The KKE before WW2 (from the 6th Conference of its Central Committee
in 1934) had betrayed the strategy of the socialist revolution in
Greece. That which had remained for it so as to justify its existence
was to fish for votes using its grovelling to soviet Stalinism and its
anti-imperialist slogans for national independence and rule. The USSR
left the scene (we aren’t discussing the reasons) and the KKE betrayed
its anti-imperialism. From a pimp for the Kremlin they became a pimp
for the White House.
Whilst under the Mitsotakis government in the early 1990’s Papariga
(KKE leader) had agreed that Greece should never recognise the
Skopjians as a state with the name Macedonia, now it recognises them
without even having any reservations.
The anti-communists have found a chance to condemn the communist
movement and especially the KKE as the main culprit for the existence
of the so-called Macedonian issue. But the truth is almost totally
different. The Third Communist International in 1924 under Manuilsky
placed the issue of the Macedonian state (not nation) under the
framework of the Balkan Socialist Federation, under which (allegedly)
there would be no importance given to the national identity of
citizens. Due to this the conflicts among the Serbs, Greeks and
Bulgarians would cease in the redistribution of land which the Ottoman
Empire abandoned.
Nowadays no one talks seriously about a Balkan Federation. Everyone
is concerned about a Balkan salamisation. Under every situation it is
of course a mistake to ignore the existence of nations, national
languages, traditions and cultures. The example of the USA, a land of
immigrants which was built on the bones of the indigenous cannot be a
model to be applied in an area where it does not apply. An example is
that the nationalities of the USSR despite the existence of stalinist
witchhunts and violent relocations maintained alive their traditions, despite
the centuries of mult-ethnic existence under Tsarism. Once the fear
expired of Stalinism, the Federation became divided.
In the years of the Greek National Resistance, the idea of a Balkan Federation
and the common Balkan strategy of the guerrillas was used for expansionist
aims, both by Tito and the Bulgarians. The last were an occupying army
who were in control of the whole of Macedonia with the difference
being that in Skopje they had become accepted as co-ethnics. Yugoslavs
and Bulgarians lived with the dream of an exit from the Aegean sea.
The KKE on the Macedonian issue was obliged to accept in words at
least the Stalinist directives from the Kremlin. At at a time when it
was frightened of dynamitising the alliance of EAM-ELAS if it ignored
the desire of the Greek population in Macedonia which wasn’t obviously
fighting the German occupation so as to replace it with a Slav one.
Despite the ‘comradely’ cooperation with the slavomacedonian element so much in
Greek Macedonia as well as in the Serbian one, from the beginning of
the guerrilla resistance, mistrust was alwaus just under the surface
so were petty conflicts.
Finally it was the KKE of that era (I underline that) was the one that
held untoucheable the Greek borders and avoided one more tragedy for
the Greek population. The anti-communists and far rightists who
condemn it today for national betrayal in that era were quislings in
the service of the Germans and black hooded informers. I will remember a few
events to restore historical truth and to show that todays KKE has
nothing in common with that of the Resistance and it has betrayed its
own history right down to the last point.
When the Occupation forces left our country defeated, the
slavomacedonian forces of Joseph tried to march towards Thessalonika
to occupy it. Then ELAS mobilised the Macedonian battalions against
it. Let us leave the British author Nicholas Hammond writer ‘History
of Macedonia’ who lived at an age of 22 in Northern Greece and gave
battle against fascism on the side of the Greek Resistance to explain to
us the events and finally to rely on Stinas view to reconfirm the
truth of what he says.
Nicholas Hammond writes,
‘During the departure of the Germans (October 1944) Joseph head of the
‘slavomacedonian’ sections with a raised red flag of the Popular
Democracy of Macedonia attempts to march to Thessaloniki.
The ELAS brigades, ordered by Sarafis and Bakirtzis and Markos
Vafiadis, sends his forces to the mountain passes of Florina and they
dissolve Joseph-Ourndov brigades which retreat towards Tito.
Under directions of the Brigade of Macedonia, Evripidis Bakirtzis they
create special border section to ‘defend and control the borders with
enough forces and with such composition that there can be no
possibility of autonomist propaganda from the Macedonians affecting
you…’
‘In the era that Tito creates Yugoslavia imposing the Federal system
and implementing governments of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and
Montenegro and Macedonia and the dreamed of access to the Aegean
creating without any basis a ‘Macedonian nation’ with a ‘technical
nationality’ as stated by Edward Stetinious Foreign Affairs Minister
of the USA, stated in his diplomatic and ambassaodorial duties with a
telegram from his department “the US government considers that every
reason for the Macedonian nation constitutes ceaseless propaganda and
isn’t based on any political or historical reality and constitutes a
possible excuse for threatening acts against Greece”
Ag Stinas wrote regarding the same issue.
“The national resistance solved all the issues of the minorities.
Zervas destroyed all the Albanians in Thesprotia, all those who
weren’t able to pass into Albania. ELAS in October of 1944
systematically chased and essentially killed all the men of Joseph,
who also fought the Germans”
From the article The First Imperialist War
In conclusion I would like to emphasise that all this story regarding
slavspeakers who were political exiles which it is left to mean that
they were forced into exile after the end of the 1948-9 civil war
allegedly chased by the anti-communist General Papagos and the ‘national’
army are miles away from historical truth.
The slav speaking partisan forces had had greeks in their lines and
Yugoslav citizens and they who chose to follow Tito and to attempt to
add the Greek Macedonian lands onto Yugoslavia were correctly chased
by ELAS and ended up in todays FYROM.
Their case has nothing to do with real political refugees, the men
and women fighters of the Greek Democratic Army who went to the USSR and
other ‘popular democracies’ so as to survive the anti-communist
progroms which the brigrandry bands had unleashed in the whole country.
Many of these refugees have been re-pratriated by a law under the Papandreou
government.
If todays KKE considers the refugees of Gochev like those
‘compatriots’ of ours who during the Occupation fought against the
Greeks on the side of the Germans and Bulgarian occupation forces and
they acted as brigands for NOF whose aim was the splitting of
Macedonia from the Greek areas, these types of political refugees have
been created by the KKE of the resistance which created them, whilst
the establishment KKE wants the unbelievable: to import as a minority
the children and nieces just like todays Americans of Nimetz demands!
Point
For those who don’t recognise Stinas let us state he was a militant
who never became a careerist with many years in prison and internal
exile. A cadre of the KKE then a critique of it, then with a satellite
of the trotskyist opposition and then a fanatic opponent of it. He
ended up like many from the Left to declare in his ‘Autobiography’
that he felt relief that the Greece fell towards the Western sphere of
influence and survived from the Stalinist dictatorship of the Popular
Democracies. In his own way he repeated the common point: “Thank god
we lost comrades”!
L Sklavos
June 2008
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