From the Once Classified Files – Part 1 - Introduction

Dear readers,

I am happy to announce the launch of a new series of weekly articles to be published mid-week.

This series of articles will present the reader with direct quotes from declassified information from the 1940’s which was once only available to governments, statesmen and diplomats.

This information will answer questions such as;

How much did “governments” in the 1940’s know about the “Macedonian Question”? What did Macedonia’s enemies say about Macedonia and the Macedonian people? How did the Great Powers “influence” events that were aimed against the Macedonians? And much, much more.

Since these articles will not be available anywhere on the internet, I suggest you save them.

In my opinion, these articles, never before available, depict the correct picture of past events and will be invaluable to historians, especially those reports containing information collected by the field agents of the various Foreign Offices.

Regards, Risto…

Here is the first article:


Balkan States – Report 1
December 11, 1944

Mr. Leeper to Mr. Eden
Athens 24th November, 1944

Sir,

I HAVE the honour to submit the following comments on Research Department paper of the 26th August, 1944, on the subject of Macedonia. (1)

2. The two formidable Macedonian problems in which Greece is concerned are: (a) that of Greek relations with the Slav world as represented by Serbia and Bulgaria, both of whom must be expected in the immediate future to be under strong Russian influence and to have Russian sympathy for their aspirations; and b) that of the surviving Bulgarophone minority in Western Macedonia.

3. The former problem turns chiefly on that of Serbian and Bulgarian access to the Aegean, the subject discussed in paragraphs 35-40 and 41-43 of the paper under reference. There is clearly no case (or handing over to Slav Powers any part of the North Aegean coast, which in 1940 had nowhere anything but an infinitesimal minority of Slav inhabitants. On the other hand, the strategic position of Greece here, even with Turkish backing, is very weak, vis-à-vis the Slav world, so that even in her own interests it behooves Greece to come to terms with her northern neighbours. The only possible solution-however difficult in practice under present conditions-seems to be that referred to in paragraph 51, namely, a return to, and preferably an extension of, the system of free zones. A Serbian free zone at Salonica is not difficult, but a Bulgarian zone at Kavala, or even at the outlying Alexandrupolis, would probably be out of the question for a considerable period to come, in view of the passions aroused by the atrocious conduct of the Bulgarians in Northern Greece since 1941. It remains, nevertheless, a Greek no less than a Bulgarian interest that Bulgaria's desire for access to an Aegean port should be satisfied so far as possible; since otherwise Bulgaria's southward political aspiration, which are now largely artificial, will be kept alive by the real and continual irritation of an unsatisfied economic need. (How far this need might be met by the alternative of a free zone at Durazzo is a matter for separate study.) It may further be pointed out that the grant of free zones at her northern ports would, in fact, be of direct financial benefit to Greece herself through the revivifying influence of increased trade on the life of those ports in general and through the restoration of a natural degree of intercourse between these Greek ports and their Slav hinterland.

4. The problem of the Western Macedonian Bulgarophones, who are briefly mentioned in paragraph 7 of the paper, also remains serious and formidable, in spite of its limited dimensions. This minority, which extends through the region from Florina and Kastoria through Siatista to the plain of Yannitsa, has proved exceedingly unreliable during the war. Satisfactory data are not available, but it appears from events during the occupation that the dissatisfied minority must be considerably larger than is suggested by Greek census figures; and it is certain that successive Greek Governments have shirked facing the problem and have preferred to persuade even themselves that it did not exist. On the assumptions (1) that the policy of His Majesty’s Government is to treat Greece as the most important Balkan country from the point of view of British interests, and to support those elements in Greece which are most stably pro-British and (2) that Greece does not wish to belong to a Balkan Federation in which there would be a large Slav majority, it would appear to follow that Greece had better not contain any Slav minorities at all. And since the amputation of the Slav areas in Western Macedonia and their annexation to a Slav Federation is a practical impossibility and would also be economically disastrous for Greece. It would follow that, difficult as it may be, a home must be found for perhaps 120,000 Slav Macedonians north of the Greek frontiers of 1941.

5. I have sent copies of this dispatch to the Resident Minister at Caserta, to Mr. Houstoun-Boswall at Sofia and to Mr. Broad at Bari.

I have, &c. R. A. Leeper.

(1) See “Balkan States” print section, 26th August, Section 6.

A Statement of the Bulgarian Idea of Unification as the Motive of Bulgarian Foreign and Internal Policy

April 5, 1944

No. 2782 (R-2585)
American Consulate General, Istanbul, Turkey

SUBJECT: A Statement of the Bulgarian Idea of Unification as the Motive of Bulgarian Foreign and Internal Policy

Sir:

I have the honor to present below a leading article from the Bulgarian newspaper ZORA of March 28, 1944, in which Mr. N. Kolarov, Editor of the Macedonian newspaper TSELOKUPNA BULGARIA, gives his view of the fundamental significance of the idea of unification in relation to Bulgarian foreign and internal policy.

The writer reviews the development of the movement in Bulgaria inspired by the idea of national unification in the nineteenth century, especially as it came to a head in the church settlement of 1870--which achieved the setting up of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Constantinople- and the Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin in 1878. He also refers to the long continued struggle that has been carried on in Bulgaria since the Treaty of San Stefano. Ethnographically the writer lays primary emphasis upon the areas of Bulgarian habitation as indicated in the delimitation of the territorial limits of the exarchate and the limits of the Treaty of San Stefano.

The writer sets forth no new ideas on this subject. The article merely emphasizes the fact that the idea of unification has been a powerful force working through the whole period of Bulgarian modern history and never more powerfully than today.

For the student of Balkan affairs the article is important in that it is another reminder of the fact that this powerful well organized movement and this profound sentiment must be taken fully into account in the settlement of the Balkan problem at the close of this war. As long as great numbers of Bulgarians live outside the frontiers of their country this struggle unification will go on, -for the Bulgarians are a determined and resourceful people in waging this kind of struggle. The aspiration for national self-determination and unification was in thorough accord with democratic sentiment in the nineteenth century, when it was born. The idea of unification was quite natural and commendable. The heroism of the people primarily concerned in carrying on the struggle, especially in Macedonia, for relief from the terrible conditions under which they lived was heroic. The literature which originated in the struggle is a fundamental part of Bulgarian literature and a part of the education of all the youth of country. Hence the ideal will not die.

The fatal element in connection with the whole movement, and that which has caused it to be wrecked in the twentieth century, was the unwise political methods adopted for its achievement, and the uncompromising attitude of those leaders in charge of national interests at critical moments, primarily in the spring and summer of 1913. In the bitter enmities and struggles between the Balkan states Bulgaria gave her enemies the opportunity of getting the drop on her, an opportunity which they were not slow to take advantage of; and so by her own lack of wisdom and political skill she wrecked the edifice which had been built up by so much suffering and bloodshed. The continuation in 1941 and since of this policy of political short-sightedness seems again destined to leave Bulgaria naked to her enemies; and to her natural enemies she has deliberately added Great Britain and the United states.

The writer of the article presented below, Mr. Kolarev, does not seem to be aware of the critical conditions which his country faces at this moment, for he writes of successful resistance to enemies without seeming to know that the forces gradually being built against his country are irresistible. He would do better, therefore, to devote his energies to devising by political skill some new alignment for his country that might save something from impending wreckage of Bulgaria's long cherished hopes.

The article shows how the most intransigent Bulgarians are still thinking and writing in this the eleventh of hour of the war in the Balkans. In free translation this article reads as follows:

In the Spirit of the Idea of Unification

By N. Kolarov

"Even for the first leaders of our renaissance, for whom the frontiers of Bulgaria were clearly defined, the unification idea, that is, the idea of the national unification of the Bulgarian nation was the fundamental and sacred aim of their efforts and of their epochal struggles. Later on in the political program of the revolutionary committee in Bucharest, the frontiers of the desired Bulgarian state were described with an accuracy which represents a true and understanding political view, especially when one bears in mind conditions at that time, conditions not only of patriotism crystal clear, but also showing an amazing ethnographical and historical knowledge.

Against all attempts to attack or deliver a deadly blow to the idea of unification the Bulgarian nation as reacted with iron determination, on which these attempts have ingloriously failed. The greatness of our church struggle rested precisely in the fact that it was an uncompromising struggle insofar as the territorial demarcation of the projected Bulgarian church (exarchate) was concerned. The southern frontiers proposed by the Patriarch of Constantinople and located on the crest of Stara Planina was turned down with an indication which made it clear, once for all, that the Bulgarian nation would no longer admit of its being challenged and insulted by such proposals. The further attempts
of Russian diplomacy and of the Sultan's government to satisfy the demands of our church further increased its territorial limits over which the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian church would extend, but which did not find favorable consideration in the Bulgarian nation. Our church leaders considered themselves satisfied only after the publication of the Sultan's decree, the tenth article of which opened for them the possibility, though under difficult conditions, of gathering all the territories with a Bulgarian population within the pale of the Bulgarian exarchate.

The peace treaty of San Stefano found the Bulgarian nation with an enhanced national and political consciousness and a fully crystallized idea of the meaning of unification. This is why this treaty, which was considered to be the crown of Bulgarian aspirations and the just reward of Bulgarian suffering and sacrifices, since it brought to life a just settlement which bad long been buried for five centuries, awakened an indescribable enthusiasm in the grateful nation from the Danube to the Aegean Sea and from the Black Sea to the Albanian Mountains. This is why the unfortunate news, which came a few months later with reference to the Congress of Berlin, found not only a painful echo but also the firm determination to take up a new struggle in the name of the idea of unification. This struggle in our then enslaves provinces is well known to all. It is known to us by its powerful romanticism, its sacred victims and its legendary heroism. In this struggle the indomitable sons of the provinces and the noble sons of the free fatherland took part side by side dying in a fraternal embrace. It was Bulgarian in spirit, in ideology and in aims.

The political elasticity with which the juridical principles, expressed in article twenty-three of the Treaty of Berlin, and then of the Treaty for the minorities, allowed and compelled the struggle to grow, because of the stipulations of the treaty and the international conditions at the time, from small to great achievements and gradually to attain the final Bulgarian solution of the Macedonian question, a fact which is used in vain today by some enemy countries, by ethnographical nihilists, for anti-Bulgarian purposes, for ideological combinations directed against them.

The final and great aim of the Macedonian liberation movement has been the union of Macedonia with the free kingdom. Similarly the underlying motive of Bulgarian foreign policy from the date of the Congress of Berlin until today, as well as the fundamental impulse which induced the Bulgarian soldier to die at the four corners of the Peninsula in the wars of liberation, has been the unification of all Bulgarian provinces in one Bulgarian state.

The idea of unification has also been the fundamental motive force of our national and political life. To the Balkan problem, insofar as we are concerned in it, we desire to give and shall give the solution which is in the spirit of our history, our wars of liberation, our national ideology. Any ideas which carry even the smallest sign or germ of separation or of particularism are equally alien to Bulgarians on both sides of the Osogovska Mountains. This is especially true today when we are living in a time of national and unitary states. We shall not seek our place in international life and establish the form of our state in accordance with the prescriptions of foreigners, the more so that these foreigners are known as our inexorable enemies. We shall build up our all Bulgarian state exclusively in the spirit of our idea of unification and Bulgaria will be a member of the international community ... a fully national and independent political entity." (ZORA -March 28, 1944.)

Respectfully yours, Burton M, Berry, American Consul General
To Department in original and hectograph

Balkan States - Report 2
February 1, 1945

Brigadier Maclean to Sir Orme Sargent

(No. 4)

With reference to my dispatch No.1 of the 6th of January regarding Macedonia, it may be of interest to recall the following sequence of events indicative of trends in Yugoslav, Bulgar, and Greek Macedonia in favour of incorporation in the new Macedonian federal unit of Yugoslavia.

2. On the 18th November the Greek Macedonian Brigade held its foundation ceremony at Bitolj to cries of “Give us the right to live within the framework of federal Yugoslavia.” Yugoslav partisan leaders appear to have attempted to moderate popular enthusiasm and Pasanko, representative of the Macedonian National Liberation Front, reminded his listeners that “this is a delicate diplomatic question in which the co-operation of our allies England, Russia, and America is essential.

3. The Greek Macedonian Brigade appears to have been formed partly of refugees resident in Bulgaria and partly from former adherents of E.A.M. who disagreed with E.A.M.’s minority policy. Keremediciev, Political Commissar of the new brigade, accused E.A.M. of harbouring certain elements who refused to accord the Greek Macedonians their cultural rights and own military formations. E.A.M. he added, finally issued instructions for the Macedonians to be disarmed and it was to avoid this that they crossed the border to Yugoslavia.

4. There they were probably joined by volunteers recruited from amongst Macedonian refugees previously living in Bulgaria. Yugoslav sources claim that there are some 700,000 of these refugees in Bulgaria, most of them having been transferred there as a result of agreements made after the last war for the exchange of population in the Balkans. The Yugoslav partisan newspaper Nova Makedonija for the 14th November, 1944, gave the following account of their present attitude: “These Macedonian refugees realize that the independence and liberation of the Greek part of Macedonia depends not a little on its direct participation in the operations against the German Fascists. Committees are therefore being formed in every village and town in Bulgaria where Macedonians are living. It is to be expected that the response to volunteering will assume very large proportions and will include all those able to bear arms, and that whole units will be formed from the refugees alone.”

5. On the 3rd December another meeting was held in Bitolj to elect “a Political Commission to lead the fight of the Macedonian people in Greek Macedonia.” The commission appointed Filip Velkov as its representative to the Presidium of A.S.N.O.M. (i.e. the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia) and J.A.N.L., H.Q., for Macedonia. At the second session of A.S.N.O.M. held at the end of December Velkov stated: “We Macedonians from Aegean Macedonia have a grim struggle before us to realize the age-old ideal of our people, the liberation of our part of Macedonia which is still beneath a foreign yoke.” At the same session of A.S.N.O.M., Atanas Atanasovski spoke in the name of the Bulgarian Macedonians. “The entire population of Pirin Macedonia,” he asserted, “is waiting for the happy hour when we shall be included with our brothers in Macedonia in Tito’s democratic, federal Yugoslavia.”

6. These claims for union between the Macedonian population of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece had already been advanced some weeks previously by authoritative Yugoslav partisan leaders, such as General Dzilas, General Tempo and Dimitar Vlahov. Though some of the more categorical of these claims may have been made in a burst of momentary exuberance, it is worth while examining the career of the most experienced of these politicians, Vlahov, for indications as to the more permanent aims and principles determining their policy.

7. Dimitar Vlahov was born in Kilkis in Greek Macedonia in 1878, and joined the original I.M.R.O. as early as 1903, collaborating closely with the famous Macedonian leader Goce Delcev. In 1908 he was elected to the Turkish Parliament as a deputy of the Popular Federal party, whose object was to work constitutionally for an autonomous Macedonia. In 1907, after Macedonia had been annexed by Bulgaria, Vlahov became Governor of the Pristina district and after the Great War, served as Bulgarian Consul-General first in Odessa and then in Vienna. In 1924 he signed the Aleksandrov-Protogerov manifesto which attempted to patch up a truce between the rival I.M.R.O. leaders and he was repudiated by the Bulgarian Government. Disapproving of the terrorist methods of I.M.R.O. which was now falling increasingly under the domination of Ivan Mihajlov and degenerating into the tool of Bulgarian and Italian designs of disruption in the Balkans, Vlahov founded his own organization, the United (Obidinena) I.M.R.O., in 1925, and expounded his ideas in his well known book “Balkan Federation”. Vlahov looked neither to Bulgaria nor to Yugoslavia (which was then pursuing a policy of rigid centralism) but to the Soviet Union, with whose support he hoped to achieve a union of the South Slav peoples in which Macedonia would form a separate, autonomous federal unit. Though Vlahov still continued to lay great stress on non-violent methods for the achievement of his aims, his organization was broken up by the Government of the Military League in Bulgarian in 1934, and its members sentenced to long terms of imprisonment on a charge of Communist conspiracy and planning of an armed revolt. Vlahov himself settled in Moscow in 1936 and appears to have remained there until returning to Yugoslavia at some point to join the partisans. Observant readers have been able to secure an interesting side light on his activity in Moscow from an article in a recent partisan newspaper which wrote that Vlahov had “liven in Moscow, where he worked tirelessly in the International Agrarian Institute” – the latter phrase being substituted for the blocked-out but still legible word “Comintern”.

8. Although the energy with which the authorities appear to have quelled the anxiety of certain of their troops to march on Salonica (see my telegram No.63 of the 16th January) bears out Tito’s repented assurances that he intends to take no premature action over the Macedonia problem, there is every reason to suppose that it is his intention to unite in due course the Macedonian provinces of Greece and Bulgaria to Yugoslav Macedonia, and that this project has the approval of the Soviet Union. Dr. Smodlaka has stated that the Bulgarian Government (no doubt under pressure from Moscow) have already agreed to cede Bulgarian Macedonia (see my telegram No.88 of the 21st January). The Greek attitude towards this problem must be regarded as less assured and will doubtless depend on the eventual complexion of the Greek Government, although, as will be seen by my telegram No.2 of the 7th December, even E.A.M. do not appear to have proved quite as amenable on this question as Tito would have wished. It is however, difficult to see how Greece, whatever her attitude, would be able successfully to resist the wishes in this matter of an overwhelmingly strong South Slav bloc under Soviet tutelage.

F. H. R. MACLEAN, Brigadier, British Military Mission. Belgrade, 21st, January, 1945.

Balkan States – Report 3
January 29th, 1945

Brigadier Maclean to Sir Orme Sargent

I TRANSMIT herewith a report on Macedonia. F. MACLEAN

British Military Mission, Belgrade, 7th January, 1945.

Enclosure. Report No. 1.

1. Now that some time has elapsed since enemy forces evacuated Macedonia, an attempt can be made to asses the extent to which the Partisans have been able to implement their policy of creating a Macedonian federal unit. Although the Partisans are somewhat prone to discuss the problem as “solved” by the mere proclamation of Macedonia’s autonomy, it is clear that a real solution can only be achieved through a long process of educational, administrative and economic reconstruction.

2. It will be recalled that provision was made for full Macedonian autonomy by a decree passed at the Second Session of A.V.N.O.J. at Jaice in November 1943. By this decree Macedonia was accorded a status equal in all respects to that of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia in the new federal Yugoslavia. The first step towards carrying this autonomy into effect was taken by the formation of the Anti-Fascist Assembly for the Liberation of Macedonia (A.S.N.O.M.) as the acting federal authority.

3. It appears, however, that there is to be a considerable difference in the degree of autonomy which the Partisans intend to allow in the various spheres of Macedonian national life. In cultural matters Macedonia is to be accorded immediate and complete autonomy; in political and administrative matters as much autonomy as can be digested; in economic life there are so far few signs of autonomy and, indeed, in opposite policy of centralized state control may well be introduced.

4. Macedonia’s cultural autonomy is finding its immediate expression in the official stimulus given to the “Macedonian language.” The later has hitherto been generally denied existence and has been claimed as a Serb or a Bulgar dialect according to the national prejudices of rival philosophies. Nova Makedonija and other papers are now regularly published in the Macedonian language and a place of special honour given to Macedonian poems and songs.

5. Special efforts are also been made to educate and develop the most backward sections of the population. The Anti-Fascist Women’s Front is reported to be receiving a special response from amongst the Macedonian women, and the backward Turkish minority is being courted by solemn celebration of the Feast of Bajram, by Moslem rallies held in Skopje and by frequent favourable publicity in the press.

6. The right to political and administrative autonomy is being more differently applied. In the first place, this right is by no means universally recognized by the other Yugoslav peoples, especially the Serbs in who the old great Serb conviction that there is no Macedonia but only a “southern Serbia” is still strong. Significant confirmation of this was recently afforded by an article published in Borba criticizing a meeting of educationalists at Nis who acquiesced in a statement made by one speaker to the effect that Macedonia was “just a part of Greater Serbia.” The article went on to complain that at another meeting of the Women’s Anti-Fascist Front, also held at Nis, a delegate from Macedonia was denied the much publicized right of making a speech in her own language.

7. If the Serbs are slow to admit the right of the Macedonians to equal partnership in the Yugoslav State, the Macedonians for their part, are not quick to forgive the Serbs for exploiting their former hegemony. Macedonia was generally regarded in pre-war Yugoslavia as a colony – a sort of south Slav Siberia to which corrupt, inefficient or recalcitrant civil servants were relegated. Their task in Macedonia was less to promote the well-being of the population than to propagate the Great Serb creed. The Macedonians are now to provide their own administrators. Although local government by the committee or “odbor” system reduces the number of officials required, it would seem that a shortage of experienced Macedonian civil servants must be felt for some time to come.

8. Perhaps more resented by the Macedonian people than the old Serbian officials were the Serbian colonists settled by Government grant on Macedonian soil. The great Serbian outlook of these colonists, together with the economic privileges they enjoyed, led to considerable ill-feeling among the Macedonian population. That this ill-feeling has not yet been wholly dissipated has been confidentially admitted by Father Vlada Zecevic, Commissar for the Interior in the National Committee, who has recently returned from a visit to Macedonia. Father Zecevic states that a redistribution of land, by which it is hoped to satisfy the needs of the poorer Macedonian peasantry without entirely dispossessing the Serb settlers, is being now carried through and is inevitably giving rise to some cases of personal resentment.

9. In the meantime economic conditions in Macedonia remain confused, as has been reported by my No. 791 of the 29th December quoting a report received from my mission there; “the economic situation here is bad largely through lack of transport and inefficiency. There is sufficient food in Macedonia but distribution problems are acute. The foregoing is probably the reason for the re-election of a new ministerial council of A.S.N.O.M., which is to take place on the 28th December.” The immediate implications of autonomy in the economic field cannot therefore be regarded as an unmixed blessing, and apart from this adjustment of claims between Serb settlers and poor Macedonian peasants it seems doubtful whether the Partisans will attempt a more extensive application of the principle. Indeed, the special character of Macedonian economy suggests an opposite tendency towards State centralism. In addition to opium and cotton cultivation, both of great potential value if wisely fostered by the State, the chief Macedonian crop is tobacco. This furnishes a valuable source of income to the State, who bought it through a monopoly from the peasant cultivators at fixed low prices. The State, however, played no part in organizing or improving cultivation, though the peasant could have been greatly assisted through expert advice in methods of cultivation, model plantations, financial help, co-operatives, &c. State assistance along these lines maybe expected to yield considerable economic results, and if Partisan controlled Yugoslavia is to attempt any promising experiment in agricultural collectivization it may well be in the tobacco fields in Macedonia.

10. That the path of Macedonian autonomy is still beset with thorny problems, both in the sphere of external and internal affairs, is suggested by Marshal Tito’s decision, already reported by telegram, to send his right-hand man Kardelj to attend the Second Session of A.S.N.O.M. held on the 28th of December, 1944. In his speech to the Assembly Kardelj congratulated the Macedonians on their newly won autonomy, but went on to warn them against becoming “giddy with success.” Their enemies, he asserted, were still active and the independence of small Powers was constantly threatened. “Vigilance was all the more necessary as, unfortunately, every-day experience showed that solemn undertakings not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries” – and here Kardelj made a veil reference to events in Greece – “were in practice only treated as scraps of paper.” Macedonia’s enemies, he continued, were “the Great Bulgarian, Great Albanian, Great Serbian and Greek chauvinists” and their supporters abroad. Equally pernicious were the opposite tendencies towards separatism. Macedonia could only flourish, Kardelj concluded, within the framework of the new federal democratic Yugoslavia.

11. A similar creed was expressed by other speakers at the Assembly, notably by General Tempo-Vukmanovic, who asserted: “We have gained a victory in the field of battle and must now gain it on the field of politics. The danger which threatens to destroy the achievements of our great struggle lies in the efforts made to stir up chauvinism and separatism.” Tempo went on to stress the need for free and democratic elections by secret ballot and affirmed: “We did not fear to give arms to the people – still less shall we fear to give the people the vote.” Thus the official line taken by the Partisan speakers was the avoidance of any territorial claims or suggestion of any eventual South Slav federation and affirmation of a conciliatory and moderate policy of full democracy. These discrete utterances were in contrast with the wild polemics and even wilder territorial claims advanced by General Tempo and Dr. Vlahov in November on the subject which, under instructions from the foreign office, I made strong representations to Marshal Tito.

12. From this and from the various conversations which I have had with him on the subject of Macedonia, there can be little doubt that Tito fully realizes the delicate nature of the internal and external problems involved, and there is every indication that, for the present at any rate, he intends to tread cautiously. What future plans he (or possibly Moscow) has for this traditionally explosive region remains to be seen. He has always told me that he does not intend to prosecute any territorial claims he may have in this region before the Peace Conference, and that in the case of any disputed region he would be prepared to be guided by the results of a plebiscite. In the case of the ethnological patchwork of the Kosovo Polje he has on occasion mentioned the possibility of moving what is left of the Arnaut population, whose loyalty to the Germans was unshaken to the end, to Albania on bloc. The first speeches made by Tempo and Vlahov after the liberation of Macedonia referred to above show that at any rate some leading Macedonians would like to see the present frontiers of Macedonia extended at the expense of Greece and Bulgaria.

13. A possible solution to these problems would, of course, be the creation of a Federal State comprising Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and even possibly Greece and Albania, with which the frontier of the ideal Macedonia could be firmly established, if not by mutual agreements, then by an over-ruling decision of the Central Federal Authority. On the other hand, even if no Balkan or South Slav Federation should be created it seems likely that, in view of the similarity of outlook of the regimes which either have or eventually will be set up in all these countries, the task of reaching, or if necessary imposing, settlement will present little difficulty.

F. MACLEAN., 6th January, 1945.

Balkan States – Report 4
April 27th, 1945

Mr. Stevenson to Mr. Eden
Belgrade, 13th April, 1945.

(No. 44.)

Sir,

I HAVE the honour to report that two members of my staff recently had a long conversation with M. Emanuel Cuckov, the Minister for Macedonia. Mr. Cuckov was very friendly and appeared anxious to give all possible information.

2. He opened the conversation by saying how important it was that Allies should understand the situation in Macedonia and should realise that the Macedonians regard themselves as a separate people. What he meant by that statement was not clear, but he later said that Macedonia was very satisfied with her federal status inside the Yugoslav State and explained that the federal idea was not a new one to Macedonians, who had previously envisaged obtaining a measure of autonomy as a federal unit in a South Slav federation. From everything he said it emerged that the Macedonians have very concrete ideas on the measure of autonomy offered by their present federal status. In internal matters they seem to regard themselves as being entitled to operate almost entirely independently of the rest of the Yugoslav State. From other remarks which I have heard from prominent Yugoslavs recently, it seems possible that this tendency towards excessive independence on the part of Macedonia is causing the Central Government a certain amount of concern.

3. On being asked about the new administrative districts which have recently been set up in Macedonia, M. Cuckov said that he was not expert on this question but that he understood that these new divisions were essentially the same as they had been before 1941. They had, however, been somewhat improved and under one administrative centre were now included all villages and districts which were bound geographically to that centre. Before 1941 the divisions bad been Some what- arbitrary and areas whose market produce naturally went to one town had been often included in the administrative district of another. This had led to much inefficiency and had caused the peasants great difficulty. The frontier between Macedonia and Serbia was the historical one, i.e., a line running east to west just north of Kumanovo and south of Kacanik. I enclose as an appendix 1.0 the dispatch a list and a map (map not printed) of the new administrative areas in Macedonia.

4. M. Cuckov then spoke about agriculture. He said that attempts had been made before 1941 to encourage wheat growing in Macedonia. The son, however, had not lent itself to this and the intention of the Macedonian Government was henceforward to concentrate on the cultivation of rice, sesame, opium and tobacco, all or which could easily be grown. Macedonia had never had many factories, but it was the intention of the Macedonian Government to remedy this and to encourage industrial enterprise for the processing of commodities grown inside the Macedonian frontiers. The main industrial enterprises before the war such as the Allatini and Radusa chrome and lead mines near Stip, had not suffered much damage and were more or less ready to resume work.

5. As regards reconstruction, the Federal Government of Macedonia had- immediately after the evacuation of the Germans on their own initiative set to work to repair runways and roads. This reconstruction had been financed by the Macedonian Government itself without assistance from the Central Government. This was due mainly to the fact that the dinar had no value in Macedonia and though the Central Government had set money aside for Macedonian reconstruction it still remained in Belgrade. He believed that all roads were already repaired and the runway from Belgrade to Veles was open. From Veles to Djevdjelija the Germans had completely destroyed the runway during their withdrawal and it would take some time to repair. The runway to the Greek frontier through Bitolj was, he thought, however, very nearly fit for traffic.

6. On being asked whether the Serb colonists would be free to return to Macedonia he said, somewhat platitudiuously, that all Yugoslavs would naturally be free to come to Macedonia if they wished. As regards officials, he said, however, that the question of whether they return to their old jobs depended entirely on the Macedonian Government and not on the Central Government. The Macedonian Government were anxious that as far as possible the official positions should be fled by Macedonians and, provided that there were men to fill the posts, it was, therefore, unlikely that the Macedonian authorities would be ready to take back the old officials. For example, before 1943 the police had been almost entirely Serbian and the police chiefs had been Serbs. Now the militia who had taken their place were Macedonians and it was natural that the head of the militia should be Macedonian as well.

7. As regards the redistribution of land, he pointed out that before 1941 it had been easy for the Serbs to buy land in Macedonia, and as a result the Macedonians, for whom the purchase of land had not been easy, had been driven out of the more fertile parts of the country. He indicated that there would be as far as possible a redistribution in favour of the Macedonians and that Serbian colonists would if possible be sent back Serbia: Thirty per cent of the Banat had been owned and cultivated by Germans and here the population had been only ninety to every square kilometer of cultivable land, whereas in Macedonia it was 350. He thought that the Serbs from Macedonia could be moved to take the place of the Germans in the Banat.

8. He then spoke about the Church and Stated that before the war one of the main attempts to Serbianise Macedonia had been made through that medium. Nearly all the priests had been Serbs and this had been very unpopular with the Macedonians, who were extremely Nationalistic and would only recognise a Church run by themselves with Macedonian priests. He believed that the solution lay in a federal Yugoslav Church. Whereas previously the Orthodox Church had been a Serbian Church with tentacles in Macedonia, Bosnia and other parts of Yugoslavia, he hoped to see separate Orthodox Churches in each of the federal units which each in turn owed allegiance to a central Yugoslav Patriarchate. If such an arrangement could not be sanctioned by the Orthodox Church he felt that the Macedonian Church would be forced to carry on schismatically as the Bulgarian Church had previously done for some seventy years. He then attacked the Metropolitan Joseph of Skopje, who, he said, had during the war been associated with Trbic, the Cetnik leader in Macedonia, and had continuously been opposed to the partisans. He considered him a time-server who was unfit to stand as deputy for the Metropolitan Gavrilo whom everyone admired. The Metropolitan Joseph was also a Serb and though it might only be an internal affair of the Orthodox Church that he should call himself the Metropolitan of Skopje, it had aroused the anger of all Macedonians when he recently went to Moscow in that capacity and apparently representing the Macedonian Church. He pointed out that the Macedonian Church Assembly had sent greetings to the Holy Synod, whose authority they recognised, but not to the Metropolitan Joseph. It seems possible that the recent visit of the Metropolitan to Moscow may have been the reason for bringing to a head the Macedonian demand for a separate Church.

9. The recent elections had been a great success and had aroused widespread interest. In nearly all districts over 90 per cent of the electorate had polled. He believed that everyone over 21, except those accused of collaboration, had been allowed to vote and, in addition to this, those under that age who had fought in the Yugoslav army of National Liberation. Candidates had been chosen freely by the people and he gave an example a town of 10,000 inhabitants. This might be divided into four districts, each of five streets. Each street would at a public meeting choose two members, and a district meeting would then be held and those of the candidates who had anything against them would then be ruled out. All those who were approved as candidates would then stand for election and election was by secret ballot. No suasions had been used either by the police or by the army during the elections.

10. Opposition to the present regime in Macedonia was very slight. The Cetnik problem had never been serious and the few who had fought in the Macedonia had a long time ago gone north into Serbia. The Albanian bands who had at one point been a fairly serious menace had only been bandits, whose object was to profit from the general disorder, and at the time of the German withdrawal had impartially attacked both Germans and Partisans. These had nearly all departed – some going north with the Germans and others taking refuge in the mountains of the Kosovo.

11. A Court of National Honour was now in operation in Macedonia, but he did not know any details. He said that the number of Macedonian civilians executed for crimes under the occupation and after the liberation had been small, and gave the figure of seventy. The main crimes had been material and cultural collaboration, spying, informing, &c., and he also mentioned that four men had recently been condemned to death for speculation. Naturally after the collapse of the Germans a number of opponents had been caught under arms and had been shot out of hand, and he mentioned a group of some forty Albanians captured near Skopje.

12. Macedonia had no problems with Albania and he thought there was no question of any change in frontiers.

13. As regards the Bulgarians, he was non-committal. At the time of Yugoslavia's collapse in 1941, however, the Macedonian people, who had been striving for autonomy for a long time, had felt that the chances were remote without outside help. They therefore welcomed the Bulgarians and thought they intended to set up an independent Macedonia. Few Macedonians, however, desired to be under Bulgarian domination, and when their hopes of independence were deceived the Bulgarians became more and more unpopular and many Macedonian patriots like himself took to the woods.

14. When questioned about Greece he said that Macedonia, being a part of the Yugoslav federation, had no separate foreign relations. The Macedonians realised that the main task for the moment was to beat the enemy and to allow no other considerations to come between them and that end. They therefore did not desire to embarrass in any way the Allies, and were determined not to create any trouble by meddling in Greek affairs. He added, however, that 70 per cent of the population of Greek Macedonia was Macedonian and they were being badly treated. He felt there were many problems to be settled with Greece, but these could wait until alter the war.

15. I am sending copies of this dispatch to the Resident Minister at Caserta, to His Majesty's Ambassador in Athens and to His Majesty's political representatives at Sofia and Debrecen.

I have, &c. R. C. SKRINE STEVENSON.

Enclosure

The Administrative Divisions of Macedonia

By a decree of the Anti-Fascist Skupstina of National Liberation of Macedonia, published on the 13th February, 1945, Macedonia was divided for administrative purposes into eight Okrugs as follows:-

(1) Skoplje, consisting of the areas of Tetovo, Gostivar and Rostusa.
(2) Kumanovo, consisting of the area of Kumanovo, Kratovo and Kriva Palanka.
(3) Stip, consisting of the area of Stip, Kocane, Carevo Selo and Radovis.
(4) Strumica, consisting of the area of Strumica, Berovo, Valandovo and Djevdjelija.
(5) Veles, consisting of the area of Veles, St. Nikola, Negotin and Kavadar.
(6) Prilep, consisting of the area of Prilep, Brod, Krusevo and Kicevo.
(7) Bitolj, consisting of the area of Bitolj, Resen and Morihovo.
(8) Ohrid, consisting of the area of Ohrid, Struga and Debar.

Balkan States – Report 5
May 17th, 1945

Mr. Stevenson to Mr. Eden
Belgrade, 13th April, 1945.

(No. 74.)

Sir,

I HAVE the honour to transmit to you herewith an interesting and useful memorandum on the partisan movement in Macedonia and its opponents, by Mr. Stephen Clissold, press secretary at this embassy.

I am sending copies of this -dispatch to the Resident Minister, Central Mediterranean. His Majesty's Ambassador at Athens and His Majesty's Political Representative at Sofia.

I have, &c. R. C. SKRINE STEVENSON.

Enclosure

The Partisan movement in Macedonia and its Opponents

MACEDONIA bas always presented one of the most complex and confusing issues in Balkan politics, and it cannot be said that recent events there have done much to clarify it.

The Yugoslav partisans claim somewhat naively that the problem has been finally “solved” by granting Macedonia the status of one of the federal units of the Yugoslav State. Apart from the highly controversial international implications of this “so1ution,” as far as Bulgaria and Greece are concerned, its acceptance within Macedonia itself has not been so unanimously approved as the partisans would have us believe. They have had to meet formidable opposition from two sides; from the exponents of the old centralist thesis that Macedonia is but an extension of Serbia and should be given no regional autonomy whatever, and from the separatists who claim that Macedonia should be given the status of an entirely independent State. It is in the light of these two opposing schools of thought that the development of the partisan movement in Macedonia may best be reviewed.

Annexation by Bulgaria

It is generally admitted that the entry of Bulgarian troops into Macedonia was welcomed by the mass of the population as a prelude to national liberation. Official Yugoslavia had denied the existence of a Macedonian people and had regarded the inhabitants of “South Serbia” as Serbs corrupted by Bulgar influence. A strict policy of Serbianisation and centralism had therefore been pursued. Serbian co1onists were settled on the land and Serbian officials- often or a very inferior grade- sent to administer the province. What the Macedonians regarded with perhaps, pardonable exaggeration as their national culture was ruthlessly harried by the Serbs as an expression of Bulgarian irredentist propaganda. It is scarcely surprising that the sudden collapse of this unpopular regime should have been hailed as the dawn of a new era.

Disillusionment soon followed, as it become clear that Bulgaria cared as little as the Serbs for the national aspirations of the Macedonians. For the centralists of Belgrade there was substituted that of Sofia. But the false hopes with which the Macedonians had started, continued to colour their outlook for some time to come, and rendered the growth of the partisan movement there of peculiar difficulty. Macedonia, it was felt, had already been “liberated” by the Bulgarians; how then, could the insurrectionary movement sweeping over Serbia bring national liberation to them! If the Macedonians grew discontented under Bulgar rule, they sought to better their lot by a struggle for social, not national, resistance. The first Macedonian Insurgents formed themselves into units which they called National Detachments, not National Liberation Detachments, as elsewhere in Yugoslavia. They formed their committees, too, but these were National Committees, not National Liberation Committees. When they chalked up their slogans on the walls of the houses in Skopje and Bitolj, one would see not the customary “Death to the Invader,” but more often “down with the Filov Government.”

The Beginning of Resistance

The resistance movement in Macedonia threatened therefore to develop along entirely different lines from the rest of Yugoslavia. The first and most vital campaign which the partisans had to win was the conversion of all resistance elements to their own programme. They had to ensure that it should be a Yugoslav and not an exclusively Macedonian resistance movement. It must be made to conform to central directives and give full recognition to the authority of Tito and the Partisan Supreme Staff. This issue was fought out until August 1943, and it was only when the capitulation of Italy brought a fresh accession of strength to the partisans that Tito's line found general acceptance. Even so, the old separatist and pro-Bulgar trends continued - and still continue to- day- to trouble the consolidation of the movement.

The first phase of partisan activity in Macedonia - from the summer of 1941 to August 1943-was largely conspiratorial. Detachments were formed, but they lacked the cohesion of a common aim and leadership, and were mostly soon dispersed. Communist influence had always been considerable in Macedonia, especially amongst the workers and intelligentsia, and here, as elsewhere, the Communists took the lead in building up the underground organization. A partisan headquarters was formed consisting of Mihailo Apostolski, a major – in the old Yugoslav army, Lazar Kulisevski, secretary of the Macedonian Communist party, Straso Pindur, Mirce Acev and others. (The latter two have since been killed; Apstolski is now a lieutenant-general and until recently commander-in-chief for Macedonia; Kulisevski is President of the Macedonian Government.)

Military and Political Consolidation

By the autumn of 1943; partisan activity had reached a more serious scale. The partisan detachments assumed the designation (if not the reality) of a regular army-the Army of National Liberation-and nationalists could boast that Macedonia now had the first army of its own since the days of the Tsar Samuel. Public confidence began to grow. The partisans now no longer drew their recruits almost entirely from the ranks of the intelligentsia and workers; the peasants, too, began to take up arms. Non-Communist politicians like Andonov-Cento began to identify themselves with the movement. The first towns (Debar, Tetovo) were liberated, and partisan patrols could steal through the streets of Skopje and Prilep without fear o being denounced by a hostile population.

In the autumn of 1942 Tito had sent his personal delegate Tempo (Svetozar Vukmanovic) to direct the organization of the movement, and during 1943 he established close relations both with the Albanian F.N.C. and with Greek E.A.M./E.L.A.S. (see Bari dispatch No.62 to the Foreign Office and 64 to Caserta of the 16th July, 1944). At the end of the year the second Macedonian Brigade was formed on Greek soil. It was composed of the Pindzur Battalion and the Kristov Batev Battalion of deserters from the Bulgar army under the command of Dico Petrov.

Tile Opposition –Cetniks

Cetnik opposition was mainly confined to the towns and does not seem to have been a serious factor. The anti-Serb feelings of the Macedonian population naturally prevented the Cetniks from obtaining any great measure of popular support. Their plan was not to offer open resistance to the Bulgar authorities but to build up a secret administration to take over from them on the day of their ultimate withdrawal. A group of Cetniks was arrested in Skopje by the Bulgar police in 1942, made little secret of their intentions in court and were subsequently released. The titular head of such armed Cetniks who did resist was Vojo Trbic, son of a wealthy landowner from Prilep, and Mihailovic's personal representative for Macedonia, and Krstic, who commanded a group of Cetniks in E. Macedonia until they were finally liquidated by the partisans in the Koxjak hills in the spring of 1944.

The Pro-Bulgars

A far more serious and persistent problem was provided by the existence of the various pro-Bulgar groups. A vigorous propaganda was carried on among the Macedonian émigrés in Bulgaria by Dr. Stanisevci, Danail Krapcevci and other leaders to induce them to return to their "liberated" homeland. The usual bribes were held out-land confiscated from evicted Serbian tenants, good posts in the Civil Service, &c. To counter the growing popularity of the partisans, the Bulgars even began sponsoring, a rival movement of Macedonian extremists to demand autonomy, or even a greater Macedonia, including Salonica. The former I.M.R.O. terrorist leader, Ivan (“Vanco”) Mihailovic had been living in Zagreb since April 1941 under the protection of his friend Pavelic. He had, however, his henchmen in Macedonia - Ckatrov, Kiril Drangov and others, who readily lent themselves to these Bulgar-inspired plans. In September 1944 he himself visited Skoplje, under German auspices, to assess the possibilities of enlisting support for a Greater Macedonia under his control (see Belgrade dispatch No.45). It was, however, too late. The partisans had stolen his thunder and summoned their anti-fascist Sobranje for the National Liberation of Macedonia (A.S.N.O.M.) at the beginning of August. Macedonia was to be a federal State enjoying full autonomy within the frame work of the New Yugoslavia.

The Experiment of Home-Rule

The first A.S.N.O.M. was elected at Bitolj on the 2nd August; it was superseded on the 20th December by a second A.S.N.O.M. held at Skoplje, which was in turn developed into a full Government at the third session of A.S.N.O.M. in April 1945.

It soon became apparent that the old opponents of the partisans' Macedonian policy- the Serb Centralists and the Macedonian Separatists-had by no means been subdued by the partisans' success. The Centralists, forced to abandon their former posts in Macedonia, have been obliged to confine their activity to expressions of impotent disapproval from Serbia and have been frequently denounced in the partisan press. The Separatists, on the other hand, have been far more active and dangerous. A.S.N:O.M. itself was permeated with them, and Marshal Tito found it expedient to send his right-hand man, Edward Kardelj, to attend the second session of A.S.N.O.M. and issue a strongly worded warning against the dangers of becoming giddy with success and harboring separatist and irredentist tendencies. These warnings have been repeated on subsequent occasions by such authoritative spokesmen all Cuckov, Minister for Macedonia in the Yugoslav Federal Government, and Kulisevski, now head of the Macedonian Government.

The prevailing mood of over-confident nationalism resulting from the expulsion of the Bulgar and German forces of occupation has found expression in many ways. Attempts have been made to close the frontiers to Serbs wishing to enter Macedonia, and the Federal Government in Belgrade was forced to issue a sharp reminder that every Yugoslav subject has the right of access to any of the federal units, regardless of his national origin. To bring the lesson home, a Serb doctor, resident for many years in Macedonia, has been included as Minister of Public Health in Kulisevski's Government. In Church matters too, a marked tendency can be discerned to break away from Serbian influence. The exact position in this respect is not yet altogether clear, but a start has already been made with the holding of a congress of Serb Orthodox priests in Skoplje as a preliminary to the establishment of an autonomous Macedonian Church to be associated with the Serb Orthodox Church in some sort of ecclesiastical federation.

Irredentist ambitions in respect of Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia have increased in proportion with the desire to loosen the ties binding Macedonia to Serbia. As early as November 1944 a Greek Macedonian Brigade had been, formed under Yugoslav auspices in Bitolj and this was followed a few weeks later by the setting up of a commission "to direct the struggle of the Macedonians in Greece." Finally, matters came to a head when certain Yugoslav units in Bitolj demonstrated their preference to fight for the expulsion of the Greeks from Salonica rather then that of the Germans from Yugoslavia.

The reaction of the Yugoslav federal authorities to all these manifestations of irredentism and separation has been vigorous. Whatever the ultimate desires of Marshal Tito and his advisers may be - and there are some grounds for thinking that they do envisage an eventual Great Macedonia, possibly comprising one State member of a Balkan federation - they are at present bent upon steering a middle course between the Scylla of separation and Charybdis of centralism. The extent to which they have succeeded in establishing their authority over the more impetuous elements is not easy to determine. It would seem that they still have a long way to go before those tendencies towards separatism and dependence upon Bulgaria, which have so handicapped their movement in the past, are finally eradicated.

Balkan States – Report 6

December 12, 1946

Notes on Serb-Partisan-Bulgarian Relations during the period August-November 1944. – (Communicated in Beri dispatch No. 209 of the 28th November, received in Foreign Office the 12th December)

THE information and notes set out here below deal solely with the experiences and actual incidents, or reported past incidents, in the areas through which Mission “Mozart” moved during the period under review. The mission landed in Serbia on the 10th August in Barje area south of Lebane, and then moved south to Oruglica and Rozdac, crossing the Morava near Mastanica, and thence to Nesverta. After some time in this area the Mission moved north once more to Crna Trava and thence to Dobro Polje. From there it made its way through Strelac and Babusnica to Pirot, where it was later joined by Mission “Entanglement.” The two Missions then moved with Partisan 13th Corps through Vlasotince and took part in the final advance on and the capture of Nis.

2. The majority of the following information about the Bulgarians and their relations with the Serbs was obtained in the period spent at the east of the Morava. Feeling here among the population were far more pronounced than on the other side of the ricer, and contact with the Bulgarians seemed to have been far more of a reality in this area. As a result of this, it was very noticeable that, as the Mission moved eastwards, so anti-Bulgarian feeling among both Partisans and peasants became more and more apparent.

3. Generally speaking, the Partisan attitude in Serbia to the Bulgarian occupier can be divided into four separate phases, namely; -

(A) An initial period which generally speaking had been going on since hostilities began.
(B) The period immediately before the Russian declaration of war while British negotiations were still taking place.
(C) The Russian declaration of war, armistice and post-armistice period.
(D) The period of actual co-operation between the new Bulgarian army and the Partisans.

The attitude of the Serbian people themselves throughout this period was continuous and forms a background of the whole picture of Partisan-Bulgarian relations in this area. When considering each of the above phases in turn, this attitude of the Serbian peasants and people must be borne in mind as an important factor influencing the local situation, and also it must be remembered that during the first three phases named above, the Mission, as it traveled towards and along the Bulgarian frontier, was moving into territory more and more strongly biased against the Bulgars. (See para. 2 above.) As a result of this, the picture is inclined to become at once more local in character, and cannot be said to reflect the true attitude of the whole of Serbia, but only that of a badly hit section of the country, where feelings may have become distorted and enlarged out of all reasonable proportions by hate stirred up on the spot.

Phase (A)

4. The original Partisan attitude to the Bulgars was that the Bulgarian soldiers were an unenlightened enemy with Fascist leaders, who, as the occupiers, must be driven out of Serbia. Prisoners, when taken, were given the chance to renounce their Fascist leaders, and were allowed to join in the “movement” with the Bulgarian Partisans if groups were operating in the area. Only the leaders, officers, police and secret police organizations were considered completely corrupt, and as the instigators of all crimes and atrocities were executed out of hand when caught. To the ordinary rank and file an attitude of distasteful toleration was adopted, and if the prisoners decided to co-operate they were at once accepted as men, who in past had been lead astray by their leaders, and their lives were usually spared. At the slightest sign of these converts giving trouble, or when the military situation made it impossible to have this rather doubtful element within their midst, the Partisans were forced to dispose of them. This they did purely as a necessity, and without the hate which was sometimes shown to the German prisoners, and would seem to be the only sensible solution to the problem.

Throughout the whole period the Partisans persisted in their policy of co-operation with the Bulgarian Partisan Movement, giving their help wherever possible. The standing arrangement to send all sympathetic Bulgarian prisoners to swell the ranks of the Bulgarian Partisans was only one example of this, and quite definitely serves to illustrate the sincerity of the Partisans as a whole, whose policy it has been since the beginning of the movement to strive continuously for harmony with their Bulgarian neighbours. The Partisan quarrel with Bulgaria was not with her people, but with her leaders and the system they stood for, a system which struck directly at the heart of the Partisan will for a friendly relationship with all Balkan people.

The above attitude of toleration and willingness to cooperate was essentially evident during the Lebane offensive, where the Partisans were able to gain a decisive victory over the Bulgarian army, and at the same time remain consistent in their former attitude towards prisoners.

There were, of course, extremists among the Partisans who contemplated the long list of past Bulgarian misdeeds through the ages, and argued that the whole Bulgar race was at fault. Bulgaria was to these men “the Germany of the Balkans” and would remain a danger until liquidated. That the Bulgars should pay for their past crimes was their slogan.

The present attitude, generally speaking, was one of fear mingled with inborn hatred which grew in intensity with the lessening of the distance to the old frontier. Every village had its stories of house burnings and killings in the district, and some had actual examples to show, getting progressively worst to the east. Perhaps the most antagonizing situation for the peasants was when Partisans came into a village with some ex-Bulgarian soldiers in their midst. The Partisans the people were prepared to feed but the Bulgars they were definitely not.

Phase (B)

5. The period immediately before, and leading up to the Russian declaration of war, when it became increasingly clear that the Bulgars really were on the verge of collapse, witnesses a noticeable stiffening in the Partisan attitude towards the Bulgars. Still the former policy of toleration existed on the surface, and all men realized as they had stated so often in the past that some agreement must be reached with Bulgaria if future peace was to be ensured. Yet, at the same time, the feeling of the impending collapse brought out many expressions of real hatred that had hitherto been suppresses. Men began to recall instances where their own villages had been sacked and burnt, or friends and relations killed, and their women debauched. Formerly they had merely despised the Bulgarians, now they began to show hatred for them, and some even went so far as to express regret that Partisan policy was of necessity a tolerant one. Even such men as Mihailo Djurovic (see Appendix “A”) who was well educated and equally well-informed as to the general picture, besides being a great influence throughout the whole are stretching from Crna Trava to Kriva-Feja, expressed himself in strong terms when referring to the Bulgars. True, his are had suffered more severely than almost any other, and during this transition period even his broad view-point of the war in general, was far from being in line with the former and official policy. To him the Bulgars stood for culture on the German model in the Balkans.

There was much speculation in Partisan ranks as to what was going to happen when the end did in fact come, and all were in agreement that the Bulgarians must withdraw from the country immediately, leaving their arms with the Partisans. Any feeling of hatred the Partisans had hitherto expressed were incensed during this period by the one great fear that the Bulgarian troops, even at the last minute before their collapse, might hand over their arms and material to the Cetnic and Nedic organizations with whom they were known to be in contact in all towns of any size throughout East Serbia.

It was during this period that the peasants’ feelings reached their peak in anti Bulgar intensity, and indeed in the whole are from Kriva-Feja to Crna Trava had good reason to hate. Examples were quoted of Bulgar soldiers coming into villages, shooting three of a family, shutting the remainder into their house and then burning the house and its pitiful intimated with it. Whole villages were seen with every house burnt down and with the villagers still searching among the ruins trying to salvage something from the ashes. In some cases new houses were just being built, but life was a very hand-to-mouth affair, as none of the essentials of the household remained. “Some of the braver individuals were just uncovering their remaining worldly goods from holes in the ground beneath manure heaps that had been their hiding place for the past seven months, and on the other side of the valley smoke could still be seen rising from the ruins of two houses burnt less than ten days ago.” (Mission Diary-Nesverta)

The Bulgar destruction through the whole are had been systematic to a degree. In Novo Selo and Nesverta, for example, there was hardly a cooking utensil in the place, no cups, glasses or cutlery, all had been taken away when the Bulgars passed through. Many of the houses had been burnt or damaged, and their man-folk marched away to Bulgaria for internment or worse. The people from these villages all displayed an air of absolute hopelessness in their adversity.

The smallest incidents were taken by the Bulgarian occupier as an excuse for such action all over the area. If a village sheltered even a Partisan it was considered hostile and as likely as not liable to call down destruction on to itself.

The same situation was evident to an even greater extent in Crna Trava and the surrounding are, although the work was not so recent. In Crna Trava itself only three buildings appeared to be still intact. A typical example of the thoroughness of the Bulgar policy here was that they had even taken the trouble to erase all the names from the stone memorial to the slain of the last war. This type of behaviour can be dismissed as both futile and unimportant, but it assuredly serves to illustrate how deep-rooted the hatred of the peasant for the occupier must necessarily become, since it is connected with every aspect of his daily life, besides being a repetition of centuries of similar occurrences.

This was a period of universal East Serbian hatred for the Bulgars, which developed before Partisan policy and finally crystallized out into its present state. It was a breakaway from the previous Partisan attitude of disdainful toleration, and was due to the sudden possibility of a Bulgarian collapse, combined with the terrible local evidence to be seen an all sides of this particular are.

This condition of terrible fear amongst the peasants, and the newly-aroused hatred on the part of the Partisans, was typical of this phase, and persisted up to and even after the armistice in the case of the latter, while the former still does exist to a greater or less degree according to the locality.

It was during this period that too that the Bulgars themselves first started to show real signs, in a few isolated cases, of working out their own salvation. Desertions to the Partisans increased – 2 officers and over 100 men came over to the Partisans in the Surdulica area from a garrison in the hills. Actual fighting broke out between the Germans and the Bulgars, in Surdulica itself, yet the Bulgarians in Vranje, a few miles distant, declared themselves to be still whole-heartedly in support of the Germans, and the movement did not become general.

The reason given for these desertions were inveritably that, although they did not mind fighting for Bulgaria, they had no wish to remain with the Germans, only to be left with the prospect of being carried off to some obscure front to fight for Germany. They insisted they were not traitors to Bulgaria, but expressed grave concern at what their countrymen might thing of them for their actions which thy held to be completely justifiable, since their country was on the verge of suing for peace. All were most anxious to explain away the past atrocities by saying that it was merely the natural outcome of their own way of life in Bulgaria, where for the past 500 years they had lived in an atmosphere of secret police, killings, and house burning among their own countrymen. As a result of this, human life was rated very low indeed, and it didn’t mean a great deal to a man to have to commit similar crimes in an enemy country when ordered to by his Fascist superiors. (This information and opinion, was volunteered by a Bulgarian officer deserter at Nesverta, who spoke English learned at the American collage in Sofia.)

It was final rush to get into the right party by men who were clever enough to see what was taking shape, and who still sufficiently uncompromised to do so.

Phase (C)

6. The Russian declaration of war, the ensuing armistice, ant the post-armistice period is probably the most interesting of all, in that it may be said to pass through three main stages, viz, :-

(i) A period of complete confusion when Russia declared war on Bulgaria, closely followed by the complete collapse of the latter. No one could be sure during this period just what would happen. News was non-existent, although the Partisans in this area generally were fairly confident that at last the Bulgars would be forced to withdraw from the country at speed. The Russian attack, coupled with lack of directive as to Partisan policy, put local Partisan anti-Bulgar feeling at its highest, and on a genuine hate basis, 70 per cent, of the staff of the Pirot Bde, for example, stated on numerous occasions, and without reserve, what, they intended to do with the Bulgars, how they would be made to pay in full for their past crimes, and of how the attack should be carried into Bulgaria alongside the Russians and the countryside laid waste there as it had been in Serbia. Past atrocities were discussed and speculation ran high. Then came the armistice, and gradually a less irresponsible and more imaginative and realistic attitude began to take shape. This was the beginning of the second stage.

(ii) There was still no news, but as time passed and the Bulgars showed no signs of leaving the country, the Partisans began to look for a deeper meaning behind their prolonged stay and to think once more along the former logical lines of Balkan unity. Personal dislike and hatred generated by the thought of a vanquished Bulgaria was suppressed by all Partisans for the sake of their avowed ideal of friendship within the Balkans. They did not, however, basically alter their attitude to the Bulgars, or forgive the past, but merely looked at the matter in the light of hard facts. They reasoned that, although things would continue to be very vague until new directives came in, it was still certain that the Bulgarians would have to pay their price of their crimes, that the various leaders would be tried for their complicity in the atrocities, and that it now appeared that the Bulgars had been directed to fight against the Germans, since they were not going to leave the country. It was generally considered disappointing that the Bulgars had apparently been selected by the Russians to continue to fight against the Germans instead of being sent home as a defeater army after handing their material and arms over to the Partisans who could then have continued the fight. It was disappointing but it was accepted, for it was obviously the only practical solution. The Partisans even admitted quite openly that, had they been given the tanks and guns, &c., of the Bulgarian army, they could not really have put them to good use, owing to lack of trained personnel to man them; they would obviously be better handled by the proper owners, who must therefore stay. At the same time it was thought and hoped that the Russians would soon find out what rotten and hopeless allies the Bulgarians were.

(iii) Time passed once more and the Bulgars did not see real fighting, but more and more material and men continued to pour into the country in the Pirot area from Carribrod. It was now that directives at last came through, which stated that the new intention of the Bulgars was to conduct a full-size offensive into Serbia against the Germans, and cut once and for all the escape routs through the Morava and Ibar valleys.

However, the scheme did not begin to take shape quickly, and once more criticism was heard. The Partisans began to feel suspicious of this large army on their soil which did nothing to hamper the enemy, but merely ate Serbian food and looked impressive. Concern was expressed over the possible political developments of having a large army in a static role in and around the Pirot area, which was already known to contain many civilians who were sympathetic to the Bulgarians having lived under them for many months without having their conditions of life made radically worse than under their own past.

This was the exception and also the exact opposite of the position elsewhere in eastern Serbia, where universal hatred on the part of the peasants was still the predominant feeling. Could the Bulgarians be here for some sinister political reason was a fear which now began to present itself. Even 13 Corps staff stated that they moved their Headquarters to Barje Civilic because they feared civil trouble with so many Bulgarians and their sympathizers in Pirot. Matters were made no easier by the fact that temporarily all arms had ceased to be sent to the Partisans, as at this time British supplies had been discontinued and Russian support had not began to arrive, while at the same time the Partisans had an ever-growing influx of the “Narod” crying out for arms which were not available, yet when the Partisans looked around they could only see their late enemies with a surplus of material of every type at their disposal. Corps Commander Vuckovic himself stated that the inactivity had gone on too long and was becoming a possible source of future trouble, and that the moment had arrived when either the Bulgars must push through Bela Palanka and Vlasotince to Nis and Leskovac, or else get back to their own country. (The Bulgarians had been sitting across the roads leading to Bela Palanka for some three weeks without making any serious move in either direction.) A “fight or go” attitude was becoming noticeable in Parisian discussions about the Bulgars, and their attitude began to stiffen once more.

(iv) Suddenly this whole situation changed and the attendant tension disappeared overnight. Russian stores arrived for the Partisans and the Bulgars who were now presumably sufficiently prepared for their attack on the Morava and Ibar valley communications, carried out a very large switch of their forces from the Bela Palanka front, where the main effort had previously been concentrated, and thrust their main force into the Morava valley and through Vlasotince. Besides being a considerable military achievement in re-concentration and switching of available forces, despite the shocking difficulties entailed by making such a large movement of men and guns over an almost impossible road, the plan was also a complete success, and Vlasotince, Leskovac and Nis fell to the Bulgars in quick succession.

After the few days doubt on the part of the Partisans as to whether this was going to be a real or half-hearted effort was finally removed, and they admitted that at last things looked like working and genuine co-operation was in view.

After the capture of Nis, the Bulgars continued their advance westwards, chasing the retreating Germans through Prokopulje and onwards through Kursumlija. Their effort here seems to have been a genuine and wholehearted affair, and up to the present moment they have been fighting as hard as they can, as their heavy casualties bear witness.

The civilian population in the towns such as Nis did not appear to be nearly as violent in their hatred of the Bulgars as had the peasants, and through an indefinite dislike was expressed by many, no serious criticism was heard. In a few cases people returning to Nis after the liberation of the town did show disappointment at seeing the recent occupier once more in the town, but this was short lived, as soon the majority of troops had moved on towards the battle and Nis had to begin to think about picking up the threads of its life again.

Short Summary and Appreciation of Existing Relations

7. We have now traced the development and vicissitudes in Partisan-Serb-Bulgar relations during the last stages of the war in Serbia, and we have seen how it was and is still developing along the normal lines necessary for future peace.

First we had the Partisans facing the Bulgarian army as enemies and without showing any great demonstrative hatred towards them, and then, after the reasonable and natural phases of hate and suspicion, we find them eventually co-operating in making war on a common enemy. That this co-operation was a compulsory clause of an armistice agreement does not necessarily mean that any basis for real co-operation could not be built up from this point. In fact, the omens are heavily weighted in favour of future peace and eventual friendship.

The new Bulgarian Government and the purges carried out by the Bulgarian Partisans have effectively removed the main reasons standing in the way of co-operation with the Partisans, for the latter’s policy has been consistently, except for a few local misunderstandings as described above, one of a desire for friendship with Bulgaria, in the hope of obtaining a Balkan unity. This could not begin while Bulgaria was under the late Fascist leadership and while she played the role of occupier in Serbia. However, this is now no longer the case, and the two nations can now face each other on common ground. They will still remain recent enemies, but time, and a carefully-directed policy, should heal and deaden this as far as the Partisan movement and the new Bulgarian army are concerned.

That the peasants of Serbia are still bitter and nourish a great hatred for the recent Bulgar oppressor is both true and natural. It is the result of years of murder, pillage, house burnings and the like that has been carried out in successive wars. It is deeply ingrained into the national character, but should not prove an insurmountable difficulty, for if the Serb Partisans, who are also Serbian to the same degree as the peasants, are prepared to suppress their hatred in order to carry out the policy of a new Yugoslavia which is aiming at friendship and peace in the Balkans, then so also can the peasants and “Narod” generally do the same. Once the later has been absorbed into the Partisan movement and given proper instructions by the means of a gradual policy, then this very real stumbling block should disappear. It is the duty of the Bulgarian Partisan Movement to carry out similar reconstruction within their own country.

The Partisans have made a true noble sacrifice in this way by suppressing all their past hatreds for sake of a cause (see Appendix “B”), and there is no reason why this sacrifice should be set at nought.

The situation should be further assisted by the fact that in years to come, the new Bulgarian army will be remembered for the part it played in the liberation of Serbia, and it should be hard for the Serbs to hate those who came to their aid and who drove out the occupier, and who at a later date sent in food, leather, &c., as laid down in the armistice terms. If this last is done, and the “new army” leaves behind it the reputation of being a liberator, then the former period when the Bulgarians were the occupiers will gradually fade from memory, as the latter is usually a very short-lived affair.

That there is still much to be done, and a great deal of precarious negotiation to be carried out before a firm peace can be established, is obvious, especially on such questions as territory and populations, which cannot be discussed here at this present stage.

Those Bulgars responsible for atrocities in the past will have to be caught and punished. There should be no weakening on this count, but simply proper justice done. But if these and similar storms can be weathered there is every indication now that a possible solution is in sight.

General Stanchev has already given a lead in his tremendous task of bringing the new Bulgarian army into being out of the sorry material of the old, a task which seems to be carrying out with success in the Nis area, and equaled only by his success in dealing with the Partisans themselves. Others like this man should be able to make Yugoslavia-Bulgaria relations at least into a working arrangement between the two nations. A step in the right direction has been made.

The Partisans under the leadership of Marshal Tito have always given “Federation with the Balkans” as one of the first principles of their whole movement. This they have striven for consistently in the past, and in so doing they have to suppress all personal feelings, after entailing great suffering and self-sacrifice to themselves, in order to bring about so great a change. Now, at last, the achievement of their aim is in sight, and the possibility of a real Balkan Federation, such as they have envisaged in the past, can become a reality.

The basis for co-operation has already been laid, and was proved by the joint operations throughout the recent fighting in the Nis area. With careful handling, a real friendship may well grow from these foundations, and Balkan unity would no longer remain a matter for mere speculation or academic discussion.

Appendix “A”

Mihailo Djugovic

CIVIL engineer, well educated, speaks French, and has traveled in France and other parts of Europe. Had experience of Yugoslav political and public life before the war. Interned by Germans, but later set free in order to be repatriated to Bulgaria as he was then subject administratively to the latter owing to frontier changes announced by the Axis.

Joined Partisan movement, where his chief task became civil administration in the south of Crna Trava.

Appendix “B”

Partisan Sacrifices for sake of Balkan Unity

AN example of this suppression of personnel hatred on the part of individual Partisans was well illustrated in the case of the Political Commissar to 13th Corps.

This man came from Crna Trava area and has been with the Partisan movement in Serbia since the early days. He had witnessed all the hardships endured by his countrymen during the Bulgarian occupation, had been forced to live in the hills for many months, and his wife had been killed by the Bulgars during an early reaction in the Crna Trava area. Yet this man could put aside all personal hatred that he must have felt for the Bulgarian, and during the liberation ceremonies in Nis he did his utmost to foster good relations between the Partisans and the new Bulgarian army, and gave frequent demonstrations of his own friendship for them, and in full public view.

Balkan States 7

June 18, 1946

Mr. Clutton to Mr. Bevin

No. 223

Belgrade, 6th June, 1946

I HAVE the honour to inform you that the trial took place last February before the Supreme Court of Macedonia of eleven members of a secret organization known as the Democratic Front of Macedonia-Ilinden 1903. The organization was charged with being responsible for drafting a memorandum in favour of the creation of a separate Macedonia, to include Bulgarian and Greek Macedonia, as a protectorate of "certain foreign countries" to whom the document was or was to be addressed. This memorandum was referred to in Marshal Tito's speech at Skopje on the 11th October, 1945 (see Belgrade telegram No. 1872 of the 12th October, 1945). A dementi appeared in the press of the 2nd November, 1945, purporting to come from the committee of the Ilinden organization, denying that it, the committee, was responsible for such a document. The denial went on to say that those of the committee who “by chance have remained alive, true to the ideals of the I.M.R.O. constellation of the time of Delchev, Gruev, Petrov, Sandanski and Hadji-Dimov, consider that the free Federal Vardar Macedonia within the frontiers of Tito's Yugoslavia represents a firm basis for the full union of the Macedonian peoples and the final settlement by democratic means of the Macedonian question which for fifty years poisoned the political atmosphere in the Balkans.

2. According to the press, the activities of the accused men began in August 1945, and it was their intention to work on the lines of Mihailov’s organization, with whom one of them, Dr. Ilija Culev, was at one time associated. Plans included the assassination of national leaders, the disarming of the militia, and the liberation of political prisoners, to be followed by the taking over of authority. Efforts were made to establish connexions over the frontier near Bitolj with the ?itos organization, from whom assistance in the Liberation of Greek Macedonia was to be sought.

3. The accused whose names were: -

Konstantin Hrisimov-Smilee Kiro Pecarov Stjepan Kuzmanov
Atanas Acov Dr. Dimitar Zlatarov Serafim Lazarov
Dr. Ilija Culev Metodi Svitjiev Kosta Dinev
Luka Sekulov

Were sentenced to terms varying from one to twenty years' forced labour.

4. This trial provides, perhaps, a suitable opportunity of reviewing the attitude of the present Yugoslav Government to the Macedonian problem and to the traditional Macedonian parties. Yugoslav Macedonia is a barren and sterile country of small economic value. Its inhabitants throughout their history have been the thorn in the flesh of every Yugoslav Government. Its strategic importance, however, is great as it controls the Vardar Valley and the Monastir Pass. In consequence, ever since its acquisition by Serbia in 1912, the Government of Belgrade has hung on to it with fierce tenacity. From the strategic point of view it was equally important to Bulgaria and the latter, to support its claims at first fostered revolutionary Macedonian organization known as I.M.R.O. When this movement broke out into two warring factions, the Mihailovists and Protoguerovists, the Yugoslav Government found in the later a means to serve their own ends, for the latter were ready to accept Macedonian autonomy within the frontiers of Yugoslavia, besides being opposed to the Bulgarian Government then in power. The Protoguerovists, indeed, received secret subsidies from the Yugoslav Government. The rivals of this faction the Mihailovists on the other hand, who stood for complete Macedonian autonomy or at least the incorporation of Serbian Macedonia within Bulgaria, to form an autonomous state, did not fail, on the other hand, to make contact with the extreme Croat opponents of the Belgrade Government.

5. There is no reason to believe that the present Yugoslav Government was any less determined than its predecessors that Yugoslav Macedonia should be part of Yugoslavia. Indeed, it is more than probable that this is part of the present Soviet plan for South-East Europe, for it is significant that Macedonian autonomy is, according to the reports I have seen from the British political representative at Sofia and His Majesty's Consul-General at Salonica, regarded as a reactionary plan sponsored by "foreign" Powers: It is, also interesting to note that the veteran Protoguerovist leader, Dimitar Vlahov, is a member of the present Presidium of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, and that those who issued the dementi referred to in paragraph 1 so significantly omit the name of Mihailov from the great names of I.M.R.O, which is, in fact, there portrayed as a purely Protoguerovist organization. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, for Mihailov during the occupation of Yugoslavia lived in Zagreb in close personal contact with Pavelic with \V whom, the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs recently told me, he escaped at the time of the liberation. Mihailov is, therefore, branded in the eyes of the present Yugoslav regime with the same mark as Pavelic. In short, the old Serb alliance with the Protoguerovist faction remains in essence as it was before the war despite the changed circumstances of the time.

6, Nevertheless, Macedonia still remains a problem to the Yugoslav Government. The Federal Republic of Macedonia is, it is true, given greater independence in administration than any other of the Federal units in Yugoslavia. Even so, the present measure of control by Belgrade is, according to the reports I have received, intensely resented and this is somewhat confined by the complaints of the Bulgarian Opposition parties reported by Mr. Houstoun-Boswall in his telegram No.3, Saving, of the 4th February.

7. On the other hand, it must not be taken for granted that the present solution of the Macedonian problem, which has been up to date the Yugoslav Government's policy, and which has eschewed ally demand for the union of Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia with Serbian Macedonia, is the final solution. To judge from His Majesty's Consulate-General's letter to the Chancery at Athens of the 14th April, there is, already on foot a Yugoslav plan for the incorporation of Greek Macedonia within the borders of Yugoslavia. As yet, however such a movement is not officially sponsored, and the general Yugoslav attitude is restricted to one of platonic sympathy with allegedly persecuted blood brothers across the border. Two factors probably militate against the Yugoslav Government officially sponsoring such a movement, let alone a movement for the union inside Yugoslavia of both Greek and Bulgarian Macedonia. The first is the effect of any Yugoslav claim to Bulgarian and Greek territory on the position of the present Bulgarian regime and the opposition in Greece, both of which enjoy vigorous Yugoslav support. In the second place the creation at this stage of a large autonomous Macedonian State might well endanger the position of the present highly centralized Government in Belgrade. On the other hand, in the event of a Yugoslav-Bulgarian union or of Greece coming into the Soviet orbit, the position would be entirely different. The retention of Yugoslav Macedonia by Yugoslavia would then cease to possess any strategic importance and a united Macedonia would be a practical proposition either as a unit of a Greater Yugoslavia, or of a Soviet-controlled Balkan Confederation.

I am sending copies of this dispatch to His Majesty’s Ambassador at Athens and Moscow, His Majesty’s political representative in Sofia, His Majesty’s Council-General at Salonica, and his Majesty’s political advisor to Supreme Allied Command at Caserta.

I have, &c. GEORGE CLUTTON.

Balkan States 8

August 22, 1946

Mr. Clutton to Mr. Bevin

No. 310

Belgrade, 13th August, 1946.

Sir,

I HAVE the honour to report that the first Congress of the National Front of Macedonia was held at Skopje from the 2nd to the 4th August. The most prominent personalities attending the congress were Lazar Kolishevski, President of the People’s Republic of Macedonia and secretary of the Territorial Committee of the National Front of Macedonia; M. Neshkovich, the President of the Serbian Government; and M.Frane Frol, the Minister of Justice of the Federal Government. The congress was also attended by a delegation from Bulgarian Macedonia (Pirin), the leader of which was Krsto Stojchev, a Deputy of the Bulgarian Sobranje. There were also delegates from Greek or, as it is called here, Aegean Macedonia, and a delegate from Trieste, M. Eugen Laurenti.

2. The congress opened on Ilinden the anniversary of the rising against the Turks in Macedonia in 1903. Extremely long speeches were made by M. Kolishevski and by M. Neshkovich. The main points of these were the necessity for suppressing reaction, the union of Pirin with the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the strugg1e of the Macedonians in Greece. M. Stoichev, the Bulgarian delegate, spoke in favour of the Inclusion of Pirin in the Republic of Macedonia and added that, as he had declared elsewhere, there were in the Bulgaria of the present day still remnants of Bulgarian chauvinism which wished to destroy the fraternal relations existing between the Fatherland Front of Bulgaria and Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia.

3. Of greater interest, however, was the manifesto issued by the congress at its conclusion. This document begins by saying that, on the anniversary of the glorious rising of Ilinden and on the anniversary of the meeting of A.S.N.O.M., when the foundations were laid for the realization of the Ideals of the Ilinden rising, the delegates, who had come from all parts of the country and who represented all classes and all nationalities in Macedonia, once again manifested the political union of the whole of the people and the unshakeable fraternity and union of the Macedonian people with all the national minorities in Macedonia. After praising the National Front, its leader, Marshal Tito and its policy, which had been created and executed by the best fighters for the rights of the working people, the Communist Party, the manifesto continues by saying, that the first congress of the front had the pleasure of welcoming guests in the persons of representatives of their brothers from Pirin and Aegean Macedonia. This had turned the congress into a manifestation of the wish of the Macedonian people of all parts of Macedonia to be free and united in the Republic of Yugoslavia. From its first days the programme of the National Front had been based on the principle that the people of Macedonia must be united in the Macedonian Republic. The realization of this ideal was to-day the ardent desire of the people. The strengthening cultural relations with Pirin and the national development of the people in that part of Macedonia would create all the conditions for the fulfillment of the wish for the union of these districts in the Macedonian Republic. This wish had also been manifested in the Vardar, i.e., Yugoslav district of Macedonia. By a fraternal understanding between the People's Republic of Yugoslavia and the Fatherland Front of Bulgaria, Bulgarian Macedonia should be united with the Republic of Macedonia.

4. Turning next to Aegean Macedonia, the manifesto says that the Macedonians in this region, who, with the democratic Greeks, waged a stubborn fight against their Monarcho-Fascist oppressors for the establishment of their national and democratic rights, had the undivided sympathy and moral support not only of the People’s Republic of Macedonia, but also of all the peoples of Yugoslavia. Taking its stand on the principle of the union of all the people of Macedonia within the framework of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia, the National Front of Macedonia insisted, moreover, that these national and democratic rights should be given to the Slovenes and the Croats of Trieste and the Julian March. The congress therefore firmly demanded the inclusion of this national territory in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia.

5. The manifesto, after an exhortation to all sections of the community to liquidate the numerous types of local reaction in Macedonia and to unite within the National Front, ends by emphasizing the importance of the elections to the Constituent Sobranje of the People's Republic of Macedonia which are to take place on the 22nd September. The elections should be a new manifestation of the unity of the people and their determination to continue on their road, led by the National Front and its chief, Marshal Tito.

6. There are two points of secondary interest in this manifesto. The first is the statement that the policy of the National Front has been created and executed by the Communist Party. As a rule, the Communist Party in Yugoslavia keeps well in the background, but there have been during the last few months several indications that the party is beginning to come more out into the open. Examples of this are Mosha Pijade's statement that the People's Committees were the creation of the Communist Party (see my dispatch No.196 of the 21st May). and Marshal Tito's statement at Split that he did not expect the Catholic Clergy to love either him or his, i.e., the Communist, Party (see paragraph 4 of my dispatch No.293 of. the 22nd July). Of like interest is also the linking up, I think for the first time, of Yugoslav territorial aspirations in both the north and south, the justice of Yugoslavia's claim to Trieste being based on the justness of the principle of the union of Pirin and Vardar to Macedonia.

7. The most significant feature of the manifesto, however, is that it is the first open indication of future Yugoslav policy towards Macedonia, admittedly in a form which the Yugoslav Government could repudiate if need be. His Majesty's Consul-General at Salonica has reported the agitation within his district for the incorporation of Greek Macedonia within the framework of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. Little or no publicity has until the issue of this manifesto been given to such ideas inside Yugoslavia. It is true that, while the manifesto openly asks for the union of Pirin to Federative Macedonia, the references to Greek Macedonia are vaguer and amount to little more than platonic sympathy. Nevertheless, it is quite clear what is in the wind.

8. Whether this projected union of the three Macedonias within the framework of Yugoslavia is to coincide with the Federal Union of Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, as suggested in my dispatch No. 223 of the 6th June, cannot yet be said. Perhaps the question has hot even yet been decided. In this connexion I might add that I have twice asked officials of the Yugoslav Ministry for Foreign Affairs what significance should be attached to the manifesto. Their answers have been very evasive. One said that he had not yet read the press reports of the congress, and the other that he could not understand what the Macedonians were up to. They now had their own Macedonia, but he supposed that they now wanted something more. From this my conclusion is that Yugoslav plans are not yet fully crystallized.

I am sending copies of this dispatch to His Majesty’s Ambassador at Athens and Moscow, His Majesty’s Council-General at Salonica, His Majesty’s political representative in Sofia, and to His Majesty’s political advisor to Supreme Allied Command at Caserta.

I have, &c. GEORGE CLUTTON.

Balkan States 9

September 4, 1946

Mr. Peake to Mr. Bevin

No. 324

Belgrade, 27th August, 1946.

Sir,

WITH reference to Mr. Clutton’s dispatch No. 310 of the 13th August, 1946, have the honour to report that the leading article in the issue of Borba for the 26th August was devoted to Greek, or, as the Yugoslav’s call it Aegean Macedonia. At the head of the article was a map, a copy of which I attach, showing the present national frontiers and also the ethnical frontier. As you will notice the latter embraces Salonica and almost all Greek Macedonia.

2. The article opens by saying that the frightful terror which is being carried on by Monarcho-Fascist bands in Greek Macedonia is already known to the Yugoslav public. Thousands of Macedonians and democratic Greek refugees are living witnesses of the murder and incendiarism which these bands are committing on “our brothers.” This terrorism has become much worse latterly, when the Monarcho-Fascist clique, which has not been able to find deep roots in the Greek people, began its attempt to purge Greek Macedonia of Macedonians and Greek democrats. Just now active purging of Greek Macedonia is going on- tens of villages are burning, women and children and powerless old men are being murdered, as in the most terrible period of the German occupation.

3. The district, in which a particularly violent terrorism is being carried on, and which is known under the name of Greek (Aegean) Macedonia, is, in f act, ethnically a part of Macedonia. In the whole of the Balkans there is no district which has passed through in the course of recent history such a bitter terrorism as has been suffered by the Macedonian population from the Greek imperialists. The ethnical history of Macedonia is then traced from 1896-1914, during the whole of which time it is shown that the Macedonians remained in an absolute majority in Greek Macedonia. After 1914, however, the picture began to change. The Greek soldiers killed tens of thousands of Macedonians, they destroyed villages, they burnt down houses. In the place of their former inhabitants there came Greeks or philhellene “Aromuni.” The greatest ethnical change was caused by the enforced exchange of populations between Greeks and Turks after the Greek defeat in Asia Minor in 1922 and the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. At that time the Greeks were forced by the Turks to take in all the Christian inhabitants, among whom “Karamanlija,” Greeks, Kurds and other Caucasian people predominated. The great part of these people were settled in Greek Macedonia. The Greeks, for their part, sent into Turkey all the Mohammedans, such as Turks, Mohammedan Macedonians, “Arbanassi” and “Aromuni.” Large numbers were also forced into Bulgaria from Macedonia. After this war, in which our Macedonian brothers fought heroically shoulder to shoulder with the Greek patriots, the Monarcho-Fascists had chased into Yugoslavia and Bulgaria about 20,000 Macedonians from Macedonia. As the result of this persecution 150,000 Macedonians had been displaced or killed from 1914 up till now. In the course of the years 1941-42 our partisan representatives personally completed a list of Macedonian families in Greek Macedonia, and they reckoned that there were still about 250,000 Macedonians there. If one also takes into account the places in which the Macedonians do not represent the absolute but only the relative majority, then this figure of 250,000 should be considerably greater.

4. What, the article goes on, can our brothers expect from the present regime in Greece? The latest terrorism which is being carried on in Greece only confirms that the Monarcho-Fascist bands are continuing the prodigious terrorism which was carried on by the reactionary cliques in the past, and that it is intended that this terrorism shall completely annihilate our brothers in Greek Macedonia. The Macedonians in Greece do not enjoy any kind of rights. It is forbidden for them to speak their national language even in their own homes. Absolutely no Macedonian schools exist. Even their local political organizations have been rendered powerless. Chauvinistic cliques try to sow hatred among the Greek and other nationals against Macedonians, and to destroy that fraternity which was created in the course of the war of liberation. But to-day, opposed to that reactionary Greek policy, there is not the old Yugoslavia in which the Macedonians were oppressed equally with other peoples, but the new democratic Yugoslavia where all peoples have equal rights. The Macedonian people who fought with Greek partisans for their liberation expected, with reason, that this war would bring them, in the spirit of the proclamations of the Great Allies, the right to advance and unite themselves with their other brothers. With justice they expected, that finally all the Macedonian people would be united and break away from foreign slavery. But it is only the Macedonians in Yugoslavia who have succeeded in bringing about their own complete liberation; and while in the People’s Republic of Macedonia a new national life is awakening, on the other side of the frontier our brothers are suffering under the yoke of Monarcho-Fascist bands.

5. Greek imperialists have no right at all to hold Macedonians any longer under their intolerable yoke; ,they can no longer answer that Belgrade and Sofia are persecuting their Macedonian populations and that such people as free Macedonians in their own countries do not exist. They have even less right because they are stifling with all their force the democratic movement and the democracy of their people, accepting foreign support and giving over their country to the mercy, or otherwise of foreign exploitation. The people of Yugoslavia watched patiently what was happening to their brothers in Greek Macedonia. They believed, and today still believe, that the Greek people cannot oppose the fight of the Greek Macedonians for democracy and national independence. But the latest statements of responsible Greek circles, not only in Greece but also in the international arena, and also the frightful terrorism which is being carried on in Greek Macedonia, show that the Greek, reactionary circles have become the provokers of tumult in the Balkans and have decided to annihilate their Macedonian population. There is no hope at all that the reactionary Greek circles, who to-day with naked force and with the help of foreign troops keep themselves in power, will show the slightest wish for the solution of this problem in conformity with the demands and interests of the Macedonians in Greece. This problem has become part of the fight which is being carried on all over the world for peace, for democracy and for the self-determination of peoples. Therefore, the article concludes, our country cannot remain indifferent to the annihilation of our brothers in Greece, nor to their rights and their demands for self-determination and union with their brothers in Yugoslavia.

6. The theme of this article again predominated in the Belgrade press of the 27th August, when all three papers carried leading articles, which in Borba and Politika were headed by another map. The tone of these articles was extremely violent.

7. I am sending copies of this dispatch to His Majesty's Ambassador at Athens, His Majesty's Political Representative at Sofia, His' Majesty's Political Adviser at Caserta, and to His Majesty's Consul-General at Salonica.

I have, &c, C. B. PEAKE.

Balkan States 10
Conditions in Western Macedonia
Report of Tour by Mr. Vice-Consul Dodson
Section 1

July 1st, 1949

R 6417/10127/19
Mr. Knight to Mr. Bevin

(No. 33)
His Majesty’s Consul General in Salonica presents his compliments to His Majesty’s Principle Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and has the honour to transmit to him, with reference to Salonica dispatch No. 61 of 9th December, a copy of a dispatch to His Majesty’s Ambassador at Athens, No. 17 of 23rd June, regarding Mr. Vice-Consul Dodson’s tour of Western Macedonia.

Salonica, 23rd June, 1949 – Enclosure

(No. 17) Salonica, 23rd June, 1949

Sir,

I have the honour to transmit to your Excellency the accompanying report by Mr. Vice-Consul Dodson on a recent tour of Western Macedonia. Mr. Dodson had previously visited this region at the end of November last, and his account of that journey was enclosed in my dispatch No. 41 of 9th December, 1948.

2. It was not expected from what is generally known of the adverse conditions still prevailing in Western Macedonia, that the military and economic situation in that area would show any marked improvement as compared with that of over six months earlier. Even so much of the report makes, I think, rather depressing reading in view of the undoubtedly imposed state of morale, both military and civilian, noticeable during the past few months throughout Northern Greece. Mr. Dodson considers that the improved morale in Western Macedonia is to be attributed to military successes elsewhere, particularly further south, rather than to any amelioration of the local situation; and in a region where so many villages remain empty of their inhabitants, and towns overcrowded with refugees living in such distressful conditions, the situation which still produces such conditions cannot be regarded as anything but serious.

I am sending a copy of this dispatch to His Majesty’s Principle Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and His Majesty’s Ambassador at Belgrade.

I have, &c. W. L. C. Knight.

Enclosure to Dispatch No. 17

I made a short tour in Western Macedonia between 10th and 14th June. I drove to Kozani on the afternoon of 10th June, and the following morning went by road to Kastoria together with Mr. A. M. Homes, British Police and Prisons Mission Liaison Office in Western Macedonia, who very kindly accompanied me throughout the rest of the tour. We spent Sunday visiting the neighbourhood of Kastoria and returned via Argos Orestikon to Kozani on the Monday. On Tuesday 14th June, we paid quick visit to Servia before leaving for Salonica.

2. In Kastoria we called on the mayor and on Major-General Vasilas, commanding 10th Division. All attempts to find the acting nomarch proved fruitless. On the Sunday morning we drove out to the village of Tikhion, north-east of Kastoria, and that afternoon crossed the lake by boat to visit the village of Mavrokhori. We had to abandon a visit to Nestorion, as the need for traveling with the convoy involved spending a night there, for which we had insufficient time. Similar reasons prevented our visiting Grevena from Kozani. We stayed in Kastoria with No. 2 U.N.S.C.O.B. observer group, the vice-chairman of which, Lieut.-Commander Barret, very kindly put us up. He had returned from the frontier only two hours before we arrived, and all the other members of the group were out on duty at various points.

3. On our way to Kastoria we had called on the police authorities in Neapolis, and on the return journey we called on the Mayor of Argos Orestikon, who took us around his refugee camps. We missed the daily convoy to Kozani as a result, and had some difficulty in persuading the military authorities to allow us to proceed despite the fact that the whole road appeared to be alive with troops.

4. In Kozani I called on Colonel Smijth Windham, commanding the British Military Mission liaison unit attached to Headquarters “B” Corps and was very kindly made a guest of the Mission’s hospitable mess. I also called on the Gendarmerie High Commander for Western Macedonia and at the Nomarchia. The latter was a waste of time as the acting nomarch was away and the official who received me as well as those who he summoned to his aid during our conversation, clearly had little idea of what was going on.

5. The situation in Western Macedonia is very different from the prevailing in Central and Eastern Macedonia and in Thrace. One senses the difference as one climbs up the Kastania pass, at the southern end of Vermion mountains, which divide the comparatively peaceful Central Macedonian region from the wilder area of Western Macedonia. Life seems to take on a new tempo and the mountains, rising range behind range westwards to the peaks of Smolokas and Grammos in Pindus and northwards to Vitsi, a new threat. There is in Kozani an atmosphere of urgency non-existent in Salonica. Whereas at Headquarters “C” Corps, one will discuss, over a cup of coffee, the prospects of a G.N.A. sweep against a rebel band in some far-away frontier are or be told about the latest mining incident, it requires only two minutes in the busy and business-like offices of the British liaison unit attached to “B” Corps to realize that there they are dealing with a war. Their maps are marked up for two or three operations at once and these are going on all around them. While talking to Colonel Smijth-Windham after dinner on the night of my arrival I pointed to a light in the hills south-west of Servia. “Yes,” he said “that’s a bandit light; that’s probably Ferraios.”

6. I could not find that the situation in Western Macedonia had changed much, if at all, since I last visited the area in December 1948, apart from a general improvement in morale. Military dispositions in the area seem little changed from six months ago. In places, perhaps, the rebels have been driven a little higher up the mountains, but the general picture remains the same. The Vitsi front runs more or less in a straight line from Florina to Kastoria and the triangle of Greek territory north-west of it is entirely in rebel hands. The line is held by two G.N.A. divisions, who depend on their supplies on the two main lines of road communications; Kozani-Ptolemais-Florina and Kozani-Neapolis-Kastoria. Between these roads the Siniatsikon mountains provide a line of communications for the rebels and a jumping-off ground for raids and mine laying expeditions. West of the Aliakmon lies the other main rebel position on Mount Grammos, south of which the Pindus range affords the rebels another line of communications. South of Kozani is a semi-circle of mountains, Vourinos and Flamouri in the bend of the Aliakmon and Kamvounia and Pieria south-east of it, which forms the rebel road to Olympus. This whole semi-circle, together with the Khassia mountains to the south of the Aliakmon bend, is almost entirely under rebel control. Indeed as we drove from Kozani to Servia on the 14th June Mr. Holmes told me that, apart from the tiny fringe of low-lying land around Velvendos and Servia, there were no garrisons beyond the Aliakmon at all. We were told in Servia that two nights before our visit parts of two rebel brigades had moved from Pieria into Kamvounia across the open ground between Servia and the Aliakmon rather than bother to take the mountain route.

7. The G.N.A. forces on Grammos and Vitsi are dug into positions, though Major General Vasilas, whose 10th Division is on the left of the Vitsi front, pointed out that they were nevertheless fighting a positional war offensively. He claimed to have killed 144 bandits, who had attempted to reach Vitsi from Kaimakchalan, in a battle fought the day before our visit. Behind these two front lines the remaining G.N.A. forces are engaged in keeping open the lines of communication, holding the main centers of population and carrying out sweeps against any rebel concentrations which may be reported. In other, words they are holding the position in Western Macedonia until the, mountain areas in central Greece have been cleared of rebels.

8. The rebels, according information given me by the British Military Mission, have between 4,000-5,000 troops on Grammos and approximately 4,000 on Vitsi. These latter are made up principally of four rebel brigades, all of which are reported to be under strength and one of which to be composed principally of women. In addition the rebels have a heavy concentration of guns on Vitsi. It is into these two mountain strongholds that the rebel supplies from Albania are brought. It appears that initially supplies are sent in bulk by road from Korce to the village of Vidove, just inside the Albanian frontier. Here they are broken up and the supplies for Grammos are sent on via the village of Slimnitsa. Supplies for the, Vitsi area are taken back by road to Bilisht and then driven over the border to Krystalopigi. The heights overlooking this road where it enters Greek territory are, unfortunately in rebel hands and it is impossible for the ,U.N.S.C.O.B. observers to see the lorries crossing the frontier, although I was told that, the sound of their engines was plainly audible at night.

9. The rebels seem to be expecting an attack on Vitsi, and their present strategy appears to be to prevent the G .N .A. from effecting any large-scale concentration of forces by sending small bands out in various directions, to pursue which the G.N.A. must disperse its troops. A number of these pursuit operations were certainly in progress while I was in the area. On our way from Argos Orestikon to Neapolis on 13th June we passed several columns of troops making their way up on to western Siniatsikon in pursuit, as we afterwards learned at “B” Corps Headquarters, of a reported band concentration. Only 6 miles from Kozani we saw a further force making its way onto Vourinos. I stopped to talk to the Brigade Commander, who told me that a rebel column with fifty mules was reported to have moved the night before from the area north of Siatista over into Vourinos. His brigade was moving up onto Vourinos from the north and east and further forces from Siatista were to move from the west. It was then 3 p.m. and the long lines of men and mu1es, moving across the corn-fields towards the foothills on the first stage of their march, must have been very visible to anyone watching from the peaks above. The following morning I was told at “B” Corps Headquarters that both these operations had drawn blank. Simultaneously with these operations other “B” Corps troops were assisting “A” Corps in an operation in the Khassia mountains against the Brigades of Ferraios and Bandekos.

10. The military authorities appear fairly satisfied with the present situation. The more sober certainly look for no final victory this year, but Colonel Smijth- Windham told me that he considered that if Central Greece could be cleared of rebels by the autumn and the G.N.A. be left with only the frontier and the areas immediately behind it to worry about, a big improvement would have been made. He did not think that the rebel morale was at present very high and believed that many were on very short rations. At the same time he thought that the present and, as he saw it, unsatisfactory situation for the rebels had been caused very largely by their own political mistakes, particularly the dismissal of Markos and the. N.O.F. declaration, and he admitted that if a political mistake of similar magnitude were to be made by the Greek Government the situation might easily change for the worse. He had a poor opinion of the rebel forces and considered that with any really determined army the war could be finished in six months. The reluctance, amounting almost to refusal, of all Greek commanders to move at night was a major factor in prolonging the fighting.

11. But although the local military situation is little different from what it was six months ago, public morale has certainly improved. There has clearly been some amelioration of the security situation in the immediate vicinity of the towns to account for the fact that all local authorities tell one that the situation is better, but in the main this improved morale must spring from reports of successes further south and from the new confidence felt by and in the army. It is perhaps easy to over-emphasize this development. When I asked the Mayor of Kastoria - an educated man and a Macedonian - what he thought of the present state of the public mind, he said it was difficult to talk in terms of morale about the reactions of the Macedonian peasant. They had been inured to…(the rest of the report is missing).

British Consulate-General, Salonica
March 16, 1945

Sir,

I have the honour to report that I toured Eastern Macedonia and Thrace by car from March 8th -11th last, visiting in particular the towns of Serres, Drama, Kavalla, Xanthi and Komotini, making Kavalla my headquarters. I was accompanied throughout by Mr. Wm. M. Gwynn, American Consul-General in Salonica.

2. Traveling by road presented no difficulties whatsoever, and the surface everywhere was better than could have been expected. Only on the stretch from Salonica to the Struma was any destruction evident, but a temporary wooden bridge has now been constructed across the Struma and other bridges and culverts repaired in a rough and ready fashion so that traveling time between Salonica and Serres is now almost normal. From Serres onwards there were practically no signs of blown bridges or damaged roads. The railway is also functioning on a reduced scale from Rodhopolis to Alexandroupolis, lignite from Serres being used as fue1. Throughout Eastern Macedonia and Thrace communications and public utilities have remained large1y intact, the chief material damage caused by the Bulgarian occupation being the burning of mountain villages and the carrying off of cattle, draught animals and agricultura1 produce. Conditions ere thus much more favourable for a rapid economic recovery than in Western Macedonia. We were everywhere received with the utmost friendliness, sometimes to the point of embarrassment and not a single untoward incident marred our journey.

3. Only a brief stay was made at Serres, but it was sufficient to impart an impression of considerable poverty, malnutrition and insufficient clothing in what should normally be a prosperous town. Most shops wore shut, and the few that were open were but poorly stocked with articles or very inferior quality. British troops had not yet occupied the town, but security was reported to be good.

4. More time was spent in Drama on both the outward and return journeys. It gave signs of much greater animation and economic conditions seemed definitely better. A company of the Gurka Rifles had arrived there the previous day (March 7th), and I was able to obtain the impressions of the Officer commanding, Captain Aurick, who had already formed severa1 local contacts. He had not found the ELAS officer in charge of the guard company by any means as co-operative as he could have wished. He held, it appeared, the mistaken view that he was responsible for disarming the Nationalist Bands, and likewise that he could continue to carry out his functions in his own way until the National Guard arrived to relive him. He was also maintaining a force of some 200 armed guards instead of the one hundred laid down in the Agreement of Varkiza. Captain Aurick considered that ELAS should confine itself to policing the town, and that for this purposes one hundred was entirely adequate. I therefore interviewed the ELAS officer to give him a more realistic view of his own position, stressing the point that Captain Aurick was the local representative of the Commander-in-Chief, and that he must take orders from him. I also told him that he had nothing whatsoever to do with the disarmament of the Nationalist Bands; that was a matter for the Greek Government and their local representatives, in this case the British troops. No difficulty was being made, however, as to the handing over of the arms surrendered by ELAS, which was due to take place the next day and has since been done.

5. With regard to the disarming of the Nationalist Bands of Anton Tsaous, I found a certain amount of confusion. Two days previously the Officer Commanding H.M.S. "Kimberley" at Kavalla had visited the headquarters of these bands, accompanied by the ELAS officer who had previously commanded the 6th ELAS division at Kavalla, and had told the bands that they must be prepared to surrender their arms the following Sunday, although he had wished in the first place to collect them forthwith. This had caused some perturbation to the Nationalist Bands, who saw themselves disarmed while ELAS still had 200 armed men at their disposal, plus demobilized men who had retained their arms and could be mustered against the Nationalists. Apparently, Captain Aurick dealt with this situation by agreeing that the Nationalists should retain 25% of their arms until ELAS disarmament was completed. Subsequently another British officer, acting independently and on his own initiative, also took a hand in the disarmament of the same Nationalist Bands, but when I left the position was that some measure of co-ordination bad been achieved and the handing over of 75% of the Nationalists’ arms was to take place on the 13th instant. It has in addition since been agreed that, pending the arrival of the National Guards, Nationalists my carry arms north of a given line as a protection against Bulgarian bands.

6. Prior to my leaving Salonica I had sent Anton Tsaous himself and he had raised the question of his return to Drama. I suggested to him that he should remain where he was until such time as Government officials and the National Guard had taken over Drama. This line is clearly advisable, as Anton Tsaous could only return at present under British military protection, which would in itself create a definite impression that we are lending him support. It is in any case, I think, too much to hope for that there will not be further clashes between Nationa1ists and Communists in the Drama area, were the Nationalists are particularly strong in the country districts and have many reasons for taking revenge on their pollitica1 opponents. For this reason I consider Drama the most sensitive spot of all the places visited, and particular attention should be given to it by the Greek authorities. There can be no doubt that complaints of the conduct of both sides are current here to a greater extent than elsewhere. The Nationalists complain that the EP guard are beating up their sympathizers, cutting off their electric light and carrying on propaganda against the Government. EAM/KKE elements, on the other hand, are complaining of attacks made on their members by Nationalists. It was impossible in the short time at my disposal to investigate in any detail the va1idity or these charges, although in the Municipal hospital I found a follower of Anton Tsaous who had been taken prisoner in a recent clash and almost lynched by the mob when he was brought into Drama. Seated by his bed was an ELAS soldier who had been wounded in the same engagement, together with a number of the EP who had been put as guard over the Nationalist. They had buried their quarrels and were perfectly happy together. When I asked the EP guard why he was in charge of a prisoner who had automatically been released under the recent agreement, he pointed to his cap where, in addition to the EP badge, he was disporting the flags of all the Allies and expressed a readiness to serve whatever authority was now the proper one.

7. Stopping again at Drama on the return journey on March 11th, I attempted to see the Nomark and Demark, but it was Sunday and they could not be found; nevertheless, I had a long conversation with the Demark’s assistant, principally about the economic requirements of the town. Each inhabitant was receiving a daily bread ration of 400 grams, the price per ration being 7.5 levas, which is equivalent, at the rate of 6 levas to 1 drachma, to1.25 drachma or 0.5d. Grain, he said, was in very short supply and would only last a short time. When the Bulgarians evacuated, the authorities had managed to retain a quantity or 2,200,000 okes, but some five or six hundred tons of this quantity had had to be distributed for seed to peasants in the mountains and to others whose farms had been burned down. The Assistant Mayor also complained of a shortage of fats, olive oil and sugar, adding that the population as a whole was suffering severely from malnutrition as a result of the Bulgarian occupation when the bread ration had been only half of what it is now and of lower quality. Scabies was said to be rampant among the children due to lack of sugar. My informant considered that the Agreement of Varkiza had been generally welcomed, that the security position in the town was good, but that Anton Tsaous' followers were responsible for disorders outside. I asked him whether he had heard of any complaints about the conduct of the Indian troops in Drama (having heard from Captain Aurick that the communists were beginning a propaganda campaign against them) but he declared that nothing of the sort had came to his hearing. I should add that the report of communist propaganda against the Indian troops is correct, Drama is the only place whore this has occurred. In Western Macedonia the communist policy is to welcome the British and Indian troops, whist turning a comparatively cold shoulder to the National Guard. Subsequent reports received from the military authorities indicate the situation at Drama is developing f'avourably. British troops are increasingly warmly welcomed and the unco-operative ELAS officer in charge of the EP Company has vanished from the scene.

8. Kavalla presented a scene of unwonted activity. The advance party of the 7th Indian Brigade had arrived the previous day to arrange accommodation for the Brigade Headquarters and Battalion that are to follow. On the day of our advent officials M.L. and UNDRA had arrived. The following day, March 9th, H.M.S. “Sirius” and the Greek destroyer “Ierax” entered the port, where H.M.S. "Kimberley" was already moored. The next afternoon an M.L. convoy of 50 trucks arrived, followed on the 11th instant by a food ship, an oil fuel ship and the Governor Genera1 of Eastern Macedonia. It had been intended that the National Guard should arrive on March 13th, but their movement has been subjected to some delay, and the Governor General, rather unwisely, has decided he cannot take over until he has their support. The population of Kavalla showed every sign of friendliness and satisfaction at the turn of events. As elsewhere, they are obviously anxious to resume their ordinary life, and the small minority who still retain a taste for turbulent politics are at present quiet. EAM/KKE have undoubtedly suffered a more than partial eclipse in this communist stronghold, helped by general dissatisfaction at their administration and the accompanying corruption and unfair discrimination. The communist organization, however, is here as elsewhere by no means broken, and will certainly make its presence felt as soon as events present a favourable opportunity.

9. On the morning of March 9th the American Consul-General and I attended a conference between representatives of M.L., UNRRA and the local authorities, represented by the Nomark and Demark. The purpose of the conference was to arrange for the resumption of the distribution of M.L. supplies. The Nomark and the Demark fell in with all suggestions made to them, promised their full support in every direction and self-sacrificingly stressed the point that the country districts were in worse need of help than Kavalla itself. In the course of the conference they mentioned that a delegation had been sent the previous day to Salonica to request the early arrival of Government officials and National Guards to take over the administration of the town. They contended that grain was in very short supply and would suffice the population for a few days only. Up to the present the peasants had been induced to make contributions for feeding the town, but now with the arrival of' M.L. and new authorities they would no longer feel under the same obligation. They stressed, too, the need for clothing, a need which was obvious to the most casual observer.

10. To introduce a little reality into the a1most unnatural friendliness of the proceedings, I enquired as to the whereabouts of three previous employees of M.L. who were known to have been arrested by the ELAS police in December last. The Nomark confessed that two of them had been shot while trying to escape, adding that if we had not intervened in Greek affairs such things would never have been necessary. He was obviously very worried about asking about the third man, Constantine Vardakis, an interpreter who had been arrested in the M.L. office itself, and showed great agitation. After considerable hedging the Demark gave the game away by whispering to him audibly that Vardakas had been shot. I understood that these three persons were members of a group of eleven persons known to have been killed by the EP in December last. I explained to the Monark that there was no comparison between conditions in Kavalla and Athens, and that the shooting of these persons would doubtless be investigated by the Creek judicial authorities, as it might well disclose a common law offence.

11. A visit was then paid to the offices of the Administrative Committee for Eastern Macedonia and Thrace to explain, if need be, the altered circumstances of their existence, but the head of the Committee, Grimbas, had already realized the position for himself. He was prepared to hand over his office immediately to M.L., which had previously occupied them as its headquarters, and produced a declaration which he had already prepared, informing the population that the Committee were handing over their functions to the Governor General and thanking the people for their support. Grimbas also made no difficulty about leaving the house of the manager of the Commercial Tobacco Company, which he and his colleagues had occupied as residential quarter. He gave the impression of a man who was both disappointed and disillusioned, and confessed that previous lack of administrative experience likewise made him little desirous of remaining in office. He took the opportunity, nevertheless, of complaining that the National Guard had searched the house in Salonica occupied by his wife and child, and subjected them to certain rough usage.

12. At Xanthi we were received by the Nomark and Demark and other officials with bouquets of laurels, gifts of their best cigarettes and an invitation to a civic banquet, which time, however, obliged us to decline. They were all quite reconciled to handing over to the Government authorities, and as in other places complained of the delay that was occurring. Politically, they said, the bulk of the population was republican, and there was a movement on foot to form a United Republican Front in conjunction with EAM, to include both Liberals and Progressives. The officer in charge of the EP/ELAS Guard informed us that security in the town was good, but that there had been some cattle stealing in the country districts owing to the absence of any police, and small bands of demobilized Nationalists (others called them demobilized Elastites) had been terrorizing certain villages. He said he was having difficulty in keeping his guard together; they were all anxious to go home without further delay. The food situation in Xanthi appeared from all accounts to be bad, particularly in the mountain districts which were appealing to the town for help. The bread ration was 400 grammes per day, 60% barley. I enquired as to the number of prisoners held, and was told that there were at present 42 in the local gaol, 20 of them on charges of collaboration, amongst whom were some Bulgars and two Bulgarians of Greek nationa1ity. It was said that all hostages had been released after a few days' detention. The police officer asked for my advice regarding two demobilized Bulgarian soldiers whom he had arrested a few days before. They had been found wandering about the countryside, and were in danger of being lynched by the local population. I advised him to hand them over for disposal to the first troops that arrived, considering them prisoners of war.

13. Of all the places, Komotini made the happiest impression. The local officials seemed on excellent terms with the Liberals, a delegation of whom called on us in the Nomark's office. The Nomark confessed to being a member of KKE, but c1aimed that out of eighteen members of the Prefect’s council only two belonged to this party, the remainder being Republican. He also talked about the formation of what he called a "Liberal Republican Party", to include EAM and all Progressive elements. It was proposed, we heard, to hold a protest meeting the next day, to complain of the delay in sending Government officials and the National Guard, but the Liberals we saw said that they had dissociated themselves from this demonstration. Security in the town, we were told, was excellent, though there was some thieving going an outside. The Nomark stated that there were at present 60 prisoners in the local gaol, including six charged with collaboration with the Bulgars and two or three Bulgarians; the rest were common criminals. He also mentioned that one Bulgarian war criminal had been shot. According to him, ten or twelve persons had been arrested preventatively during the recent troubles, all of whom had now been released. The food situation seemed better than elsewhere, although there was the same acute shortage of imported goods and particularly clothing and footwear. From reports received at Komotini it appeared that the situation in the Alexandroupolis and Demotika areas is very similar. Complaints were also made to us of the hardships caused by the inability to trade with Turkey and Bulgaria. Local efforts to renew commercial relations had failed as the present officials were not recognized by those Governments, nor could the question of payment be solved.

14. Throughout the journey one everywhere felt that EAM/KKE is in varying degrees very much on the defensive. It is anxious to prove itself respectable, moderate and patriotic, loyal to the agreement of Varkiza and anxious to co-operate to with republican and liberal elements in forming a common front against monarchists and other so-called reactionaries. But the KKE organization remains in the background unimpaired. The turbulent spirit that animates it is but temporarily repressed, and is ready to assert itself again when conditions are favourable. The demobilization of ELAS has been carried out with the greatest willingness. Most arms have been handed in, though there are many stories of hidden dumps and ultimate designs. Between Serres and Drama we saw a group of seven or eight demobilized ELAS soldiers on the road, and stopped to talk to them. It appeared that they had been disbanded some weeks previously and were then merely returning from a carnival celebration at a neighbouring village. They were extremely friendly and full of pacific intentions. It was noticeable though that EAM – appointed officials were very sensitive to any suggestions of collaboration or even relationship with Bulgarians. They were anxious to appear first and foremost as good Greek patriots, even when their previous association with Bulgarian communists had been matter of common knowledge.

15. There are two aspects of the economic situation that deserve special mention. In the first place, an early decision should be made or the question of currency, for east of the Strimon the leva is still the only circulating medium. To refuse to exchange at least limited quantities of leva into drachma at a reasonable rate will involve a great part of the population in considerable hardship, although even a reasonable rate from the point of view of the Greek Government will cause complaints, as all prices in terms of leva are unreal, the leva enjoying a purely fictitious value owing to its scarcity. Whereas in the rest of Greece currency has undergone a considerable devaluation, here the value of the leva has to a great extent been maintained in a closed economy. It would also seem essential that the Bank of Greece should as soon as possible establish branches throughout the area and make arrangements to give advance on a generous scale against merchandise during the transitional period.

16. The second questions relates to a stock of some 8.5 million kilograms of processed tobacco now ready for sale at Kavalla and elsewhere. This tobacco was bought by the Bulgarian Government from producers at unremunerative prices, and will now presumably be considered the property of the Greek State. Nevertheless, if the proceeds of its sale (and the United States is at the present moment a very interested purchaser) are paid into the Greek treasury there will be considerable local discontent, the producers complaining that they are now being robbed by the Greek Government instead of the Bulgarian Government. A reasonable suggestion for solving this problem has been made by the newly appointed Governor General for Thrace, M. Papathanassis. He suggests that part of the proceeds should be paid as compensation to the producers, and that part should be retained to form a fund for the repatriation and resettlement of refugees from Thrace now temporarily living in other parts of Greece. This proposition merits serious consideration, and it is to be hoped that something on these lines can be arranged.

17. Finally it may be said that, in general, all conditions favourable for the resumption of complete authority in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace by the Greek Government. The only question is whether the Greek Government can rise to the occasion. The principle dangers lie, firstly, in delay, secondly, in the quality of officials who are to assume office, and, thirdly, in the attitude and behaviour of the National Guard. Any ill-considered action on the part of the latter body would strengthen the hands of the extremists and seriously perturb the majority of the population who are now only too anxious to see normal life re-established on a peaceful, orderly basis. Here, as elsewhere, law must once more be made supreme and legal firms observed.

Sir Reginald Leeper, K.C.M.G., C.B.E., His Majesty’s Ambassador, Athens.

British Embassy - ATHENS

March 3rd, 1947

Dear James,

The following is an extract from a letter dated 10th February which we have received from our Consul at Corfu:

“Recently I visited the prison of Corfu where six hundred prisoners are incarcerated, having most been sentenced by the special Collaboration Courts before the coming into force of the Emergency Measures Act of June 1945.

The capacity of the prison is one hundred and thirty prisoners and of the present inmates three hundred and thirty-three are communists and eight-five were convicted of normal crime.

By interrogation it was ascertained that while in Salonika Prison, prisoners awaiting transportation to Corfu sent a list of their names to “ORIM” an organization founded in 1903 for the independence of Macedonia, address:- Secretary Nicholaos Papa, Anastasio Rallis (a school teacher) 9 Dean Street, Toronto, Canada, One hundred cheques of twenty dollars each have since been received by various prisoners from this source which were dispatched from Toronto in the name if individuals and not of the organization, although the accompanying letters are all written in the same handwriting.

This organization is alleged to have assisted one hundred and thirty-two families from the village of Vasiliyadis near Kastoria, to immigrate to Canada and pre-war distributed funds via Bulgaria. It is said that the procedure in 1932-1933 was for Macedonians in Greece to immigrate to Canada via Istanbul and Sofia whence they continued their journey provided with Bulgarian passports.”

We have no evidence here to support or deny this story of the activities of “ORIM”, but we think you may like to know about it and look into it.

We should very much like to know the outcome of any enquiries you may make, meanwhile we also will attempt to find more.

Yours ever, (signed) John Tahourdin.

J. George, Esq.,
Canadian Embassy, Athens

British Embassy Belgrade

April 15, 1947

I was greatly interested to read what Frank Roberts had to say in his letter of the 3rd of February to you about his conversation with Quaroni, and I have now had an opportunity to think about your letter N. 2364/389/38 of the 26th February on the same subject.

2. I must own to a certain diffidence in expressing my views on a question of the kind that after being in this country for comparatively so short a time, and, to adapt a saying of Pascal, I don’t as yet know enough to write you a short letter, and I must ask you to bear with a long one.

3. In the first place, Yugoslavia to my mind represents an entirely different picture from that displayed by any other European country except Russia. Here Communism hiding under the cloak of the National Liberation Movement, has won an outright victory and reigns unchallenged. Before, therefore, attempting to answer Quaroni’s question, it is perhaps worth while taking a brief glance at the past, to see how the present situation in Yugoslavia came about.

4. When, in 1941, Tito began to organize the armed rising, which took place in June of that year, although in all probability he was acting in complete independence of Moscow, yet he must have been confident of eventual Russian support since he had been trained in Moscow where he seems to have been regarded as an excellent organizer and an able and far sighted man. Little was known of him in his own country, except by his fellow communists, nor had he made - for himself a reputation as a military leader, for, contrary to popular belief, he was never in Spain at the time of the Civil war, during which he sat at Besancon organizing a depot for recruits and supplies. But when his hour struck he quickly proved himself to be a commander of genius, with a remarkable power of injecting enthusiasm and a sense of unity into all manner of diverse elements, and welding them into a Movement of National Liberation. Not the least of his achievements was the programme which resulted from the Jajce Congress of November 1943. It was not a communist programme, the emphasis being entirely upon the new and national Yugoslavia. One of its avowed aims was to put an end to the persecution and internecine strife that had always been an element of disruption in the country between the two great wars. It had, that is to say, a strong element of reputable nationalism. This was the alternative he offered to his countrymen who, if they wished to play their part in ridding their country of the invader, had either to throw in their lot with him or to join Mihailovic, whose aim was to restore the monarchy, and with it the old dominance of Serbia in the tripartite kingdom.

5. The result was that there rallied to Tito's side many who were fired by the ideal of a united Yugoslavia in which internal strife would cease and all efforts would be bent to increasing the country's prosperity and position in the world. The majority of these did not, and I believe do not care a fig for theoretical communism. Many, indeed, must dislike it, and this, I think, applies in large measure to the, Army where, however, the officers owe their social position to Tito, without whom they would revert to being errand boys and boot blacks. But they also put up with it because they are imbued with the Slav ideal; their thoughts are bent on their country, its expansion end its hegemony in the Balkans, and they believe that this regime has a better chance of achieving these aims than any other. In short, it was not least by his ability to project the one idea which could attract and hold these differing elements that Tito was able to make himself Prime Minister or the first united Yugoslavia in 1945. The rest is soon told. The young communists who had been in and out of prison with him before the war and who had shared with him the perils and difficulties of his campaigns were quickly moved into key positions, and the regime was started on its way. Here it is, and here it looks like staying. Tito's own power has waned while that or his associates has waxed, but his position in the country, end still more with the Army, remains undiminished and continues to be built up.

6. The reason is easy to see. This is a minority government, and it is well aware of the fact. It enjoys complete power, and is determined, come what may, to hold on to it. But to remain in power it is necessary first and foremost to be sure of the Army, in which communists are by no means in the majority. This is where Tito is a godsend to the Government, and it is one of the chief reasons why his prestige must at all costs be maintained. To the Army he is presented not as a communist but as a great military leader by whom his country achieved its freedom. Indeed, in this one respect only Stalin and Russia are pushed into the background. To the army it is nothing but Tito all the time. The marching songs sung by the Yugoslav soldiers as they go about their business have for their sole theme the exploits of the Marshal, his tribulations, his battles and his victories. The nationalist ideas in the Jajce programme are kept constantly before them, and their gaze is directed as much externally to the territorial expansion of Yugoslavia as it is internally to the liquidation of Yugoslav political opponents of the present regime. No effort is, or course, being spared to indoctrinate the rising generation with the communist creed, but some years must pass before there is on Army which can be counted on for certain to be politically reliable. Until this happens Tito as a leader is indispensable and the nationalist sentiments of the army are given full rein and even encouraged in every way. It is worth recording that the Russians have themselves encouraged such sentiments. Marshal Tolbukin stayed a minimum of time in this country and, as far as we can judge, with an eye to the morale of the Yugoslav Army made every effort to withdraw his troops as quickly as possible. The Russians at that time went so far as to put it about that some victories which they themselves gained had been the work of the Partisans. They would obviously go to particular lengths in this direction in the early days when they were anxious to build up the regime. Their policy does not however seem radically to have changed in the intervening period. The Russian military instructors here are kept fairly discreetly in the background and the Yugoslav army certainly could not complain that it does not receive sufficient encouragement and praise from Russian sources.

7. This then is the historical background against which we have to judge the political thought and tendencies of the present government. The relevant points are, I think

(i) The regime built itself without Russian assistance. It would be too much to say that the Russians allowed Tito and his colleagues wide latitude; in their curious ignorance of Balkan affairs during the war they scarcely seemed to have noticed Tito until a fairly, late date. On the, other hand he was himself sufficiently confident of eventual support to take very far reaching decisions on his own authority.

(ii) The regime's strongest appeal in its early days rested upon nationalist sentiment in various forms. Among the population as a whole nationalism is a confused and often parochial feeling. The Slovenes irrespective of party feel very deeply about Trieste. The Macedonians don't, but feel intensely about Salonika. Both of them loathe the Montenegrins. But Yugoslav nationalism, as opposed to regional nationalism, remains a, very potent force in the Communist Party and in the Army upon which the Party depends for its hold on the county.

8. So much for history and now for the present. No one here would think of denying that the present rulers of Yugoslavia are all convinced and many of them fanatical communists. It may seem a platitude to add that they must therefore believe in communism, but I think we sometimes forget the implications of this obvious conclusion. To Tito and his colleagues communism is not simply an intellectual theory and it has not been watered down as it must have been, for example, among many French and Italian communists by other intellectual influences. I suspect in fact that Yugoslav communism keeps at the moment far more closely to the classical principles of Leninism than does the brand of communism now favoured in the Kremlin. Yugoslav communists have a much more recent experience of persecution for their faith than have the Russians. They seem to me to believe in communism as the answer not only to internal economic- problems but also, according to the old Marxist theory, as the answer to all problems of foreign affairs. They believe that whenever another neighbouring country becomes communist it will cease, to harbour imperialist designs against Yugoslav territory; it will run its own internal affairs more efficiently; it will produce more exports for other countries including Yugoslavia; it will raise its own standard of living and will be a better potential market for the goods; which Yugoslavia can now export and for the larger quantity, which she hopes to be able to export after completion of the 5-year plan; finally, being communist it will be more sympathetic and accommodating to Yugoslavia's needs, and relations with it, being conducted by two communist governments, will be immeasurably easier. In short, we must assume that the Yugoslav communists believe that whenever another country becomes communist this process represents a direct and immediate benefit to Yugoslavia.

9. At the same time we are all agreed that the Yugoslav Government is intensely nationalist. It is not merely that they depend for their support upon that strongly nationalist organization, the army. Their own nationalism is perfectly genuine. The first symptom is intense pride in what their country has done during the war and confidence in their plans for the future. The relevant aspect of their nationalism is, however, that they desire:

(a) maximum prosperity at home in the form of a secure agricultural basis to the country's economy and the fulfillment of far-reaching plans far industrialization.

(b) international prestige;

(c) territorial expansion;

10. As I have indicated above the Yugoslav communists must believe that maximum prosperity at home is attainable only when communism has embraced as many countries as possible, when all countries are making the best use of their productive facilities and when having shed the gross prejudices which some Governments still seem to harbour, all countries are ready to trade with Yugoslavia upon the sort of terms which suit the Yugoslav Government's taste.

11. The Yugoslav communists must have just as much reason to believe that their international prestige is also to be attained in the same way. Here indeed I think they are perfectly right. This prestige exists at the moment only among communist parties and fellow travelers and in countries which are governed by communists. The press they get in Italy and Greece is as bad as the press they get in Albania and Bulgaria is good. We all know how long this state of affairs would last if Italy and Greece fell under a communist government. In short, the more communism there is in the world the more prestige for communist Yugoslavia. This must be qualified to the extent that if a major European country became communist Yugoslavia would obviously lose the position which she now seems to hold as the second most influential communist country. But you will find my answer to this qualification in paragraph l5 below.

12. When we turn to Yugoslavia's territorial ambitions it is harder to determine whether there is a conflict between the claims of communism and nationalism. I do not, however, believe that there is such a conflict. Of the 4 major Yugoslav territorial claims, three are now being prosecuted against non-communist governments and one against a communist government. There has been much speculation whether the prosecution of territorial claims against Italy, Austria and Greece is in the interests of world communism. It is obvious that such claims strengthen the anti-communist feeling in these three countries. It may be that the body which has, replaced the Comintern took account of this, but whether or not it did, one thing seems to me comparatively clear. Yugoslavia's three territorial claims against non-communist Governments ore not going to be disappointed because the Comintern's successor has decided that it' is better tactics to help the Italian, Greek and Austrian Communist Parties. They are going to be disappointed because the, non-communist forces in the world look like being strong enough, at any rate at the moment, to prevent their realization. We here have sometimes thought that the Russians might take pains to avoid embarrassing the Italian Communist Party over the Trieste question. They do not appear to have done so. On the contrary they pressed Yugoslav claims to Trieste, firmly and stubbornly and appear to have relinquished their pressure only when they were certain that it had failed. They and communist parties in other countries are supporting Yugoslavia's Austrian claims with a similar, disregard for the repercussions which such claims may have upon the success of communism in Austria. Finally, although Russian intentions in Macedonia are obscure they have, to say the least, not discouraged Yugoslav and Bulgarian claims on Greece which must be a great embarrassment to the Greek communist party. In fact, they seem so far definitely to have decided to back the really safe horse of a communist Yugoslav Government and not to trust themselves to the uncertainties, of public opinion in Greece, Austria and Italy where, in the absence of communist Governments, public opinion is still an important factor.

13. We do not, of course, know how Yugoslavia’s territoria1 claims would fare if Greece, Austria and Italy became communist. It might be that once they secured power the Communalist Governments of those countries would become just as nationalist as the Yugoslav Government and would be unwilling to make any territorial cession. But one thing is quite clear. So long as the Governments in these three countries are not communist and provided that they receive sufficient support from non-communist forces in the West there is no chance whatever of their ceding territory. If we exclude the possibility of a complete economic collapse of the non-communist forces of Europe it is therefore clear that only through the spread of communism and the emergence of further communist Governments will there arise any prospect at all of the satisfaction of Yugoslav territorial claims. Their chance of securing territory from communist Greek, Austrian or Italian governments may be less than they suppose, but at least cannot be as small as their chance of securing such territory under the present dispensation.

14. I think this argument is supported by the manner in which Yugoslav claims have been prosecuted against Bulgaria. These claims have, I think, provoked some press reaction in Sofia but not, as far as I know, the governmental reaction to which all other Yugoslav claims have given rise. I world not base an argument too strongly upon any aspect of the Macedonian question because as I have said, I find Russian intentions in this regard very obscure. But it seems at least possible that the communist Bulgarian Government are ready or have been compelled to promise territory to the communist Yugoslav Government.

15. To sum up it seems to me that the Yugoslav Government believe and have good reason for believing that their national interests as defined in paragraph 9 above are inseparable from the spread of communism over the world. I should be surprised if they made any great distinction between the expansion of communism and the expansion of Russian influence and domination. They believe I think, that if the whole of Europe embraced communism they would find themselves as a senior partner of the Balkan Federation (whether or not the technical procedure of Federation was carried out). This, I think, the answer to the qualification which I made at the end of paragraph 11 above. Yugoslavia would obviously have to cede the second place in the communist hierarchy to, e. g. a communist France, but I think the Yugoslav Government much too hard-headed to nurse unlimited ambitions. As the head of a Balkan Federation in a communist Europe they could enjoy, or at any rate would expect to enjoy, considerably more prestige and influence than their country has possessed for centuries, and they would not, I am sure, hope for more than this. They may from time to time have to put the brake on nationalist exuberance among their supporters. For example, the shooting down of the American aircraft last September, appeared to me to be an outburst of such exuberance on the part of the army which caused considerable embarrassment to the Government. But I believe that the Government are ready to wait a long time for the realization of their hopes. So long, therefore, as communism is an expanding force, and so long as they are not disillusioned in the belief that it is a valid economic theory I do not believe that serious conflict is likely to arise between the claims of international communism and of Yugoslav communist nationalism. I have certainly no person to believe that such a conflict has yet arisen.

16. I believe that a fundamental change of circumstances is required to create conditions in which such a conflict might arise. The best example I can think of is the possibility of a serious failure of the present Soviet 5-year plan, which would, I presume first put the strongest brake upon the present Russian policy of dynamic expansion, and secondly give Russia serious reason to consider plundering all the satellites for her own benefit. Such conditions might well cause both some measure of disillusion among Yugoslav communists, and a direct and serious conflict of interest between Yugoslav nationalism and international communism, of which the latter's first object being presumably to render assistance to Russia. This is, of course, a matter of speculation and I cannot say whether even in such circumstances Belgrade would attempt to refuse any demand which Moscow seriously pressed. I can, in fact, only give you a few general ideas which I think govern every-day relations. The first is that the Yugoslav Government seem to enjoy as much confidence as the Soviet Government are ever likely to give to any organization outside Russia. As I have said above, Tito assumed authority during the war for far- reaching decisions in the confidence that they would later be approved. The Yugoslav Government are still, I believe, trusted by Moscow to take the right course in most fields of administration without too much instruction or advice. At the same time, if and when instructions are received they have some, and probably fairly wide powers of “arguing back”. Their relation to Moscow is indeed probably very similar to that of a senior colonial governor. They are trusted and known to be working in the same direction. They can represent, very strongly at times, that local conditions made certain courses of action desirable and they know that such representations will be considered. In the last resort they will carry out instructions. Secondly, we should remember that Yugoslavia is now very useful to Russia as a source of imports, as a spearhead of the attack in international organizations and as a show piece of communism outside Russia. So far as the Russians consider unselfishly the needs of any Government it must be the Yugoslav Government.

17. These two rules may govern every day relations but would probably break down in the event of a serious clash of interests. But there as a third rule which would, however, obtain even during such a conflict. This is that the Yugoslav Government must depend to a very large extent upon Russian support for its internal position. At the moment there is no need for aggressive Russian support to keep the country held down, but one of the most potent factors which has prevented active opposition is the wide-spread belief that even if the Army could be penetrated or neutralized the Russians would still return and re-impose Tito by force of arms. If the regime were ever to lose Russian support the possibilities of a revolution would be very greatly increased, a fact which the regime could certainly not afford to ignore.

18. After Saying all this I need hardly add that at present I see no chance whatsoever of useful encouragement to national as opposed to international communists. I shall of course bear the matter in mind and let you know If I see any reason to change the conclusions I have now reached.

19. I am sending copies of this letter to Frank Roberts, Ashley Clark, Ward and Nichols.

C.F.A. Warner, Esq., CMG, Foreign Office, London, S.W.l.

Canadian Embassy

Athens, March 5th, 1947

No. 126

Sir,

I have the honour to enclose here with a copy of a letter of 3rd March from the First Secretary of the United Kingdom Embassy to Mr. George passing on for our information a report received from the United Kingdom Consul at Corfu in which he refers to the activities of an organization known as “ORIM” which was founded in 1903 for the independence of Macedonia and has its headquarters at 9 Dean Street, Toronto. This organization has apparently been sending money to prisoners of Bulgarian sympathies who collaborated either with Bulgarians or the Germans during the occupation.

2. Although the United Kingdom Embassy has no further information on the activities of “ORIM”, I think you may be interested in the report and may wish to make enquiries as to the present activities of this organization which is presumably sending money to other persons interested in the movement for an independent Macedonia with Slav and Communist affiliations.

I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, (can’t tell signature)

The Right Honourable, The Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa, Canada.

Canadian Embassy

Athens, April 3rd, 1947

No. 175

Sir,

I have the honour to transmit for your information, further to my dispatches Nos. 147 of 12th March and 126 of 5th March, a Gendarmerie (Special Security) report from Jannina, Epirus, dated 28th February regarding “anti national activities of a Slav organization in Canada” which contains further details of the ORIM activities.

2. I received the report from United Kingdom Consul at Corfu through the United Kingdom Embassy at Athens. The Consul, Mr. Kinsella, reports that the parcels referred to in the report were two Red Cross food parcels sent through the Consulate by the Embassy to Kyriakos Kotoris, a prisoner serving a life sentence in Corfu jail on a charge of collaboration with the Bulgarians during the occupation. At the request of Mr. Kotoris’ relatives in Canada I made enquiries through Mr. Kinsella and, on his strong recommendation, I sent two parcels for him. Mr. Kinsella had reported that conditions in the jail were appalling and that the inmates were in urgent need of food and clothing. In view of Kotoris’ Canadian connection and on humanitarian grounds regardless of politics, I made the gesture of sending him two food parcels as evidence that Canada recognizes misery wherever it exists. The parcels were sent to Mr. Kinsella who handed them to the director of the prison in the presence of Kotoris on 21st November, 1946.

3. I am not much impressed by this latest example of the seditious activities of “ORIM” which the over zealous Commander of the Gendarmerie in Jannina might easily have traced to the Canadian Embassy. Nevertheless it might well be true that ORIM’s organization in Canada is worth investigating.

I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient servant, (can’t tell signature)

The Right Honourable, The Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa, Canada.

Canadian Postal Censorship
Ottawa Ontario
C. 33
March 24, 1941

“Narodna Volya”
(People’s will)
5856 Chene Street,
Detroit, Michigan.
U.S.A.

February 21, 1941
Bulgarian

The lease-lend bill is pure Fascism, reads the leading article

The standard Oil is supplying both opponents in the European conflict: England directly, Germany and Italy by way of Spain. England having appropriated the merchant marine of all the countries overrun by Hitler has a higher tonnage at the present time than ever before. It is quite inaccurate to say that England needs ships as, with the 10,000,000 tons of so called “Allied Shipping”, she now commends 45% of the world’s aggregate merchant fleets. The lease-land bill is leading the U.S.A. into war. The working class wants neither war nor Fascism and must, therefore, oppose the measures which will drag us into both with all means at her disposal.

Before the Explosion in the Balkans

The eyes of the world are on the Balkan Peninsula which may soon become a theater of war. English maneuvers have caused disturbances in Rumania. Italian reverses on all fronts have compelled Hitler to come to the rescue and threaten Greece with invasion unless the latter signs a separate peace with Hitler. Mussolini has held frantic consultations with Franco and the head of the French Fascist Republic, Petain. But Franco has pleaded Spanish exhaustion, and the opposition to the various bourgeois factions in France is strong enough to compel Petain to the utmost caution. So that passage of Nazi and Italian troops over French and Spanish territories to North Africa is for the time being at 1east not likely. The United States hold the key to the situation and here opinion is divided. The mass of the people want peace and preservation of the rights of the workers, but reactionary leaders and Wall Street are all out for war. They have given the President dictatorial powers and they are pushing the lease-lend bill through. This bill means war - war in the Balkans, war for America.

Yugoslavia and Bulgaria Threatened with War

England is trying to engage part of the German forces in the Balkans in order to relieve the pressure on the British Isles. She has severed diplomatic relations with Rumania and is waiting to do the same with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. She can then bomb Rumanian oil fields and Bulgarian towns. Hitler, it is said, has promised Salonika to Yugoslavia; Agach and Kavala to Bulgaria, if they let his troops through to Greece. There are 600,000 soldiers in Thrace. The Balkans are once again facing the horrors of destruction.

The Bulgarian Government has Betrayed the People

The Bulgarian Government has conspired with the German Nazis against the Bulgarian people. The Filoff Government and Tsar Boris are embarking upon the same course as the Rumanian traitors who provoked anti-Semitic pogroms in order to hide national opposition to Fascism and German occupation.

In order to justify this flagrant act of treason, Filoff gives the excuse that Bulgaria has been told by Moscow she must not count on help from the U.S.S.R. -Local Bulgarian papers in America, namely, the NARODEN GLAS, have repeated this lie.

The Bulgarian Government never intended to oppose German invasion and never took any measures to prevent it. Tsar Boris and Premier Filoff are Hitler’s best Fifth Columnists in Bulgaria -they have bargained away the life and the independence of the people. How could Soviet Russia help to save a country from Hitler, when the leaders of that country have already sold it to Hitler! The U. S. S. R. would be falling right into the famous Munich trap laid by British Imperialists at the time and still waiting to be sprung: a war with Hitler.

The Bulgarian people know that the U.S.S.R. is their friend but the Bulgarian bourgeoisie is afraid of that friendship and prefers to conspire with imperialists, be they German or British, against the best interests of the country. The Bulgarian ruling classes are betraying the Fatherland because they fear the Bulgarian people. The Bulgarian Government never asked for Russian help -they avoided it. Tsar Boris sold the country to Hitler for 30 pieces of silver just as Tsar Ferdinand sold it to the Kaiser, in his day, against the wishes and better judgment of the nation. The Bulgarian people are keeping count of these treasons and the day is not far oft when the traitors will be brought before a people's Court. When that day comes, the Hitlers, the Churchills and the Roosevelts will not be able to save themselves either. The people will win in the end, after the imperialist forces and their puppets at the helm of the Balkan States have plunged the Balkan fields and dales into a murderous war -the day of reckoning will come. The Balkan workers and peasants will suffer and die, but enough of them will survive to put an end to imperialism forever.

Central Intelligence Group

Washington D.C.
June i3, i947
Country: Greece/Canada
Subject: Letters from Macedonian Autonomists in Canada
Date of Info: 3 April i947
Evaluation: F-6

1. The letters in paragraphs 2 and 3 below were written by George Grouios (or Grouev), a resident of Canada. He went to Canada from his native village, Alonia, near Florina, in Northwestern Greece. He is Secretary General of the Slavo-Macedonian Organization in Canada, which is seeking the federation of Greek Macedonia with Yugoslavia. An important point brought out in one letter is the fact that during the spring of 1947 a considerable number of Slavo-Macedonians are preparing to go from Canada to fight as Comitaji (mountain bandits) against Greece.

2. The following letter is written to Nikolaos Tsetos, a resident of Alonia:

“Dear Cousin Nikolaos,

Many greetings from me, your cousin George Grouios. Also give my greetings to Vasiliki and to all the rest. I am well so far. I am going to America (i .e., U.S.A. ) , and I decided to take this opportunity to write you a few words. I am indeed very well, but I am distressed because I hear much that is not good news. They are now writing news even worse than before, namely that there are many Comitaji. In the spring, Nikolaos, the situation will be far worse. They are preparing to go there from America and from Canada by the thousands to fight as Comitaji against your mangey-bald old nanny-goat (meaning Greece), and until we get what belongs to us you will not have liberty there. Tell my godfather Panos Tantsef: “Be a little better to my boy, or Panos, you will have the same experience as Antonis Standisis” (the President of the village of Alonia who was carried off by the bandits, and his fate is still unknown). Cousin Nikolaos, don't think that the world is asleep. Everything which happens there happens because of our men. Therefore tell my boy to snap out of it, because there will be nobody to protect him. Tell the same thing to Panos Tantsef. I tell you that letters come here from Monastir, and they write us who is harming our people. Give many greetings to all who ask about me… I am expecting much news from you and for you to write me what everybody in the village is doing.

With fraternal greetings Yours cousin, G. Grouios”

3. Elias Lalos, also a resident of Alonia, is the recipient of another letter written by Grouios:

“Dear Elias Lalos,

I received your letter some time ago, but… we learned from the newspapers that the Andartes have taken Antonis Standis, but we do not know how far this is true. I am anxiously awaiting your answer on this point. Liberty will not be slow in coming; everything that the People demand will come about. You there know nothing of what is going on. We know. Thousands of telegrams are sent from here to the Peace Conference demanding that Macedonia remain independent with Salonia as its capital, and this will happen in a short time. Pay attention to my words. This only you need to know: you and the others demand the just rights of our people. You are Macedonians and not Greeks. Demand just this by telegrams from there.

Yours friend, George Grouios”

4. Although the letters are not dated, probably written in February or March 1947.

Extract from the Dispatch from His Majesty’s Consul in Skopje

March 27, 1949

……..The Yugoslav communist Party's entire Macedonian policy is based on the assumption that they can carry in the teeth of fierce opposition from most Bulgars and some Serbs their thesis of a distinct Macedonian language and national tradition. The Party is therefore particularly committed to support advanced research in the little explored subjects of Macedonian national history and philology. Such studies have, of course, had little chance until recently of getting very far, owing to ferocious opposition from Greeks, Bulgars or Serbs, and as a result there are really no trained specialists in this field. The discovery that at Skopje University very few students are showing any interest in Slavonic Philology or the Macedonian language, and that during the recent end-of-term examinations they showed themselves much keener on the Serbian language and Yugoslav literature, is therefore a good deal more significant than might appeal at first sight. One or two other minor incidents that I have observed would appear to suggest that some Macedonians, at least in Skopje, may prefer to read in Serbian, rather than Macedonian, when they get the chance. Add to this the fact that a large number of the students here are showing very little interest in their compulsory Russian studies, or at any rate are scoring deplorably bad marks at Russian in their examinations, and it will be seen that Crvenkovski has a lot to think about in his new post.

The apparent lack of interest among certain sections of the intelligentsia in the "Macedonian National Tradition", so essential to party ideology here, is no doubt also reflected in the “indiscipline” and “passivity” of the Macedonian writers and poets referred to earlier in this dispatch. It is a fact that, to judge from Dimitar Nitrev's speech, various brands of “decadence” (meaning, apparently, a failure to express oneself unequivocally as on the side of the Yugoslav Communist Party or, at the very least, to be interested in individual, rather than in mass emotions, and thus, by implication, "apolitical") is a far commoner offence here, and certainly very much graver, than any inadequacy in form or style.

Some clue to the degree to which the “Macedonian National Tradition” has captured people’s imaginations here may also be afforded by the long series of free public lectures given in Skopje recently by Dimitar Vlahov. At the beginning of the series, when Vlahov was speaking on the early history of the Macedonian Revolutionary Movement, his audiences were quite large -perhaps 500 or more -but a very high proportion of them appeared to be elderly people such as may have had some personal experience of the period he was describing. As the series progressed, however, not even Vlahov's considerable reputation, as the “Grand Old Man” of the Macedonian movement was able to compensate for the impossible dullness of his lectures. When I looked in one minute before he was due to begin the lecture entitled "The successes of the Macedonian People’s Republic" there were precisely three people sitting there, and another half-dozen or so huddled around the stove at the back of the hall -although in fairness it should be said that Vlahov tended to begin his lectures later than the advertised time, and it has been a habit for people to return.

If as these events appear to suggest, the (not very numerous) intellectuals here are not over-impressed by the new Macedonian Idea, what then is their attitude? Some (I should say not very many) are plainly pro-Bulgarian on principle. Most of the students and young people, although probably more interested in their technical studies than in their Macedonian traditions, are, I should say, supporters to a greater or less degree of the present Yugoslav Government in the same way as are most other young Yugoslavs. As Macedonians, they are likely to be far less worried by any submergence of "Western Values" than are their fellow students, say, in Zagreb and Ljubljana. At the same time the Yugoslav Communist Party, by putting an end to the almost colonial policy in Macedonia of successive pre-war Belgrade governments, has at one stroke eliminated the greatest single curse of Vardar Macedonia, and released a good deal of latent energy hitherto suppressed. The Party can also claim, convincingly, that Yugoslavia has done a lot more to liquidate the economic backwardness of Vardar Macedonia in the last three years than Bulgaria is ever likely to do for Pirin. Finally, the Bulgarian Occupation was not a particularly pleasant affair, and the memory of it probably still works as a fairly effective discouragement to pro-Bulgarian sympathies.

On the other hand, there is evidently fairly widespread support for a Macedonian autonomist movement - largely, I should say, among older people, though certainly also in certain sections of the youth. As a spokesman of the Yugoslav security service said at the Macedonian Party Congress what opposition groups there have been have consisted "almost entirely of Mihailovists". It is a commonly held view that the Mihailovists, or IMRO, are really only advocating autonomy as a prelude for incorporation in Bulgaria when the time is ripe. The fact that they seem quite happy to talk the Bulgarian language lends credence to this view, and certainly one of the main tenets of Yugoslav propaganda is that the policies of the Bulgarian Communist Party and of the Mihailovists is virtually indistinguishable. I am inclined to believe, however, that this is an over - simplification, and that there is a body of opinion which seeks a united, independent Macedonia as an ultimate object in itself - quite possibly within some larger federation, perhaps, as is alleged here, under Anglo-American protection, but probably not under the protection of the Kremlin. Evidence in support of this view comes from Lazo Mojsov’s book, mentioned earlier in this dispatch. Mojsov gives, for the first time, more details of the "Skopje intellectuals" who had been mentioned earlier as criticizing the Manifesto put out by the partisan Headquarters for Macedonia at the end of 1943. These, critics, who appear to have been supporters of the Partisans, were apparently professional politicians with no very great regular following, but their views are interesting none the less. They argued that there could be no final settlement of the Macedonian question within Yugoslavia, as the very name of Yugoslavia was for Macedonians a symbol of slavery; that the future of Vardar Macedonia could not be decided without reference to the other two parts of Macedonia as well; that the first aim of the Macedonian Partisans must be clearly stated as being a United Macedonia, and a joint Macedonian military command must therefore be established with a view to placing the Macedonian Question fairly and squarely “in the diplomatic arena”. Other criticisms put forward by these people were that the Partisan Headquarters were “not competent” to issue any “Manifesto” in the name of the Macedonian People; that they, the “intellectual leaders”, should be consulted more frequently and entrusted with diplomatic missions, etc.; that there was no need publicly to criticize Ckatrov and other "fascists", as they were completely discredited anyway; that for General Mijalce (or Mise) Apostolski to sign himself "Mihajlo""smelt of Serbdom" , and so on.

Various extracts from Tito’s letters quoted by Mojsov make it clear that he was worried by autonomist tendencies on the fringes of the Partisan movement in Macedonia. No doubt they were a good deal harder to deal with than plain “Greater Bulgarianism”. It seems clear that Metodi Andonov- Cento, the Macedonian nationalist politician who eventually became President of the Presidium of the Antifascist Council of National Liberation of Macedonia, must have been one of these “autonomists”. He must also have been a figure of some standing in Macedonia, otherwise he would scarcely have been given the appointment. This may also explain why the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has proved so eager to sing Andonov's praises since their hands were freed by the Cominform Resolution. Andonov, of course, tried to escape to Greece with the object of laying, proposals for an independent Macedonia before the Paris Peace Conference, and since that attempt (as on several occasions before the war) he has been inside a Yugoslav gaol.

Lazo Mojsov, of course, argues (or rather states categorically again and again -it cannot be called argument) that these Macedonian autonomists were really “tools of Bulgarian Chauvinism”. If that were so, then it would of course be easier for Mojsov to discredit them in the eyes of the public. But his “arguments” are not convincing, and clearly beg the question. There seems to be no doubt that IMRO, if it plaid its cards carefully, could count on the support of most politically conscious anti-communists among the Macedonian intelligentsia, in addition to the more-or- less fascist following it has always had -in present circumstances there would appear to be no other alternative to communism, whether Titoist or Stalinesque. It is certainly a fact that autonomist bands were active in both Vardar and Aegean Macedonia during the war, and at least in Vardar Macedonia for a considerable time after the war, until they were dispersed by Yugoslav security troops. It is scarcely likely that the ideas for which they stood in 1945 have been so easily disposed of.

But IMRO has often been described with some justice as mainly an affair of the bourgeois intelligentsia, with little mass support. The same is probably true today, and autonomist tendencies are likely to be limited to certain groups of Macedonian intellectuals (not a very numerous body, in any case). The state of opinion among workers and peasants is altogether a different matter. My impression is that the Macedonian workers' main feeling is one of dissatisfaction with living conditions as they are at present -they are certainly very bad -and that they are a good deal more interested in their standard of life than in ideological or national disputes. Town workers here suffer more than those elsewhere as a result of the inevitable, but none the less frightening inefficiency of Management in their People's Republic, which can be observed at its worst in the State commercial network. As a result, housewives here have had to put up with a good deal more in the way of queuing and shortages than elsewhere, and the free market-prices of essential food are painfully higher than they are only a few kilometers away in Serbia (particularly in Kosmet).

"It was better than when the Bulgarians were here” is a typical comment, but it is not a political judgment; in fact, most people know well enough the rations in the Bulgarian People’s Republic are appreciably worst than they are here. “Yes, we suppose things will get better – but WHEN?” probably best expresses the resigned attitude of most town worker.

While housewives struggle to make ends meet, many of their husbands have to work in extremely bad conditions, and workers are constantly leaving their jobs in the (slender) hope of finding something better. This again seems to be very largely due to inefficiency and thoughtlessness, resulting once more, to some extent, from Macedonian inexperience in management and administration. In the once British-owned chrome mines at Radusa, to take one fairly typical example, workers have been standing all day in several inches of water although it is said that gum-boots are in fact available if someone will only do something about it. One thing is certain, and that is that in general (although a few branches do manage to assist their members to some extent, as for instance in getting them extra rations and firewood) the Trade Unions are of almost no help at all in improving working conditions. It is scarcely likely that the scandals revealed in the recent purge of the Trade Union leadership will do much to increase their reputation.

Nevertheless, there are, signs that the living conditions of ordinary workers will improve this year, and I should say that most of them would give their more-or-less willing support to the present authorities unless somebody else can offer them, convincingly, a standard of life dramatically better than the one they suffer at present. It seems very unlikely that advocates of union with Bulgaria could hope to make such an offer. Whether Macedonian autonomists could make their proposals more attractive with an offer of Anglo-American spam and circuses is another matter. I should be inclined to think it extremely doubtful. Probably, apart from other factors, very few of the thousands of Greek Macedonian refugees here are likely to be good propagandists for Anglo-American support.

Opinion among the peasants (the great majority of Macedonians, of course) is a different matter again. As I have reported on an earlier occasion, many (if not most) of the country districts of Vardar Macedonia are so backward that it is difficult to conceive of any but a few individuals having any sort of coherent political opinion at all. But Bulgarian (and perhaps more particularly Albanian) occupation was certainly no pleasant business for the Macedonian peasants, and I should say that by the end of the war the Partisans were regarded genuinely as liberators in many country districts where the peasants neither knew nor cared anything about communism. Macedonia possesses an unusually high proportion of really poor peasants, and many (particularly among the Albanians in the south-west, it appears) were either without land or hopelessly in debt. For these people -a very numerous class -the Agrarian Reform came as a godsend, and subsequent resistance to the idea of Producer Cooperatives was far less than in districts with a higher proportion of richer peasants.

The Macedonian Communist Party, compared with the parties in the rest of Yugoslavia, had comparatively little influence in the towns, where the Bulgarians were naturally able to develop far more effective anti-communist (or at any rate anti-Yugoslav -communist) propaganda than German or Italian occupiers elsewhere. The Macedonian Partisans, therefore, were based almost exclusively on the villages, and it seems clear that the Macedonian Communist Party is well aware of the source of most of its strongest and most effective potential support nowadays. The Party appears to consist of a not very large group of intellectuals who in earlier days might have been Macedonian nationalists, a group (again, I should say, not large) of Macedonian workers who for one reason or another were less influenced by anti-Serb opinion than their fellows, plus the usual admixture of flamboyant “1941 Partisans” and warriors, together with an unusually high proportion of time-servers with rather murky records. The latter, although they do no occupy the highest positions, are obviously the most unstable element in present circumstances. The Party is both young and (except as regards Partisan warfare) very inexperienced. As pressure on it becomes stronger (and the leaders are obviously very nervous about the possible effects of Bulgarian propaganda, especially since it increased in vehemence at the beginning of the year), the Party is trying to consolidate its position in the most promising (and, in Macedonia, the most decisive) sector; namely, in the villages.

In my opinion, the Party is likely to be successful in its policy, given time. There is to be ideological work on a very big scale where pre-conceived political notions are few; the party's wartime record is mostly in its favour; loyal peasants of the more influential kind are to be admitted as members of the Party with little or no regard to the purity of their Marxist-Leninist ideology (if indeed they understand it at all). In this way, the Party will build up a firm basis of influential villagers committed to its support. Many of them will undoubtedly be (already are) opportunists and yes- men, but the policy in general is likely to be effective.

The main weapon in this drive for increased support in the countryside is of course the extension of the Producer Cooperatives. On this issue (as I have suggested earlier in this dispatch) Kolisevski, who, as a worker born and bred, probably takes a less novel view of the social category from which a communist party should draw its main support, appears to have been over-ruled. There is no doubt that Macedonia, compared with the rest of Yugoslavia, offers very favourable conditions for the establishment of Producer Cooperatives with the minimum of peasant opposition. It is, after all, the home of "pecalbarstvo" -the system under which the men of a village unable to support its inhabitants would go abroad to earn their living, and send their savings home. In the case of the mountain village of Galicnik, near Debar (and others too) the entire male population used to go abroad to work as crafts men or yoghurt makers, and returned once a year in July for about a fortnight (or every other year, if they had been to America). The month of July was thus filled with celebrations and weddings, and the newlywed husbands would look forward to seeing their three-months-old children the following July. Such a way of life was extremely picturesque for foreign visitors, but not very satisfactory for the villagers themselves. Now, Galicnik has a very large and flourishing cooperative engaged in stock-breeding and carpet-making. It has libraries, electric light, a cinema. I am told by a man who has just spent a few months there teaching the carpet makers the secret of wool-dyeing that the women and young people are delighted with the new arrangements, although some of the older men who had got used to the idea of going "on pecalba" every year are still inclined to hanker after foreign parts. The case of Galicnik, of course, is so startling that it can scarcely be called typical. I believe, for example, that government loans to this particular cooperative have been unusually large. Nevertheless, it does serve to illustrate the fact that the cooperative idea is likely to become increasingly popular in the very large number of poor, backward and barren villages of Macedonia.

It is therefore clear that if "the population of Bulgaria is to be increased from 7 million to 10 million" (as has apparently been said in Sofia), it will not be as the result of a popular rising in Vardar Macedonia in the foreseeable future. Propagandists here have not much difficulty in disposing of Greater Bulgarian Chauvinism. They can point to the fact that there is not likely to be any autonomy for Macedonians inside Bulgaria -and some sort of autonomy would certainly be demanded even by Macedonians who might not press their claim to a language of their own distinct from Bulgarian. The "Kolisevski clique" can even make a convincing enough counter-claim for the inclusion of Pirin in the Macedonian people's Republic. Neskovic, at the Macedonian party Congress, strongly denied that Yugoslavia had ever claimed Pirin except as part of a general settlement in an eventual South Slav Federation. This seems, if not an actual misstatement, to be at least misleading. Mojsov's book makes it quite clear that at one stage the union of Pirin and Vardar Macedonia within Yugoslavia and without regard to an ultimate South Slav Federation was agreed to in principle by the Bulgarian Communist Party, though without enthusiasm. They are scarcely likely to have agreed to this unless the Yugoslavs had been pressing them very strongly (and unless, one might perhaps add, they had had instructions from Moscow in this sense).

Mojsov and his fellow publicists will have a far harder task, though, to counter proposals for some sort of Macedonian autonomy with no special Yugoslav association. The Bulgarian Party appears, wisely enough, to have given up the attempt to persuade Macedonians that they are really Bulgars, or that they would be happier as citizens of the Bulgarian People's Republic. Nor can they convincingly propose Pirin as a basis for some sort of autonomous Macedonia. But if they are still thinking in terms of an autonomy based on Aegean Macedonia, then they touch the Yugoslav Communist party in general, and Lazo Mojsov in particular, on a very weak spot indeed. Publicists here have surely been thinking of this possibility when driving home the not entirely convincing argument that all Macedonian autonomists without exception are the dupes or agents of Sofia. As I have indicated the autonomists can in no sense be described as the agents of Sofia; whether they will in due course become their dupes will depend on the skill and subtlety of the Bulgarian propaganda machine. Less convincing still is Skopje’s secondary argument that, pending a form of South Slav Federation acceptable to the Yugoslav Communist Party, a united Macedonia not; based on the People's Republic within the framework of Federal Yugoslavia is "unthinkable". At this point Mojsov completely abandons reasoned statement in favour of a mystical wrath and categorical assertion. He claims that those Macedonians (i.e. the Yugoslav Macedonians) who fought for and won their national independence within Yugoslavia have a natural right to lead the way to Macedonian unity, and that since Yugoslavia is in itself a federation of South Slav peoples, the incorporation of the rest of Macedonia in it, along with the Macedonian People's Republic, is an obvious next step. Vardar, says Mojsov, is in any case the natural heart of a united Macedonia, gliding calmly over what I believe to be a fact -namely, the existence of a fairly general feeling in Aegean Macedonia that the people of Vardar are backward and uncouth. Perhaps as a natural reaction on the part of the latter there is, I believe, a slight tendency here (certainly in other parts of Yugoslavia) to regard Aegean Macedonians as slackers.

Mojsov's assertion that Vardar is the natural heart and head of any united Macedonia is not likely to go unchallenged. His language at this stage of his “argument” is cautious and in rather general terms. He probably realizes he is skating on very thin ice which may expose him to the charge of Belgrade Chauvinism. Reading most of the Yugoslav Communist Party's Macedonian propaganda one might be excused for supposing the Macedonians quite entitled, if they so wish, to form a united Macedonia of their own. But this is just what Mojsov will not countenance, and he only just manages not to say in so many words that South Slav Federation is of less importance than the need to keep the Macedonian people's Republic firmly attached to Yugoslavia, and to add the rest of Macedonia to it as soon as the opportunity arises. It is difficult to see what else a Yugoslav publicist could say, given the post- Cominform situation in the Balkans, but this is certainly the weakest part of Mojsov's (and therefore of the Yugoslav Communist party's) case as far as Macedonians are concerned.

In the light of recent developments, it looks as if the first shots in what must surely develop into a high powered Macedonian propaganda campaign were in fact fired by Mito Hadzi Vasilev in his article in "Nova Makedonija" on 24 February (i.e. some days before Mosa Pijade opened up with his big guns on 6 March).Vasilev revealed, rather innocently, in a single brief sentence adduced in support of his charge of Bulgarian hypocrisy, that Mr. Visinsky's reference in Paris to the “Macedonian and Albanian minorities” in Greece had been reported by Tass and Pravda as "Bulgarian and Albanian" minorities. Since when, asked Vasilev curtly, had Tass been a mouthpiece for Bulgarian Chauvinism? - and in the rest of a nine-column article made no further reference to Soviet Policy or to Greece. He charged the Bulgarian Government with encouraging talk in Pirin (he did not say Aegean) Macedonia of a "free Macedonia not in Yugoslavia but in a South Slav Federation", and hinted darkly at the possible significance of the alleged Bulgarian claim that "Bulgaria's population will soon be increased from 7 m. to 10 m." If the Bulgarian leaders did not realize they were making a big mistake and mend their ways, said Vasilev, “invincible Life will teach them a cruel lesson to-day or to-morrow”. I do not know whether this is in fact the article which is said to have been quoted indirectly by The Times on 21 March (I have not yet seen the Times report but if so, then Vasilev certainly got no nearer to anything that could be called a threat of war than this prophecy about "invincible Life".

It may not be irrelevant to conclude this general review of the position in Macedonia by mentioning a conversation I had last December with an officer of the Yugoslav Army Engineers in Djevdjelija. He was a Bosnian, from a remote village in Krajina. I asked him whether there were many Macedonians in his unit on the frontier, and how he liked service in Macedonia. “Macedonians?”, he replied, “of course not – we’re mostly Bosnians and Montenegrins – you can’t expect a Macedonian to be any good at fighting. Wild people too - just savages – take the girls, they just run away when you chaps appear – as for dancing…… Give me Zagreb any day”.

Department of National Health and Welfare
War Charities Division

Ottawa, April 23rd, 1947

Secretary of State For External Affairs, Ottawa

Attention Mr. Scott Reid

Dear Sir:

Your letter of April 11th to my Deputy Minister concerning Macedonian and Bulgarian activities in Toronto has been directed to me for reply.

Following your information received in November, 1946, one Mr. Pepcoff, 24 Sydenham street, Toronto, was informed by registered letter that we were aware of appeals for Macedonian relief were being conducted and that $ 15,000 had been collected for the purchase of supplies. We pointed out that the raising of funds for objects connected with the War could not be carried on without benefit of registration and that if they could not affiliate themselves with the registered organization in Toronto, which contributed to Yugoslav relief, they were to discontinue raising monies forthwith.

As no reply was received, on December 4th a request for an investigation was dispatched to the Commissioner of the R.CM.P. A copy of this letter is enclosed.

I have taken advantage of your letter to write the Commissioner and call his attention to the possible connection between the last named group and the individuals we heard about last Full. I am asking the Commissioner what progress might nave been made with regard to the investigation requested by the Department last December. As soon as word has been received from the constabulary I shall lost no time in getting in touch with you.

Yours sincerely,
Leon Trebert,
Registrar,
War Charities Act.

LT/MH