BY GEORGES MEHRABIAN AND BOBBIS MISAILIDES
ATHENS, Greece - The foreign ministers of Greece and the
former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia signed an agreement
at the United Nations in New York September 13. The accord,
which went into effect at the end of October, specified
that Athens would lift its embargo on the republic of
Macedonia. The government of Greece slapped the economic
and trade ban on its neighbor in February 1994.
Macedonia, a land-locked country, has access to the sea through the port of Thessaloníki on the Aegean Sea in northern Greece. In 1993, 92 percent of exports from Macedonia went through that port.
The September accord also specified that the republic of Macedonia will change its flag and parts of its constitution, which Athens finds objectionable. Skopje pledged to change two articles in the constitution of the republic that refer to the oppressed national minority in the neighboring northern Greek province, which is also called Macedonia. Athens does not recognize the existence of Macedonians as a distinct nationality in Greece.
The dispute has its origins in the Greek civil war and the Yugoslav revolution in the 1940s. The worker-and- peasant rebel army in Greece was defeated in 1949 by the bourgeois regime in Athens. The capitalists were backed by Washington and London and aided by the betrayal of the Stalinist leadership of the popular forces. At the end of the civil war, tens of thousands of Macedonians fled to Yugoslavia. There, they enjoyed protection of their culture and language at the time, under the Yugoslav workers and farmers regime that came to power in 1945. They fled Greece to get away from the sweeping witch-hunts, national oppression, and in many cases to save their lives.
The government of Greece confiscated the land of these refugees by decree in 1953 and stripped them of their Greek citizenship rights. According to the September 15 New Ma cedonia, Athens pressed Skopje during the recent negotiations to sign a declaration distancing itself from the land claims of these refugees and their families. Athens, however, was unsuccessful in this quest.
The two states are to recognize each other's existing borders. The name of the former Yugoslav republic, which Athens objects to, is to be negotiated in the future.
Since the break up of Yugoslavia and Macedonia's declaration of sovereignty, the capitalist rulers of Greece have been on a campaign to isolate the newly independent republic, claiming the name Macedonia implied territorial claims on the Greek province of the same name. Athens also claimed that the republic's new flag, which includes the Star of Vergina (the emblem of King Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, in ancient Greece), was an affront to the "Greek nation which was having one of its symbols stolen."
A succession of conservative and social democratic governments, with the open backing or tacit support of the General Confederation of Labor and of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), mounted a nationalist campaign against recognition of Macedonia. It included government-sponsored demonstrations of up to 1 million in Athens and Thessaloníki and reached a high pitch with the imposition of the embargo.
The neighboring governments of Bulgaria, which claims Macedonian is but a dialect of the Bulgarian language, and Albania, which poses as the protector of the Albanian minority of 12 percent in the new state of Macedonia, also have territorial visions of expansion in the former Yugoslav republic.
Taking advantage of the explosive situation, Washington dispatched 550 soldiers to Macedonia in 1993 as part of a United Nations' "peacekeeping" force of 1,150. To date, it is the only part of former Yugoslavia with U.S. troops on the ground. U.S. imperialism is using its military intervention in Macedonia to gain an edge over Bonn, Paris, and London in asserting Washington's long-term political and economic interests in the Balkans.
The imperialist rulers of Greece have up to now lined themselves up with Belgrade and Moscow in the Yugoslav conflict. Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and his hireling, Bosnian Serb chauvinist leader Radovan Karadzic, are presented by the big-business and other media here as heroes preserving Serbian sovereignty from a "German- American" assault. The Greek Orthodox religion, sponsored as the official state religion here, is presented as a main pillar in the alliance between Athens, Belgrade, and Moscow.
With Belgrade appearing victorious until recently, this seemed a sure way to advance Greek imperialism's expansionism and economic interests in the Balkans.
The defeat of Belgrade-backed Serbs in the Croatian region of Krajina this summer, however, the NATO bombings of Bosnian Serbs in September, and the subsequent advances of the Croatian and Bosnian armies in northwestern Bosnia, dramatically altered the political and military landscape. Washington, after standing behind the Croatian and Bosnian regimes and carrying out the bombings, emerged as the main imperialist power intervening in the Yugoslav conflict. It managed to push back Athens among others.
Finally, the embargo on Macedonia hurt some capitalists in Greece who held 20 percent of the market share of imports that republic made before 1993. Greek products have now been replaced by German, French, and Italian goods. Above all, of course, the embargo, a virtual act of war, hurt the Macedonian people. According to the daily New Macedonia, unemployment there jumped to 25 percent since 1993. Skopje estimates that the sanctions cost it $40 million per month.
While a majority among the Greek rulers felt compelled to concede and sign the September accord, the decision by Athens has generated ongoing debate in bourgeois politics. Former Greek president Christos Sartzetakis accused the Papandreou administration of leading a "national surrender." Antonis Samaras, of the right-wing opposition party Political Spring, called the accord an "unprecedented national humiliation." Aleka Paparíga of the KKE demanded that the issue of the name of the neighboring republic be settled quickly in a way that it gives Macedonia only a geographic meaning "and not an ethnic one."
Many workers feel relieved that the tensions with Macedonia have eased. "I don't care about the name or whatever," said an airline baggage handler during a discussion at the Athens airport. "I just want the dispute settled and over with. Let them call themselves whatever they want."