IMRO.

And Macedonia's Communist banners burn as hot and red as its old revolutionary flags. Vlahoff came to his post of President direct from Moscow. He and the "great George Dimitroff," both Bulgarians, worked side by side in Russia for years and they are working side by side now. Practically every member of the Skoplje government is a crusading Communist, as are most members of local city or district governments in Macedonia.

Nowhere in the Balkan Peninsula is Communism more openly, ardently, and proudly proclaimed. Tito has constantly tried to convince the Western world that his regime is liberal-democratic. Tsola Dragoicheva in Bulgaria tries to convince the Bulgarians that she tolerates non-Communists. But the government of Free Macedonia stoops to no such "pussyfooting." They are as outspoken as their Moscow Comrades. They are Communists and glory in it. They have set up a Communist regime and tell the world to take it or leave it. They want Communist officials, Communist teachers, Communist officers, and Communist editors. They pour out Communist words over the radio and send them streaming from their presses. They follow Russia's line and make no apology for it. They consider themselves a Russian outpost, serving Russia's interests, and feel strong in that role. They tell the world that they're with Russia and Russia with them.

They exult in the reforming fury that moved Lenin and Trotsky. Of course, they're going to turn things upside down. That's why they're there. That's what a revolutionist is for. They have put their hands on practically all the little factories, many of the farms, every promising enterprise, and use them for the glory and aggrandizement of their regime. They confiscate what there is to be confiscated and control whomsoever is left to be controlled. They feel that time is short and there is much to be done to get the Communist conflagration spreading from Skoplje.

Also the Bulgarian fire in Macedonia burns very brightly. The official Macedonian language is essentially Bulgarian, not SerboCroatian. The Macedonian radio speaks largely in Bulgarian, the Macedonian papers print largely in Bulgarian, the new schoolbooks are written in the Bulgaro-Macedonian tongue.

The Macedonian army contains many Bulgaro-Macedonians who long lived in Bulgaria and some Bulgaro-Macedonian officers trained in Bulgaria. As a matter of fact, the Bulgarian government officially gave Free Macedonia a fully equipped Macedonian brigade, sent from Sofia. When in Bulgaria in 1945, I saw Bulgaro-Macedonian refugees from Greece returning to Yugoslavia from Bulgaria, whither they had fled in 1944. They told me they were going to Free Macedonia to help in the fight against Greece.

New Macedonia's attitude toward Greece is that of Sofia in its most nationalistic moods, or of IMRO in its moments of greatest revolutionary fervor. Free Macedonia considers Greece an imperialistic Fascist oppressor, crushing the Slav Macedonians in Greece. The Macedonian government cries to the world of Greek terror, just as Sofia long shrieked of Turkish terror. The Skoplje papers report atrocity stories directed against the Greeks, just as Sofia papers for years seethed with stories of atrocities perpetrated by the "unspeakable Turks."

From Skoplje run underground lines of conspiracy into Greece, just as they used to run from Sofia into Turkey. And into Free Macedonia flee Macedonian refugees from Greece, just as Macedonian refugees used to flee into Bulgaria from Greece. Free Macedonia is a Bulgarian revolutionary station for operations against Greece. And not without importance is the fact that the President of Free Macedonia is from Greek Macedonia. This Communist revolutionist is from the very same town as Bulgaria's last Fascist Minister of the Interior. The Fascist Stanisheff was hanged as a war criminal, but the Communist Vlahoff is carrying out Stanisheff's Bulgarian irredentist policy, with Yugoslavia and Russia behind it.

There also functions in Free Macedonia a semi-autonomous Holy Eastern Orthodox church, which is endeavoring to free Macedonia's ecclesiastical activity from the control of Belgrade. That would make cooperation with Sofia easier and would increase Macedonia's prestige and feeling of independence. Such a Macedonian church would strongly appeal to Macedonia Slavs in Greece. It would be an ideal vehicle for Bulgaro-Macedonian irredentism.

Pan-Slavism, also, intensifies Free Macedonia's expansionist ardor. The Macedonian nation is the world's most enraptured Cinderella. It has emerged from a fearfully long sojourn in Turkish and Balkan kitchens and is now given a place of honor beside marshals and rulers. It has been brought into the all-Slav family amid booming cannon, blaring radios, and thunderous applause. Macedonia and Russia sit side by side. Macedonia, Bulgaria, Poland, and Czechia march hand in hand. Macedonia, the Ukraine, and Slovakia dance together, with newly emancipated Macedonia honored as the belle of the ball.

This all-Slav solidarity is a thrilling experience. It makes a Slav feel even stronger than an American or Britisher. Hard-pressed, long-tortured Macedonia no longer fears any big, bad wolf. The domain of its great comrade and champion extends from Port Arthur and Archangel direct to Skoplje. The Russia, "before which America trembles and England bows low, leads Macedonia by the hand!"

When there's a Pan-Slav Congress in Sofia, Macedonia is there. When the Slavs are all called to Moscow, Macedonia is there. Why, the Slavs from Moscow, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia, Zagreb, and Bratislava gather in Skoplje as Macedonia's guests! In all-Slav choruses you hear Macedonia's voice, in all-Slav orchestras you detect Macedonia's violin--even bass drum. Macedonia has no fear from poor little orphan Greece. Free Macedonia feels its soldiers are the vanguards of a stupendous Slav host, directing the sharp point of a gigantic Slav spear.

Naturally, Tito and the Yugoslav government are not indifferent to all this. They realize the dynamic force of Macedonia, its value as an imperial channel and as an instrument for South Slav aggrandizement. Tito joins with Bulgaria in nurturing and strengthening Macedonia's independence and irredentism. In Yugoslav periodicals and papers, Free Macedonia is presented as part of integral Macedonia including Greek territory. And when, because of provocative Bulgaro-Macedonian activity in Greece, the Greeks get rough with Slav Macedonian agents, Tito issues vehement anti-Greek threats over all his senders.

In view of that, the question as to whether Tito Free Macedonia will bring harmony to the Balkans is self-answering. It is already causing constant friction. It may eventually exacerbate Serbo-Bulgarian animosity. It hangs as a Damocles sword over Greece. It is a Soviet dagger directed at an artery of the British Empire. It could be a Croatian instrument in the Croat-Serbian fight. It is a charge of dynamite with many fuses in a very delicately balanced world.

In an ordered Balkans or a Balkans moving toward stability, a Free Macedonia might be an ideal solution of an old and bitter problem. But in the extremely unstable Balkans of the present time, it is an element of disruption.

R. H. Markham, Tito's Imperial Communism (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1947), 220-230.

========================================================

* The word Tito's is my adding in order to understand for what kind of Macedonia we speak and the most important to see the period that written the specific article.

THE REPATRIATION DILEMMA (Slavmacedonian Separatists)

This below pages is a chapter from a book (Macedonia in non-Greek archives),that publish from the Society for Macedonian Studies that has as subject to provide Yugoslav and Bulgarian state archives that reveal how and for what purposes the governments of Greece’s two neighbours handled the Macedonian Question from 1950 to 1967, the crucial period that followed on from the Greek Civil War, where Greek Macedonia was the main theatre of operations.


After the Greek Civil War, some twenty to twenty-five thousand fugitives and refugees form Greece settled in Yugoslav Macedonia (People Republic of Macedonia). Most of them were Slav Macedonians. These ‘Aegeans’, as they were arbitrarily group-labelled by the local leaders in Skopje, were not a tightly-knit community, despite allegations to the contrary; many of them had simply got trapped in Yugoslavia, and were the Yugoslav Macedonian’s captives – hostages to an irredentist ambition.


As the documents quoted below make quite clear, the commonalty of ‘Aegean’ refugees from Greece was, in the early 1950s at any rate, a very mixed bunch, not at all compact either in ethnic structure or in ideology.


'Aegean Macedonia' is a Slav Macedonian irredentist term used to refer to the region of Macedonia in Greece, in the context of a 'United Macedonia'. The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1940s but its modern usage is widely considered ambiguous and irredentist. The term has occasionally appeared on maps circulated in the former Yugolsav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), which envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia", and is regarded as a challenge of of the legitimacy of Greek sovereignity over the area.

Click the images to view them in higher resolution.

Slav-Macedonian Political Separatists

Map published in the Yugoslav newspaper Borba for 26 Aug 1946, showing the Yugoslav Macedonia and the ethnic boundaries as they dreamed from the Slavmacedonian Separatists

FYROM´s (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) irredentist policy towards Greece from 1944 to the present, is a policy that is in flagrant breach of the Interim Agreement signed by the two parties in 1995, calls on FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) to put an end to any expressions of irredentism. The FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) pseudo-irredentist propaganda, by which it essentially disputes Greece´s sovereignty over the northern part of the country, is promoted with a barrage of advertisements in American media, and with the publication of Parliament resolutions and State law suits by so called "Aegean Macedonians" against the Greek state. [1]

"Aegean Macedonia" is a Slav Macedonian irredentist term used to refer to the region of Macedonia in Greece, in the context of a greater 'United Macedonia'. The origins of the term seem to be rooted in the 1940s, but its modern usage is widely considered ambiguous and irredentist. The term has occasionally appeared on several maps circulated in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), which envisioned Greek Macedonia (referred to as "Aegean Macedonia") as part of a "Greater Macedonia", and is regarded as a challenge of the legitimacy of Greek sovereignty over the area [2].

http://au.youtube.com/watch/v/eeDCJZ3kCHI
King Boris of Bulgaria arrives in Skopje April,1942 to the adulation of the Fyromians/Vardaskans shouting "our King our King"


WHO ARE THESE "AEGEAN MACEDONIANS"?

In Greece, at the World War II and after the Germans invaded in 1941, they established occupation zones for their forces and those of their Italian and Bulgarian allies. In Macedonia (only the Greek province used that name at the time), the German High Command under Field Marshal Sieg-mund List approved of the presence of Slavophone (bilingual) "liaison officers" to be attached to the occupying forces. These were mostly Bulgarian officers linked to the nationalist group VMRO (Slavic for "Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization"), whose agenda was to mobilize and coordinate the activities of Slavophone inhabitants in Macedonia and Vardar Banovina, for the benefit of the Axis occupiers. The leader of VMRO was Ivan Mihailoff (known as Vancho), a major figure in the history of Southeast European extremist nationalist movements, though little studied even by experts [3].


People from FYROM in Skopje posing with their allies German soldiers with the irredentist map of Greater Macedonia behind them

Most of the Slavophone inhabitants in all parts of divided Macedonia (and in Vardar Banovina, present FYROM) perhaps a million and a half in all – had a Bulgarian national consciousness at the beginning of the Occupation; and most Bulgarians, whether they supported the Communists, VMRO, or the collaborating government, assumed that all Macedonia would fall to Bulgaria after the war as Chris Woodhouse mentions [4]. Communist leader at the time, Josip Broz Tito was determined for this not to happen. The first Congress of AVNOJ (Slavic for "Anti-Fascist Council") in November 1942, had parented equal rights to all the 'peoples of Yugoslavia', and specified the (Slav) Macedonian population among them. By implication, the guarantee could be extended to Pirin (Bulgarian) Macedonia and "Aegean (Greek) Macedonia". Thus this scenario was a creation of Tito, in order to provide a launching-pad from which to invade and occupy ´proper´ Macedonia found in northern Greece (refer to attached map).

Detachments of Slavophone volunteers were first formed in 1943, and accompanied by Italian units searching for arms from the stores of the retreating Greek forces, which the country people were often hiding. These volunteers joined the Italian-sponsored "Axis-Macedonian-Bulgarian Committee," which later became better known as the "Komitato" or "Komitet", first founded in Kastoria by Anton Kaltchev, a Bulgarian officer of Slav-Macedonian antecedents, connected to Mihailoff´s VMRO who enjoyed the respect of the Germans. Soon after, a military arm of this organization was formed and came to be known as the "Macedonian-Bulgarian Command," or less formally as the "Ohrana".

POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION

When the Germans withdrew from Greece, and Bulgaria declared war on Germany, the Ohrana and the Slavophone collaborationist effort collapsed. Anton Kaltchev fled Greece, but was apprehended by Yugoslav communist partisans and was delivered to ELAS (Greek People's Liberation Army). After the end of the war he was put on trial as criminal of war and was sentenced to death by the Greek military court [5].


Graffiti written in Slavic supporting Markos Vafiadis, a renegade general for KKE (DSE) during the Greek civil war.

Many of the Greek Slavophones who had filled the ranks of the VMRO volunteer (i.e., Axis collaborator) units, enlisted in the ranks of SNOF (Slavo-Macedonian Popular Liberation Front), which was created by the Greek Communist Party. After Bulgaria aligned itself with the Soviets, the process further accelerated. Thus, Slavophone collaborators found their way to DSE (Demokratikos Stratos Elladas), the military force of the Greek Communist Party, and during the civil war in Greece (1946-49) renamed the SNOF organization to NOF.


UN COMMISSION REPORT

Following the resolution of the Security Council of April 18, 1947. a commission was set up in order to investigated the Greek Frontier Incidents. The general conclusion of the UN Security Commission on the Macedonian issue was as follows:


The U.N. Logo of 1947

The Yugoslav and Bulgarian Governments themselves revived and promoted a separatist movement among the Slav minorities in Macedonia. In making this finding, the Commission pointed out that some 20,000 Greek citizens had fled to Yugoslavia and some 5,000 to Bulgaria — most of them Slavs — and that the treatment of this group by Greek officials had "provided fertile breeding ground for separatist movements." In Yugoslavia, Macedonian separatism was the special goal of an organization called the NOF (National Labor Front) which had its headquarters in Skopje and Monastir» [6].


LEGAL PROBLEMS

Recently, (July 2008) the issue of a "Macedonian minority" in Greece and the returning of the properties to "Aegeans", (even directly from the leader of the ultranationalist VMRO and Prime Minister of FYROM Nikolas Gruevski, and the confirmation from the FYROM Parliament), has been orchestrated purely for the promotion and the support of the requests for property compensations.

After the Greek Civil War (1949), some 20,000 to 25,000 Slav-Macedonian separatists (with their families) from Greece settled in Yugoslav Macedonia. These "Aegeans", as they were arbitrarily group-labelled by the local Communist leaders in Skopje, were not a tightly-knit community despite allegations to the contrary; many of them had simply become trapped in Yugoslavia, and were the Yugoslav Macedonian's captives – hostages to an irredentist ambition. The question of the properties of fugitives and refugees from Greece was one that was already on the minds of the Yugoslav authorities, from the early 1950s. Initially, it was widely thought that the negotiations with Greece should include a demand for indemnities. Nevertheless, this line of thought was soon abandoned; the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry´s legal department had given its opinion that anything of the sort would be legally null and void; and for good reasons too. There are a large number of Yugoslavian documents that support the above historical fact [7].

FYROM and activist centers have accused Greece because it passed the Law 3370/1955 that concerns the Greek nationality and the Ministerial decree No. 106841/29 Dec. 1982, that concerns the free repatriation and return to Greek citizenship of political refugees of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949. They both accept as a criterion of implementation the ethnic identity (genos) of the citizens, and apparently contradict the Greek Constitution. For this reason alone, they are considered by the aforementioned reports as indispensable evidence for the unfair treatment of ethnic minorities in Greece. A better understanding of these laws requires a deep knowledge of the Macedonian Question and its special and complex relation to the Greek Civil War; when Greek Macedonia became the target of Yugoslav territorial expansionism using Slav-Macedonian activists in Greece as a vehicle for these aspirations. Unfortunately observers are reluctant to understand and explain; but more apt to judge and condemn [8].


CONCLUSION

Slavmacedonian Political Separatists who were born in Greece and in 1949 fled to Tito´s Communist "Socialist Republic of Macedonia", who years before (during Greece´s occupation by the Axis in 1941-1944) had openly expressed pro-Bulgarian sentiments and affiliations and enthusiastically collaborated with the Bulgarian allies of the Nazis - those very people - decided, literally overnight, to make a drastic and highly opportunistic change of their political affiliations and national consciousness.

These Slavmacedonian Political Separatists and as mentioned collaborators of the Bulgarian and Italian fascist occupation transformed, as if by magic, to left-wing Slav Macedonians fully committed to the propaganda and designated aims of Tito. From 1946-1949 they fought for the secession of Macedonia and Thrace from Greece. But during this time they wore the cloak of Communist Internationalism and followed the rhetoric of the ´class struggle´ ideals. Having tasted defeated twice, and within a relatively short time, (and fearing that justice for their actions was rapidly approaching) they decided to flee from Greece and into Skopje. Since then they became the basis and the cornerstone of the FYROM pseudo-macedonian propaganda. Many of them afterwards immigrated to the USA, Canada and Australia carrying with them every bit of hatred and fanaticism towards anything Greek, bringing with them the very same sentiments that had misguided their flawed actions and agendas from the past.


NOTES

[1]- FYROM´s Provocations and their American Godfathers, Mihalis Ignatiou, Ethnos Newspaper, 19th July 2008
[2]-"The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Loring M. Danforth, p. 37
[3]- The Reality and the Weight of History: Why the Greek People Cannot Easily Accept FYROM's Claims, Aristide D. Caratzas, hellenicnews.com
[4]-"The Struggle for Greece 1941-1949", Chris Woodhouse, page 67
[5]-Trial of the Bulgarian and Italian Criminal of wars at Macedonia , Royal Prosecutor Ioannis Papakyriakopoulos, 1946
[6]- A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941-4,(U.S. Govt. Print. Off), 1950
[7]- The Hostages of Skopje-Fugitives, properties, and repatriation: Yugoslav confidential documents, Society for Macedonian Studeis, 2008
[8]-Recycling Propaganda: Remarks on Recent Reports on Greece's "Slav-Macedonian Minority" by Vlassis Vlasidis - Veniamin Karakostanoglou, Macedonian Press Agency-Institute for Balkan Studies , 1996

for  http://www.macedonian.com.au/    and   http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/82398

‘Communist Landlords’ and Political Refugees from Greek Macedonia

by Basil Gounaris

The calls for the repatriation of people deported or forced to emigrate during warfare have always found a listening ear in the West. This is a fact well known by all the organisations of Egejski Makedontsi (i.e. Aegean Macedonians), Slav-Macedonian ex-Greek citizens, residing in F.Y.R.O.M., Australia or elsewhere since the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949. As one is informed from the "Macedonian Information Liaison Service" (MILS), "Vecer" or "Nova Macedonia" the UN, the OSCE, various NGOs and the governments of Greece, both F.Y.R.O.M. and Australia are constantly and heavily bombarded by letters, petitions, leaflets, and booklets submitted by Egejski Refugee organisations requesting the unconditioned repatriation of all those "who were forcefully evicted from their land" and the return of their state confiscated property.

Amidst endless negotiations about the future name of F.Y.R.O.M. -due to Athens' steady refuse to accept a Skopje-owned monopoly of the name "Macedonia"- the "unconditional" return of persons who define themselves as "ethnic Macedonians" would be a contradiction in terms. As recent progress has shown the question is not without a solution, but still a lot of relative issues must be clarified in advance.

Slav-speaking peasants in Western Greek Macedonia were indeed the backbone of the Communist led Democratic Army in the last year of the Greek Civil War (1948-49). Either communist by belief or forcefully conscripted, in any case they were compelled to leave the country along with the retreating communist fighters of the "Democratic Army" in 1949. In their ranks were World War II collaborators of the German, Bulgarian, and Italian occupation armies, as well as Slav-Macedonian communist activist of the Civil War. The latter were inspired either by the Yugoslav dream to annexe Greek territories or by the prospect of a united Macedonian state within a Balkan Communist Federation. All had to flee to avoid persecution for high treason.

In the early stages of the Cold War this was a serious and real charge no less real than the fear from the Communist North most Greeks felt. A Slav-Macedonian activist in Greece, Mr Papadimitriou, has claimed once in "Moglena", [No.73 (June 1992) p.10] that Slav-speaking partisans declared themselves "ethnic Macedonians" only to conform with the Communist Party line and should not be blamed for this. If true, then Greek Governments should have been more hesitant to reallocate their land, more tolerant for their crimes, and more receptive to petitions by these refugees to return to Greece and be reinstated in their properties. Only veterans now residing in F.Y.R.O.M. can verify if they had actually been black mailed by the party.

How many Slav-speakers fled away? 

Greek bibliography generally accepts that 30-35,000 plus some 14,000 children, out of 28,000 moved across the border by the "Democratic Army". "Nova Macedonija" (see MILS 5.7.1996) mentioned 65,000 political refugees, a much cited specialist Dr Risto Kirjazovski, an Egejski himself, talks about 80,000 refugees (MILS 26.1.1996). Other Slav-Macedonian sources give different figures: the "Association of the Aegean Macedonians" in Bitola claims 100,000; a similar association in Poland cites 250,000; in the electronic list "Makedon" even the figure of 300,000 was once mentioned. The evaluation of these sources is easier, if we take into consideration that in 1940 the total population in all three prefectures of Florina, Kastoria, and Pella, Slav- and non-Slav-speakers together, was 275,000; 55,000 of them were interwar refugees from Asia Minor. In 1951 the total population of the same prefectures, which were heavily involved in the War, was 234,000. Apparently the discrepancy is due not only to a tendency of exaggeration by certain Slav-macedonian nationalist or refugee organisations, but also on account of including as Egejski mixed marriage families and descendants born in F.Y.R.O.M. or other countries (Australia, Canada, etc.).

Regardless of numbers it is more interesting to assess the views of some of these refugees towards a solution of the Macedonian Question. According to MILS some Egejski are distinguished members of Slav-Macedonian society in F.Y.R.O.M. and the diaspora, they have formed associations and their annual conferences are addressed and sponsored by president Gligorov and other officials of F.Y.R.O.M. (MILS 24.3.1997). Found usually in the extreme nationalist side, they have been known to oppose strongly Albanian educational rights and the request for a university in Tetovo (MILS 12.12.1994). They wave proudly the banner of United Macedonia (which includes vast parts of Greek and Bulgarian territories), they still use in Australia and elsewhere the "Sun" found in Vergina (Greece) as their national emblem. All in all they are against any reconciliation, even against the new visa formula facilitating their visit to Greece.

This hard line, punctuated by much used "historical" rhetoric against the Greek presence in "their home land" inevitably puts the question: Do the Egejski (or their descendants) really want to return to Greece and for what purpose? The answer has been coined internationally by Chuck Subetic in "The New York Times": the real issue is "Real Estate" (3.11.1994). If so, the question is how much land are we talking about? Risto Kirjazovski has cited 2,000,000 acres which belonged to 30,000 families (sic) (MILS 29.1.1996). "Nova Macedonija" wrote (5.7.1996) that 12,000 dossiers had been submitted by 1991 referring to 6,000 hectares and 5,000 buildings which had been confiscated. It is also mentioned that, between 1985 and 1990, 120 petitions had been submitted to the F.Y.R.O.M. Ministry for Justice concerning 25,000 hectares of land. Again it will suffice to say that 2,000,000 acres equal to 90 per cent of the present arable land in Greek Macedonia, not to mention that in 1940, the total arable land in the region was less than 1.5 million acres. But even if Kirjazovski or "Nova Macedonia" were right after all this would imply a family allotment of 50-70 acres, indeed a vast property by all Greek standards. Either they are grossly misinformed or the Communist Army was manned exclusively with landlords!

Land is not what the Egejski want, at least not the first generation of them. Property can't be that much important for veteran Communist partisans. Had they, the Communists, won the Civil War, they would have confiscated the land to build collective farms, very much like what happened during the same period in Tito's Yugoslavia. What is never told in international fora is that their properties for 50 years now have not been in the hands of Greek gendarmes, civil servants or people with "healthy national consciousness", as they claim, but in the hands of their very close relatives, who know well and say it in public that the land question will not be solved on their expense.

A much more honest and simple answer to their real motives would be nostalgia. But then, why pursue such exaggerated claims speaking of "hundreds of thousands of refugees", and "millions of acres", deny the visas offered according to a recent agreement between Athens and Skopje, if the real purpose is "only to visit the ancestral graves"? Do such arguments facilitate rapprochement? Certainly they do not. Nostalgia for home, village, and grave is only one side of the coin. However, the other is justification for a lost cause, a lost war, a lost youth, for separation, segregation, sometimes for a whole life spoiled beyond the iron curtain in exchange for new identity and ideology.

Unfortunately this mentality remains well entrenched among some Egejski activists and various political groups in F.Y.R.O.M. and the diaspora. Moreover it is retained as a "vision" by the official state authorities which continue to teach schoolchildren that the ethnic boundaries of their nation extend to the Aegean littoral and Mount Olympus. This national ideology cannot be altered over night. Although flexible diplomats from Athens and Skopje can get round emotive issues and eventually get the job done, some Egejski do not appear ready to come to terms with present realities. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that the Greeks would be in no mood to accept back persons nurturing maximalistic views, by-products of a 50 year old nationalism and irredentism.

sourse: macedonian-heritage