The Other Face of History By Stoian Kochov (Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov) The Other Face of History Published by: Risto Stefov Publications [email protected] Toronto, Canada All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written consent from the author, except for the inclusion of brief and documented quotations in a review. Copyright 2013 by Stoian Kochov & Risto Stefov e-Book Format July 18, 2013 2 INDEX Introduction..................................................................................................5 I – The Other Face of History....................................................................13 1.0 For years the Macedonian people have been unwitting accomplices and victims of fatal ideological foreign strategies............................................13 2.0 TRUTHS AND CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE GREEK CIVIL WAR (1945-1949).....................................................................................40 3.0 BASIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GREEK CIVIL WAR (1946 - 1949)..........................................................................................................99 II - Chronicles (27) from the hell of war – Review of military-political Balkan historical chronicles (1940-1950)................................................123 4.0 - Yugoslav Balkan strategy................................................................123 4.1 Great Britain’s Position (The British always controlled the Balkans) .................................................................................................................147 4.2 Attitude of the USSR .........................................................................150 4.3 CPG reactions regarding the establishment of Macedonian organizations............................................................................................154 5.0 First fateful year 1945 under the leadership of the CPY/CPM..........155 6.0 The second fateful year 1946 – “Brotherhood and Unity” under CPG leadership.................................................................................................161 7.0 The third fateful year 1947 – Total mobilization under CPG leadership .................................................................................................................185 8.0 The fourth fateful year 1948 – Under CPG and Inform-Bureau control and the “Save the Children program” ......................................................194 9.0 The sixth fateful year – CPG leadership loses the Greek Civil War - August 27, 1949.......................................................................................241 9. 1 WHY DID THE WAR NOT END WITH US AS IT DID WITH EVERYONE ELSE ON MAY 9, 1945?! ................................................267 10.0 AFTER THE WAR ENDED ...........................................................291 10.1 The source of the so-called “name dispute” can be found in the Greek Civil War led by the Slavo-Communists .................................................306 10.2 Since when and why did Greek politicians want to become Macedonia-nized......................................................................................309 A. FINALLY – THERE IS NO SILENCE BEFORE THE HORROR!..310 B/ Then came the Lausanne Peace Treaty signed in 1923 which called for the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey...331 11.0 Attachments .....................................................................................351 11.1 Facts and arguments regarding the Macedonian insurgency in Kostur .................................................................................................................362 11.2 Facts and arguments regarding Greek strategies in dealing with the Macedonians – as told by Greek history, the history of the victors! .......365 11.3. “Thirty three years of silence” ........................................................367 11.4. Zahariadis’s most recent statements ...............................................368 3 11.5 Siberia for “Tito’s Agents”..............................................................370 12.0 The road of battles across alien communist ideologies....................373 AFTERWORD ........................................................................................376 NOTES ....................................................................................................383 About the Author .....................................................................................406 Acronyms.................................................................................................407 Bibliography ............................................................................................408 4 Introduction This book is an attempt to analyze the politics behind the Macedonian involvement in the Greek Civil War by asking critical questions such as: Who got the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia involved in this war and why? Why was this war started right after World War II ended, when everything was already decided by the Great Powers? What was the common Macedonian fighter led to believe that he or she was fighting for and what was the real motive behind getting them to fight? And most importantly, why did the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia, yet again, allow foreigners and strangers to lead them in a brutal ideological war; the same foreigners who had brutally partitioned Macedonia in 1913? This book focuses on the Macedonian people’s longing desire to free themselves after generations of persecution and how that desire and patriotism was exploited to work against them, eventually driving them out of what they had fought for and loved the most; their homeland Macedonia and their centuries old native hearth! So surely every Macedonian who has been driven out of Greek occupied Macedonia and who today finds him or her self separated from their home and from their native land must want to know the answer to these questions?! There is no shame in asking such questions, there is no shame in looking at ones own past, but why did it have to take 60 years after that dreaded Greek Civil War for these questions to finally surface? And why have our historians, up to this day, ignored them? Thanks to modern research techniques, modern search systems and our ability to collect, store and search through large amounts of data, we finally have the ability to not only ask but also search for the answers to these questions. My inspiration, or should I say, my “provocation” for doing research for this book came from having read Historian Risto Kiriazovski’s book entitled “Pette sudbonosni godini vo Egejska Makedonija (1945-1949) (Five vital years in Aegean Macedonia (1945 - 1949)). I will be analyzing the specifics of this book looking at all the details, searching for facts and solid evidence that may even suggest that there was a cover-up, a conspiracy and that the reality of this war might be quite different from what we were led to believe. I will specifically be looking for: 1. Tito’s involvement in the Aegean part of Macedonia. 5 2. Tito’s surrender of the Aegean Macedonian people to Zahariadis. What were Tito’s (CPY/CPM, undoubtedly the most powerful force in Yugoslavia) political and ideological notions which motivated him to establish the Macedonian organizations NOF, AFZH and NOMS on April 23, 1945 in Skopje? And why were these organizations required to seek maximum mass mobilization of the Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia during a time when the War (WWII) had already ended and when Greece was facing political hell?! - Did the war (WWII) not end for us Macedonians in Greek occupied Macedonia on May 9, 1945 when it had for everyone else?! - Why were we, the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, led to war on April 23, 1945 when the war was ending for everyone else?! - Why did Tito deliver us, Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, like slaves to the Communist Party of Greece and put us in the hands of that butcher Zahariadis?! - Why did we, Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, enter into this war without our own Macedonian strategy?! These are legitimate questions to which every Macedonian should scream and demand answers, given the outcome of that dreaded Greek Civil War! The Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia were lured by the CPY/CPM and by the CPG with promises that they needed to fight “together” with their “traditional enemies” in order to fix historical wrongs. But in the end, no historical wrongs were ever fixed and in addition to losing many lives and their centuries old native hearth, they also experienced genocide in massive proportions. Why did they, and why do some of us still, believe that the very same people who brutally occupied and partitioned our Macedonia in 1913 and those who were subsequently brought there to colonize our lands in the 1920’s would “somehow” now save us?! - Why were we so brutal with our own people, pushing them to get involved in a strange alien “ideological” war while all along telling them that it was a “revolution” and that we were fighting for our freedom and liberation?! And even though the Greek Civil War had ended, for us, the Macedonians from Greek occupied Macedonia, the war still goes on. Thousands of us 6 were persecuted and after they had pushed us out of our