BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS  
Readers B.M. and G.K. comment in the letters section this week on Militant articles about demands for independence by the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and the Greek government’s opposition to it.

The government of the republic of Macedonia raised the demand for independence following the de facto breakup of Yugoslavia through the ongoing conflict there.

The conflict is a result of decades of bureaucratic rule by the Stalinist regime in Yugoslavia. A deep-going and popular revolution coming out of World War II began to break down the divisions between the peoples of Yugoslavia—whether Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, Montenegrins, Macedonians, or others. These divisions were fostered by imperialism and the native capitalists.

Steps through struggle to further the unity of working people were blocked by the Stalinist regime. As a result of the growing social and economic crisis over the past decade, ruling layers in the various regions have been pressing to enhance their own position and access to resources through force and violence.

While great numbers of people in different parts of Yugoslavia have been drawn into the fighting, voices continue to be heard against the war. Thousands of Belgrade students, for example, demonstrated in early March 1992 demanding Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic’s resignation for his role in spurring the civil war.

The bureaucratic rulers of the republic of Macedonia have the same narrow goals as their Serb or Croatian counterparts. The attitude of communists toward demands for independence depends on whether a fight for such demands advances the interests of working people in a particular country. What is needed to advance working-class interests is a fight aimed at uniting workers in different parts of Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, and throughout the region.

A necessary part of such a fight for unity is the struggle against the oppression of any nationality, including the suppression of languages, culture, or religions.

Before World War II, under the rule of King Alexander I, a Serb, Macedonians were forbidden by law to publish books or newspapers in their native language. This was reversed by the Yugoslav revolution, which championed the demands of oppressed nationalities. Following the overturn of capitalist rule in Yugoslavia, the Macedonian language was recognized and in fact it is now written and standardized, contrary to what G.K. asserts. It is a dialect of the Slavic language spoken in Bulgaria. Working people in the republic of Macedonia fought to preserve their language and to be allowed to use it.

Progressive measures were taken during the initial stages of the Yugoslav revolution to develop the economy of underdeveloped Macedonia. As a result, while industrial output in the more advanced regions of Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia increased nine or tenfold from 1939 to 1970, in Macedonia the increase was more than thirtyfold.

It was the example of this revolution that the Greek bourgeoisie and other capitalist classes in the region feared. B.M. correctly points out that a blow was dealt to Greek imperialism’s plans to conquer Macedonia at the end of World War II.

Hatred for the Yugoslav revolution and what it accomplished comes through even today in arguments raised by spokespeople of the Greek ruling class to justify their opposition to recognition of Macedonia.

For example, in an open letter to the European Community, former Greek minister of culture Melina Mercouri and five other well-known personalities in Greece stated: “You of course are aware of the effort begun earlier and systematized after 1944 with the creation, in the framework of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, of the so-called state of ‘Macedonia.’ Its single goal, then and now, was the questioning of the borders of Greece, within which is included Greek Macedonia… with a homogeneous Greek population.”

Recent demonstrations in Thessaloniki and in New York, sponsored by the Greek government, raised the slogan “Macedonia was, is, and will remain Greek.” This is similar to such slogans as “America for the Americans” or “France first” advanced by incipient fascist currents in the United States, France, and other imperialist countries.

As G.K. points out, there are oppressed nationalities in northern Greece, and indeed throughout the country, including hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant workers, many of them from the Balkans. One of these is the Macedonian nationality, comprising about 2 percent of the population of Greece. As B.M. notes [see below], many are treated by the state as “agents of Skopje” (the capital of Macedonia) for attempting to use their language or their culture.

Communists and other fighters in Greece have in the past been charged with “treason” because they championed demands against the national oppression of Macedonians. One of them was Pantelis Pouliopoulos, national secretary of the Communist Party (KKE), until he was expelled in 1927 for his opposition to the counterrevolutionary course of Stalin. He was jailed twice by the Greek government for his proletarian stance on the Macedonian question—in 1924 and in 1928.
 

Since the column above appeared in the Militant in April 1992, the conservative government of Constantínos Mitsotákis [in Greece] has stepped up its international campaign against recognition of the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. The social democratic opposition and most trade union officials in Greece have given their full backing to the effort.

On December 9, 1992, more than one million people participated in a rally in Athens to back the government’s campaign. “Macedonia has been Greek for 3,000 years” shouted many in the crowd. The absurdity of this slogan becomes apparent when one considers that during this time span millions of people of different nationalities, speaking a spectrum of languages, and living under various social systems, have inhabited the area comprising what is today the republic of Macedonia and northern Greece.

Athens, however, has used such slogans to whip up nationalist sentiments and win backing among working people for its goals. In the course of this campaign the Greek government has carried out sweeping attacks on democratic rights….

The Greek government has continued its nationalist campaign on Macedonia. But recently, under pressure from Washington, Bonn, and Paris, it was forced to accept a compromise. On April 8, 1993, the United Nations Security Council approved UN membership for Macedonia under the name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.”

BY BOBBIS MISAILIDES  
THESSALONIKI, Greece—A World News Briefs article in the Militant noted that the Greek government protested the declaration of independence by the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, fearing that this “might give rise to demands for rights among the ethnic Macedonian minority in Greece.”

The fact is that this oppressed minority has been raising their national demands in Greece for decades. Much like the Kurds, the Macedonians were divided by imperialism and the local capitalists within the borders of what became Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia. In World War II, Greek imperialism aimed to conquer Macedonia but a deadly blow to this plan was the armed struggle of the Macedonians, which culminated in the formation of their republic as part of the Yugoslav federation in 1945.

With the crushing of the Greek revolution in 1949 and the subsequent sealing of the border, almost every Macedonian family in the province of Florina to this day has relatives on the other side who are not allowed to come to Greece. They are subjected to terror by the police in Greece, who see anyone who speaks Macedonian, who sings their traditional songs, or dances their traditional dances as “an agent of Skopje.”

The Greek government has been whipping up nationalist chauvinism to convince working people to look for the wrong enemy. This reactionary campaign, supported by all major political parties, the union bureaucracy, women’s and youth organizations, and the church, resulted in a march of one million in Thessaloniki at the beginning of March 1992 around the slogan “Macedonia is Greek.”

Class-conscious workers face the task of explaining the imperialist aims of Greek capitalism and, while supporting the just demands of the Macedonians, they must demand: Open the borders to the republic of Macedonia now!
 
 
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Referendum curtailing rights of Albanians fails in Macedonia  
 
 
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