СТОЈАН ХРИСТОВ: Херои и Асасини

СОДРЖИНА

I.                    Ivan Michailoff

II.                 The Bulgars Bring the Horsetail to the Balkans

III.               Imro

IV.              Comitadjis

V.                 Foutrteen Thousand “Miss Stones”

VI.              The Salonica Dynamiters

VII.            The Macedonian Cry

VIII.         Todor Alexandroff Revives Imro

IX.              The Garvan Golgotha

X.                 A Premier gets the Imro Course

XI.              Between the Red Star and the Black Shirt

XII.            Alliance of Comitadjis and Ustashi

XIII.         Macedonian Salad

XIV.         Twilight of the Comitadjis

Index

…

XI

ПОМЕЃУ ЦРВЕНА ЅВЕЗДА И ЦРНА КОШУЛА

Now Imro seem to be the mote in everybody’s eye. Alexandroff and his comitadjis had to wage a desperate battle for the preservation of their Imro in their hands.

One day swift-footed comitadji couriers hurried over the narrow mountain paths to bring Alexadroff news of the appearance in Macedonia of a strange band of “comitadjis”. They found their leader in a forest near Kratovo and there told him the news. They said that the new tcheta which had been sighted in the revolutionary domain was neither a “Federatist” one, nor a detachment of Stambolisky’s Orange Guard. When the leader questioned them closely, they happened to mention that these new comitadjis had embroidered upon the fronts of their uniforms caps something that looked like a hammer and a sickle.

This was in 1922. Pandursky’s band was the first armed attempt on the part of the Bulgarian Communists to take over the Macedonian revolutionary organization. It was unhappy venture. Alexadroff’s comitadjis made quick work of it, though the voyvoda escaped and placed himself at the disposal of Belgrade to be used in the further conflicts with Imro.

But the affair didn’t end there. That band was the harbinger of the terrible eruptions which in the next few years shook the Imro to its foundations and nearly wrecked it. And that part of the history of Imro which deals with the Communists phase is the most tragic, and from the writer’s angle, the most delicate and illusive, for the truth is obscured by a shroud of lies and personal hatreds.

As early as the beginning of the century, Imro had to cope with a natural “left” element in its rank. This was hard to reconcile with Imro’s foundations which are laid deep in nationalism. Its birth was the result of a people’s irrepressible desire for freedom and self-government. The leaders of the Macedonian revolution held to the precept that before they could transfer their battle to a social-economic plane, they must have rudimentary national rights, the right to speak their own tongue and the right to call themselves by their proper names. And post-war Imro’s more immediate aim was to combat Serbs’ and Greeks’ assimilative policies in their portions of Macedonia. The maintenance of Imro as an independent organization was deemed necessary in order to keep the flame of national consciousness burning in the hearts of the Macedonian Bulgars.

The Communists claimed that fighting the possession of the means of production and for proletarian system of government precluded, or included, the fight for fundamental national liberties. They cited Lenin’s position on the question of national minorities. Why waste so much energy and life in a struggle for political freedom which is no sooner attained than you have to fight all over again to free yourself from the clutches of fascism and capitalism? Why not combine the struggle and fight for both national and social-economic rights? More convincing yet were the arguments that for thirty years, the comitadjis had been fighting on their own national front, and had failed of their goal. It should be plain enough to them that imperialistic Europe would back Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria sooner than it would a band of outlaws and assassins. But once Imro joined the Third International, the Macedonians would have the backing of the Soviet Union and the moral support of the proletariat all over the world.

The Communists pointed out that Imro used terror as a means of provoking European intervention in behalf of Macedonia. Imro had done a great deal of damage, and still no European power raised its voice to defend the Macedonians. The League of Nations, which according to the treaties is supposed to look after their national rights, had thrown their pleas and memoranda into the waste-basket. The Third International and the Soviet Union were ready to take as protégé the Macedonian cause provided the Macedonian revolutionists took order from Moscow and fought, not alone for their special liberation, but for the liberation of the entire Balkan peninsula. In a system of Balkan federated soviet republics Macedonia would be an independent unit. The Third International was in sympathy with all revolutionary movements fighting basic national rights. And to help matters, the Bulgarian Communist Party declared publicly that Pandursky’s band was unauthorized by the party’s Central Committee, and that it was his own independent venture sponsored by the Communist mayor of Dupnitza, a Dr. Petroff, who was subsequently executed by Imro.

Many Macedonians now began to see that it the specific Macedonian revolution were merged with the larger and more embracing social-economic revolution, Imro might serve as the leaven which would bring about the fermentation of the Balkans necessary for the establishment of a system of soviet republics. But the Macedonian ship was then manned by persons ideologically opposed to Communism. Todor Alexandroff, then actual leader, was worshiped by all Bulgarians, from Macedonia and from the kingdom, as a national hero. Alexander Protogeroff, the second member of Imro’s Central Committee, was universally respected general and an idol in Bulgarian military and patriotic circles. And nearly all of the chiefs aides were nationalists and militarists, untouched by the germ of Communism. They all found it hard to reconcile ancient and treasured Imro principles with a fight on an international basis.

Among these principles are those of Internality and of Independence (not the independence of Macedonia, but of Imro). The principle of internality, incorporated in the name of the organization, stipulates that the revolutionary domain is the territory encompassed by the natural boundaries of Macedonia and holds that the Organization should exist, work and thrive on Macedonian soil. The Central Committee of Imro, traditionally referred to as being everywhere and nowhere, should always be on Macedonian soil. The other principle, that of the independence of Imro, is one of the main pillars upon which rests the structure of the organization. For Imro has been a complete state, a secret government, maintaining the courts of justice, an efficiently run postal services (with postage stamps bearing the images of the founders of the society), and many other departments, as in regularly constructed government. At one time, it even considered the advisability of minting its own coins. It therefore has guarded its own integrity and independence with the same fierce jealousy with which it guards its revolutionary domain, forbidding the co-existence in it of any other revolutionary society that is no subject to its authority. Imro therefore felt that it must act within it own boundaries, that it must create unrest on Macedonian soil, so that no power could say that there was peace and quiet in Macedonia; and that the comitadjis outside of it were but trouble-making hirelings of this or that political combination.

All this talk about basic principles may sound like so much theoretical claptrap, but these principles were the life-blood of Imro in 1924, and they would be its life-blood today if it could reinstate them in practice. In 1924 and for ten years afterward, Imro was able to maintain its internality and independence by just one circumstance. I have shown how Imro was in complete possession of the Petrich District. The possession of that bit of Macedonia made it possible for the comitadji society to be internal and independent. It could rightly call itself that because it was on Macedonian soil, in the Petrich District. From this district, it maintained invisible occupation, over the rest of Macedonia. Its activity in Greek and Yugoslav Macedonia rested absolutely on its foothold in Bulgarian Macedonia. The Sofia government that succeeded that of Stambolisky, while nominally governing the district and maintaining a formal anti-Imro policy, in reality left its share of Macedonia to the comitadjis to do with, as they wished. And of this long-neglected, impoverished, bandit-infested region, Imro made an exemplary of administrative division, a tiny Macedonian state, in which only the speech was Bulgarian, everything else Macedonian.

But how long would Imro remain in the Petrich District as a Communist organization. The leaders knew that Communism would mean end of their power there. Imro in Bulgarian Macedonia meant end of Imro. Subsequent developments have shown that.

But still the Communist possibilities were not exhausted. Stambolisky tried to take away the Petrich District. He did not succeeded because Imro made common cause with the Bulgarian army and the opposition parties for the overthrow of the peasant premier. Why could not Imro make common cause with the Bulgarian proletariat for the overthrow of Tsankoff’s fascist cabinet and the establishment of a workers government in Sofia? Than it need have no fear of losing Petrich District and of estranging itself from its own soil.

Well and good! But Imro had the District. The proletarian revolution might not succeed; it might be suppressed as cruelly as one in the preceding fall. And even if it did succeed, how long would a worker’s government last in Sofia with Yugoslavia, Greece, Rumania, all ready at any moment to act as the agents of the imperialist powers. A Soviet Bulgaria would be occupied by any of its neighboring capitalist countries or by all of them simultaneously in twenty-four hours.

And Imro had the District. And that meant a home for Imro, a foothold on Macedonian soil, internality, independence, taxes, power, traditions. It meant everything. It meant Imro.

And yet… There is great looming reality – the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Third International. They cannot be disregarded so easily. The failure of September 1923, Communist uprising in Bulgaria, brought home the truth to Moscow that workers’ revolution in Bulgaria, the most hopeful country in the Balkans, could hardly succeed if the Macedonian revolutionists were against it. So Moscow continued to wave the red flag before the eyes of comitadjis. Through the conversion of Imro it hoped to break down imperialism in Bulgaria, and then, one by one, tear down all capitalist outposts in the peninsula, so that the soviet system might extend from the North Sea to the Adriatic and Aegean in a solid front against Western Europe.

That the Macedonians, ignored and crucified the peace conference, should become so important a factor in the realization of such a large plan, Alexandroff did not dreamed when he took a new lease on hope in 1920. But it was only three years since the moment of despair, and his revitalized Imro was negotiating with Moscow for the sovietization of the peninsula. For the first time in Imro history, the Central Committee transferred its headquarters from native to foreign soil. In the spring of 1924, the three members of Imro’s executive body met in Vienna for a series of conferences with representatives from Moscow. Perhaps all confronting viewpoints can be reconciled. Imro has nothing to lose but the Petrich District, and may gain the whole of Macedonia.

The authorized agent in Vienna for the Macedonian Central Committee was Dimitar Vlahoff.

…

(“HEROES and ASSASSINS” by Stoyan Christowe; New York, ROBERT McBRIDE & company – 1935)