Stojan Kochov, Macedonians through the whirlwind of the ‘Red’ Waste, Toronto, 2023 – A Review Article (Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov) e-book edition
It is my pleasure to review the present, greatly informative book, which is now made available to English readership; elaborated by the veteran Macedonian scholar, author, activist and partisan Stojan Kochov (25 December 1930 – 5 January 2023); this publication is a highly recommendable reading for anyone wishing to have an insight into the turmoil that the Macedonian nation experienced in the middle and late 1940s. It is greatly useful for Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs, Turks and Greeks. You can download the book here: https://www.academia.edu/106347755/MACEDONIANS_THROUGH_THE_WHIRLWIND_OF_THE_RED_WASTE
For those who are not acquainted with the Modern History of the Balkans:
https://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Стојан_Кочов
https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Стоян_Кочов
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Кочов,_Стоян
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stojan_Kočov
https://daily.mk/names/stojan-kochov
https://matica.com.mk/book-author/stojan-kocov/
http://makedonskosonce.com/old.makedonskosonce.com/broevis/2003/sonce467/Tekst42.html
https://m.facebook.com/Egejska/photos/a.10151257159233670.482945.202258228669/10154817400763670/?locale=hi_IN
At this point, I have to state that I find it extraordinary and impermissible that the Bulgarian Wikipedia has about the late Macedonian veteran a so longer entry than that of the Macedonian Wikipedia; someone from Macedonia must undoubtedly correct this!
My deepest thanks go to Risto Stefov for the excellent English translation that he provided us with; it would be wonderful if he proceeded in this manner with Stojan Kochov’s other books; I know that they are really numerous, and that he already translated some of them. https://macedonianhistory.ca/media.html
Also: https://independent.academia.edu/RStefov
However, I have to admit that this is truly a national task for the government of Macedonia, and if the present administration is not up to it (whereas Nikola Gruevski definitely proved to be able to duly address similar needs), a NGO established by Diaspora Macedonians can certainly do it.
As a matter of fact, the entire world needs to read and know the testimonies and the accounts written by firsthand witnesses, who experienced the indescribable atrocities and the merciless methods that took place in Greek Macedonia before, during and after the Greek Civil War (1945-1949). The oppression, the persecution, and the ethnic cleansing (also involving the spiritual genocide) endured by the Macedonian nation, as well as the eventual mistakes and misperceptions of their socio-political and intellectual leaderships, constitute always a worthwhile study and an alarming warning for many other oppressed and persecuted nations and ethno-religious groups in different continents.
The trichotomy experienced by the Christian Macedonians after 1912 (Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia / Yugoslavia) is perfectly well reflected among the Muslim Afars of the wider Horn of Africa region, as they happen to be dispersed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. The same situation is also shared by the Muslim Baluch, who were transformed into so-called minorities in Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the Christian Aramaeans experienced an even worse fate, being presently divided among many states, namely Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Iran.
I. The Communists and the Macedonians
The pertinent quest, scrutiny and reassessment undertaken by Stojan Kochov in his book only corroborates a firm conviction that I had since my adolescence, back in the late 60s and the early 70s, namely that during the tumultuous 1940s, the Macedonian minority in Greece did not really ‘need’ to be Communist.
Living in Athens during the Military Junta (1967-1974), traveling to Greek provinces with my parents, and hearing endless stories about the ‘Symmoritopolemos’ (i.e. ‘the war against the bandits’; no one used the term ‘Greek Civil War’ then) 1944-1949, I realized very well how vivid the reminiscences of those events were for all the people. The traffic period was still felt as ‘yesterday’ by all adults who were deeply marked by the war atrocities.
I then shaped the opinion that the Macedonians (or ‘Slavo-Macedonians’ as they were called in Greece before 1974) were first exposed to a 3-decade long period of excruciating oppression (1912-1941). This involved forced change of thousands of toponyms and family names, and an absolutely tyrannical education in the so-called Modern Greek language, which was mother tongue only to the victims of the Anti-Christian and Anti-Eastern Roman genocide that was perpetrated after 1828 in the tiny, Anglo-French colonial structure called ‘Greece’. Through this abhorrent process, the Macedonians were in reality deliberately pushed to become ‘Communists’ and then to fight against an army that they could not win, while having ‘allies’ (Tito, Stalin), who would never help them.
One can certainly raise the question whether the whole matter was a machination…
The Macedonian minority of Greece consisted mainly of farmers and shepherds, being in its outright majority an agrarian population; the Macedonian proletariat in Salonica was scant and ideologically weak. The real interests of the Macedonian populations of Greece would certainly be better expressed at the socio-economic level by either liberal or conservative parties; but these political parties in Greece were structures fully absorbed into the local regime, which wanted to exterminate all nations, peoples and ethno-religious groups that inhabited the territory controlled by the Athens government and to fabricate out of them a totally fake, new nation named “Greeks” on whom they imposed
a- an ahistorical, constructed language coined by Adamantios Korais and successive generations of grammarians,
b- an entirely fake History (first in the sense that the so-called Western Classics are a fake science and what is called ‘Ancient Greece’ never existed; and second because there was absolutely no racial, ethnic, cultural, spiritual, intellectual, religious, socio-behavioral, artistic or linguistic affinity or continuity between the different nations that are deceitfully called ‘Ancient Greeks’ (by modern scholars) and the local populations in Rumeli and Mora, i.e. the southern extremities of the Balkan Peninsula, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th c.), and
c- an alien culture and behavioral system, thus turning these misfortunate populations to ludicrous copies of the French and the English, because they were gradually forced to stop wearing the fustanella (фустан) and get dressed in ‘franghika’. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fustanella
That is why the only ‘alternative’ left to the Macedonians, who were entrapped within the expanded borders of the Greek state during the period 1912-1913 and 1915-1922, was to support the Communist Party which was the only political organization that took a favorable position about the Macedonian issue in the early 1920s.
II. Macedonians and the new, Western, concept of ‘nation’
Stojan Kochov clearly shows in his book what the main problem of all Macedonians was; like the Albanians and many others, they came to know the modern, Western, concept of ‘nation’ very late or, if you want, with considerable delay. This topic is vast, as it is extensively attested in all the continents and it impacted many nations – always in compliance with the interests and the agenda of France and England, i.e. the colonial powers, which had deliberately produced this new, modern concept of ‘nation’ in the first place.
Certainly, Stojan Kochov’s book details the circumstances in which the Macedonian populations of Greece and their partisan leaders were engulfed, sacrificing their lives for a liberation front, for a rebellious army and for a communist party, which -even if they won the war- would concede to them only the right to self-determination (p. 137). The following paragraph is very enlightening:
“On January 30-31, 1949, the CPG Central Committee held its 5th Plenum during which it dropped the slogan ‘Independent and united Macedonia within a Balkan Federation’. On February 3, 1949, the NOF Central Council plenary was convened and new NOF principles were proclaimed for the future of the Macedonian people in Greek occupied Macedonia”.
This is true and Stojan Kochov’s understanding is correct, but incomplete.
Macedonians failed and still fail to assess the following facts and truths:
– There is an enormous difference between the notion of ‘nation’ prior to the so-called French Enlightenment and the French Revolution and after these developments took place.
– The diffusion of the new, modern (and ‘Western’) meaning of ‘nation’ did not reflect the choice of local nations, which in most of the cases were intentionally kept entirely uninformed and unaware, but it fully corresponded to the colonial choices, plans and agendas.
– The construction of the modern, Western, meaning of ‘nation’ and the colonial needs that triggered this ‘invention’ were not simply due to the Anglo-French desire to dismember the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid-Afshar-Qajar Empire of Iran, the Mughal Empire of India, Romanov Russia, and Qing China, while also dividing Africa.
– The construction of the modern, Western, meaning of ‘nation’ and the colonial needs that triggered this ‘invention’ were basically due to the Anglo-French intention to remake the world and to revive the Roman Empire, as the sole imperial force worldwide.
– Of course, among the colonial powers, there were conflicting interests and things did not always happen as per the provisions of the plan, but in spite of all changes and modifications, there is one critical point that is necessary to assess: the diffusion of the new concept was a totally controlled procedure because the colonial powers (France and England, and later America) were fully aware of the fact that the new ‘concept’ was in reality a lethal weapon wherever applied.
– Consequently, it was not just a coincidence that the Eastern Roman Orthodox Adamantios Korais from Izmir (and not a Macedonian Orthodox from Salonica, Bitola/Monastir, Veles, Lerin, Pirin or Skopje) was helped by French and Dutch diplomats to first move as a merchant to Amsterdam and then to prepare a thesis in Montpellier; it was a plan. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamantios_Korais – Note: “Korais believed Western Europe was the heir of the ancient Greek civilization, which had to be transmitted to the modern Greeks through education. Additionally, he advocated the restoration and use of the term “Hellene” (Έλληνας) or “Graikos” (Γραικός) as an ethnonym for the Greeks, in the place of Romiós, that was seen negatively by him“.
– That is why it would be accurate to say that Macedonians did not truly ‘lose’ the so-called Aegean Macedonia in 1912 or in 1828 (with the Anglo-French production of the Greek state) but already before 1789, when the aforementioned vicious colonial plan has been prepared.
– Of course, the colonial plan faced setbacks, notably with the Treaty of Lausanne, which replaced the Treaty of Sevres; however, to be on the safe side, one should view the overall plan as an ongoing project even today. This does not mean that it is the only; apparently, there are conflicting interests.
– With this approach, I don’t attempt to criticize or reprimand the early Macedonian patriots or the Macedonian partisans and intellectuals, but I want to simply state that, following the aforementioned developments, the loss of Aegean Macedonia was inevitable. How could a poorly armed and untrained nation like the Macedonians win there where the Ottoman Empire failed and collapsed?
I am not a fatalist and I don’t believe that there is anything that can be irreversible in human affairs; everything can change. But it is essential that Macedonians remove ‘Greece’ and ‘Greeks’ from the ‘place’ of ‘Macedonians’ worst enemy’ in their minds, and that they firmly place there the English, the French, and the Americans instead. Otherwise, quite unfortunately, Macedonians confuse the stooge with the leader, the slave with the master, and the tool with the user.
III. Macedonians: defeated by the overwhelming strength of the colonial tools
With their fresh ‘tool’ (the new notion of ‘nation’), the English and the French could in reality do whatever they liked; it is essential to understand that. The two colonial powers fabricated Greece, but if they had desired to produce a ‘Greater Illyria’, they would have managed to materialize it even faster and more easily! But the vicious eschatological agenda that they have incessantly implemented until now did not provide for an ‘Illyria’, but for a ‘Greece’. I made this very clear in a recent article published in Greek. Here you have the title and the link:
Το 1821, αντί για μια Ψευτο-Ελλάδα, Άγγλοι και Γάλλοι θα μπορούσαν, αν ήθελαν, να φτειάξουν μία Τεράστια Αλβανία από το Ζάγκρεμπ μέχρι το Νησί Τσούχα
https://www.academia.edu/50342501/Το_1821_αντί_για_μια_Ψευτο_Ελλάδα_Άγγλοι_και_Γάλλοι_θα_μπορούσαν_αν_ήθελαν_να_φτειάξουν_μία_Τεράστια_Αλβανία_από_το_Ζάγκρεμπ_μέχρι_το_Νησί_Τσούχα
And this is the English translation of the title: “In 1821, instead of fabricating Fake Greece, the English and the French could, if they wanted, manufacture an Enormous Albania from Zagreb to the Island of Çuha”; the island that I mentioned is nowadays called Cythera after the Ancient Greek Zombie-revivalist method and the name change practices implemented by the cruel regime of Athens.
My article serves only as example; if France and England produced their calamitous colonial vision and eschatological agenda around a fake Macedonia, then you would observe the secession of Salonica, Mount Athos, and some peripheral lands from the Ottoman Empire in the 1820s. Rumeli and Mora (absurdly called ‘Peloponnesus’) would still remain Ottoman only to be later invaded by an expanding ‘Macedonia’. This plan apparently did not exist; however, if it did, this should not make any Macedonian happy. The colonially fabricated Macedonia would not be a real but a fake Macedonia. It is of paramount importance to understand this reality.
It is therefore essential to grasp what would happen in that hypothetical scenario; as early as the late 18th and the early 19th c., several selected Macedonians would get scholarships for Paris, London and other academic centers of the colonial powers. There, they would get the properly prepared (by colonial academics) ‘education’; a new ‘Modern Macedonian’ language would then be produced (as a possible mixture of Macedonian, Old Slavonic, and Alexandrian Koine) eventually written in Ancient ‘Greek’ alphabet. Subsequently, all this fabrication would methodically be exported to the seceded Kingdom of Macedonia where Macedonians would have been incited to undertake an anti-Ottoman rebellion, supported by many philo-Macedonian (not Philhellene) activists and agents. Last, as if by a miracle, a Bavarian or a Danish king would be dispatched to offer his services to the ‘renascent nation’!
The true, historical Slavic Macedonian language would surely perish in this process, because the pupils would go back to their parents in Lerin, Ver or Voden (as they did in Zituni/Lamia, Mahalla/Fyteies or Tarablus/Tripoli in the 1840s and the 1870s) to tell them that they should be ashamed for having forgotten the language of their ‘illustrious ancestors’, namely the Ancient Macedonians. The end result would be a Fake Macedonia, pretty much like we now have a Fake Greece.
It is easy to fathom why this did not happen; simply, the French and the English did not want their stooges to have imperial aspirations (on the basis of the historical background of the Kingdom of Macedonia, the Seleucids, and the Ptolemies), but to be contaminated by a materialist plague involving ‘democracy’, corruption, ‘theater’, faithlessness, ‘philosophy’, pedophilia, and Satanic sexual orgies (performed not in ancient temples but in Freemasonic lodges). Only this situation would make them loyal lackeys for their colonial masters.
— — THE IRANIAN MITHRAIC ORIGIN OF THE MACEDONIAN FLAG — —
Mithra and Cybele represented on a plaque from Ai Khanoum, Bactria 3rd c. BCE
Mithras relief in Arsameia Nymphaiou, capital of Commagene: Eski Kâhta, SE Turkey
Antiochus I of Commagene and Mithras
Mithra in Ardashir II relief, Taq-e Bostan – Iran / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_of_Ardashir_II
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
IV. Macedonians’ worst mistake: they took ‘Greeks’ at face value
As I view the entire issue, the worst mistake that the Macedonians made was to take Greeks at face value, namely as a real nation. Of course, as I already said, I don’t lambast anyone for that. The imperial administration at the Ottoman Constantinople failed to assess the colonial concepts, plots and undertakings, and the entire Ottoman Empire fell like a dead corpse; how could possibly a small agrarian nation stand against such atrocious colonial plans? All the same, it is essential today to first accurately conceptualize the Macedonian issue and second comprehensively contextualize it.
This is what I attempted to do writing another article recently in Greek; here you have the title and the link:
Οι Μακεδόνες είναι και Απόγονοι των Αρχαίων Μακεδόνων, αλλά οι Έλληνες δεν είναι Απόγονοι των Αρχαίων Ελλήνων, επειδή Αρχαίοι Έλληνες δεν υπήρξαν ποτέ
https://www.academia.edu/50313053/Οι_Μακεδόνες_είναι_και_Απόγονοι_των_Αρχαίων_Μακεδόνων_αλλά_οι_Έλληνες_δεν_είναι_Απόγονοι_των_Αρχαίων_Ελλήνων_επειδή_Αρχαίοι_Έλληνες_δεν_υπήρξαν_ποτέ
The English translation of the title reads: “Today’s Macedonians are also the Descendants of the Ancient Macedonians, but today’s Greeks are not the Descendants of the Ancient Greeks, because Ancient Greeks never existed”.
Instead of taking Modern Greeks at face value, Macedonians should view them as the first victims of the Hellenization (or Greecization) process that the French and English colonials launched in the South Balkan extremities during the 1820s. There was no Greek nation there at the time. There were ethnically-linguistically dissimilar people from place to place and they were speaking different dialects, which were not easily comprehended among them; these idioms testified to a varying amalgamation of Slavic, Albanian, Vlach, Turkish, Latin, Arabic, and Eastern Roman, namely the language of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was already a mixture of Alexandrian Koine and Latin. The linguistic amalgamation was different in proportions from one idiom to another.
Not one man called himself a ‘Greek’ (Hellene) throughout South Balkans in 1800. They all considered themselves as Eastern Romans (Ρωμαίοι / Ρωμιοί, Romioi / Rumlar), and to best communicate, they eventually spoke in Eastern Roman (then called ‘Phanariotika’, i.e. the language of the Eastern Romans who lived in Phanarion / Fener, the district where the Orthodox Patriarchate was located in Istanbul) or in Ottoman Turkish (the official language). More:
https://www.academia.edu/46916384/Ottoman_Empire_and_Modern_Greece_a_Failed_State_with_no_Education_and_a_Fake_State_with_False_Education_J_Ph_Fallmerayer_A_Korais_and_D_Byzantios_Part_III
and
https://www.academia.edu/44758297/The_Fabrication_of_the_Fake_Greek_History_the_Nonexistent_Fallacy_of_Hellenism_the_19th_c_ailing_Ottoman_Empire_and_todays_Turkey
In corroboration of what I said about the Macedonians’ lack of knowledge of the ‘other’ (in this case, of the Modern Greeks), I will refer to a very interesting point made in the greatly enlightening book written by Stojan Kochov and translated into English by Risto Stefov.
On p. 115-116, one reads the following paragraphs:
Here is a document, translated from Greek that may shed some light: «… A year had not passed, when in the evening of October 24, 1947 several Politburo members including Ioannidis, Stringos, Markos and Evripidis Georgios – Petros invited Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera for a ‘special conversation».
Markos coughed in his hand and looked at Mitrevski but nobody could guess what thoughts were passing through his head. Markos felt that he needed to reprimand the NOF and AFZH leaders once and for all. He made a stern face and loudly and sarcastically laughed and began to speak:
«You need to be reminded that you are members of the CPG and this I want to emphasize, not once, but three times. There is only the CPG and no one else. I do not understand why you think that one day the Macedonians will noisily rise and leave the Democratic Army of Greece. NOF and AFZH are not just yours; I say that to you as your superior. You are well aware that you have been placed under the CPG umbrella with the blessing of Marshal Tito and our leader Zahariadis. First you need to be communists and then patriots. That’s how you should be looking at the Slavo-Macedonian Question and not thinking about some sort of ‘United Macedonia’. If you desire a ‘United Macedonia’ then what will happen to us, the Prosfigi, as you call us, where will we go? Return back to Asia Minor»?!
«Oh, my Slavo-Macedonians. You should, ONCE AND FOR ALL, UNDERSTAND THAT THIS COUNTRY – MACEDONIA NOW BELONGS TO THE MAJORITY OF THE PEOPLE LIVING HERE AND THAT IS US THE PROSFIGI! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH MACEDONIA IN GREECE ANY MORE». (Note: capitalization is used in the book)
«This has been said many times; even Lenin said it many times: Minorities must obey the majority. You are fighting for other people’s interests and against mother Greece. But in the end you will lose. Nobody is going to help you; neither Tito nor Stalin. Whatever happens to you will be your own fault because you alone are responsible for bringing suspicion to yourselves in the eyes of the Party… ».
I certainly believe Stojan Kochov and trust his sources; I can picture for myself this scene. The narrative is truthful, but the criticism, which was apparently expressed by the author with respect to Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera and to their stance during this meeting, is in reality only half of the problem, and quite unfortunately, the author was not able to discern the rest.
As any reader can surmise, the author blames the Macedonian participants of the meeting for not thinking properly as ethnic Macedonians (who should be motivated by the passion for an independent, united Macedonia), but rather feeling that they belonged to the Macedonian minority of Greece. That’s true, but there is more to it.
Even extending criticism at the socio-political level, one should wonder why Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera did not question Markos Vafeiadis’ Marxist-Leninist credentials by simply asking something similar to the following (concerning the aforementioned paragraph with the capitalized letters):
– Since when should the imperialist powers’ plans and the practices implemented by the Athens bourgeois lackeys of the English and the French be accepted as eventual prescriptions by Communists? Yes, Lenin was very correct saying that ‘the minorities must obey the majority’, but the Greek invasion and annexation of Macedonia were purely imperialist acts, and the majority of the indigenous population in Macedonia rejected those developments at the time. It is only after the exchange of populations, which was effectuated as per the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne, that the non-indigenous populations outnumbered the local Macedonians. And certainly the implementation of the treaty, the effectuation of the exchange of populations, and the selection of locations by the government of Athens for the settlement of the newly arrived Anatolians are imperialist acts of a capitalist comprador regime and they therefore cannot be possibly accepted by any Communist.
Speaking in this manner, Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera would be ideologically and historically correct, but still their major error lay elsewhere. The Macedonian leadership failed to identify who stood in front of them. I already identified the reason for this error: they took Markos Vafeiadis at face value, namely as a ‘Greek’. But he was not!
V. Macedonians did not realize that Pontic Eastern Romans were also an ethnic minority in Greece
But who was Markos Vafeiadis? As a matter of fact, he was an Anatolian Pontic born in 1906 in the wider Pontus region (according to some sources near Kastamonu, and as per other references near Erzurum). Actually, his biography and most of all the related sources have highly reconstructed, modified and tampered with. About:
https://m.bianet.org/biamag/tarih/256924-markos-ve-tosya-daki-evi
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Вафиадис,_Маркос
https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Vafiadis
https://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Маркос_Вафијадис
https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/Маркос_Вафиадис
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Μάρκος_Βαφειάδης
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markos_Vafeiadis
Irrespective of the true location of his birthplace, Markos Vafeiadis’ Pontic identity is not put in doubt by anyone; Pontic Anatolians are some of the descendants of the Eastern Romans, and Pontic language originates from the Eastern Roman (‘Romeika’) language, pretty much like the Phanariotika (see previous unit IV), the Smyrneika (the language of Eastern Romans in the region of Izmir and Ancient Ionia) and the Kappadokika (the language of Eastern Romans in the region of Cappadocia/Central Anatolia). About:
https://www.proquest.com/docview/1299558500
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/9783956506734.pdf?download_full_pdf=1&page=1
https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/1661176
https://www.gorgiaspress.com/a-smyrneika-lexicon
http://www.levantineheritage.com/book93.htm
https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/c9d27a9e-a1e4-4539-83d5-2ef1b2c52850/content
https://vk.com/wall-102737810_21
http://asiaminor.ehw.gr/forms/fLemmaBodyExtended.aspx?lemmaId=10090
https://tkidergisi.com/file/gerci-rum-isek-de-rumca-bilmez-turkce-soyleriz-the-adventure-of-an-identity-in-the-triptych-vatan-religion-and-language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocian_Greek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontic_Greek
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Понтийский_язык
(Note: the terms ‘Cappadocian Greek’ and ‘Pontic Greek’ are fallacious, ensuing from the Anglo-French colonial forgery; the correct terms are respectively ‘Cappadocian’ and ‘Pontic’. This can be easily realized when taking into account the terms used in Russian; ex. Понтийский язык.)
It is essential at this point to state that none of these people, namely the Anatolians and the Constantinopolitans, defined and called themselves as ‘Greeks’ (Hellenes) in 1800 (i.e. before the beginning of the materialization of the colonial plans). And none among them believed that he was the descendant of Ancient Greeks, as they were apparently the offspring of an enormous and long amalgamation of more than 20 ancient nations and historical ethnic groups.
As Pontic, Markos Vafeiadis was an Eastern Roman, born to an Orthodox family and having Pontic as native language. He certainly spoke Ottoman Turkish, which was the official language of the state where he spent his life’s first 17 years, before his family moved to Greece, following the Lausanne Treaty. Pontic language was totally incomprehensible to the local South Balkan people, who were forced to learn the fabricated Modern Greek idiom in the primary and secondary education schools. Even today, average Greek citizens do not understand Pontic; it is Macedonian to them.
Adamantios Korais’ fabricated jargon, imposed as official language in the tiny Greek state as early as 1828, had already become the mother tongue for the non-illiterate segment of the inhabitants of the Greek state; in fact, all the literacy campaigns that were undertaken in Modern Greece were not benevolent acts, but they consisted in monstrous aspects of a spiritual genocide because in this manner, the government intended to uproot and eliminate the earlier existing idioms. But the official Modern Greek language was an alien idiom to the young Pontic refugee Markos Vafeiadis. Actually, all the Eastern Roman refugees had difficulty to speak the official language of Greece, and that’s the local populations hated them and pejoratively called them ‘Armenides’ (Armenians).
This reveals the extent of the spread of racism that was promulgated as dogma by the zombie state of ‘Hellas’; it turned a great part of its misfortunate inhabitants into ulcerous and rancorous, wounded animals that indiscriminately, comprehensively and irreversibly hate the ‘Other’, while ceaselessly exalting themselves as gods after the ‘example’ of the pedophile Zeus and all the other filthy demons worshipped by the cursed Ancient Athenians.
VI. Macedonians failed to realize that the Pontic Eastern Romans were most reviled by the racist Greek state
The Satanic Megali Idea (Μεγάλη Ιδέα), which was an Anglo-French concept providing for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, had nothing to do with the aspirations of the Eastern Romans to revive Romania (Ρωμανία/the accent is on the penultimate syllable), i.e. the Eastern Roman Empire. If the Megali Idea were to be materialized, the capital of the state would still be the provincial town of Athens, not Istanbul/Constantinople.
Of course, one can be sure that the Anglo-French colonials would never allow the empire destroyed by the Crusaders in 1204 to be reconstituted in the 19th c. Then, on the basis of the absurd and colonial Treaty of Sevres and in case of success of the paranoid military campaign launched by the Greek army in Anatolia, an absolutely ridiculous situation would come to happen in which today’s Greece and Modern Turkey’s western half would be called altogether “Greece”.
That would be totally preposterous, because in the Antiquity, Greece was merely a geographical term that denoted the South Balkan extremities. Macedonia was not ‘Greece’; Illyria was not ‘Greece’; Thrace was not ‘Greece’; Aeolia was not ‘Greece’; Ionia was not ‘Greece’; Lydia was not ‘Greece’; Phrygia was not ‘Greece’; Caria was not ‘Greece’; and Lycia was not ‘Greece’. And Crete was not ‘Greece’. There was never a state called ‘Greece’ before 1830.
These truths and realities were not deeply sensed by the Cappadocian, Ionian, Pontic Anatolian and the Constantinopolitan Eastern Romans who were forced (‘exchange of populations’) to move to Greece; the reason is very simple. Pretty much like the Macedonians, they were not aware of the new, Western concept of ‘nation’. For them, they were one nation with the Armenians and the Turks were another nation, but this distinction was purely religious. The Eastern Romans, who settled in Greece, did not know that they merely consisted in expendable stuff for the cruel state, which intended to deprive them of their
i- traditional world perception and worldview (Weltanschauung),
ii- religious faith (as they belonged to the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, not to the ill-conceived ‘Church of Greece’),
iii- moral values,
iv- spiritual piety,
v- cultural continuity,
vi- socio-behavioral system,
vii- linguistic integrity,
viii- Eastern Roman imperial ancestry, and
ix- national identity (in this case, I use the term in the traditional, non-Western connotation of the word ‘nation’).
The aforementioned is not so strange. In fact, the Pontic Eastern Romans (Πόντιοι Ρωμιοί) were much loathed and shamelessly despised by the cruel regime of Athens. As the Pontic Anatolians noticed that several ethnic groups were ready to secede from the Ottoman Empire and achieve national independence, they also demanded to form a state of their own. Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek representative (as an appointed plenipotentiary by His Majesty the King of the ‘Hellenes’!!) in the Paris Peace Conference (and more particularly in the Treaty of Sevres), so much loved the Pontic Anatolians that he did not even want to meet their delegation!
The extent to which the disreputable Venizelos was a shameful lackey of the English is highlighted by the following comparison: Greece was invited in the Paris Peace Conference not as ‘principal allied power’, but among the ‘other allied powers’. Even worse, representatives of earlier nonexistent states, like Armenia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hejaz, were included with the same rank as Venizelos, who obediently accepted this humiliation in spite of Greece’s participation in WW I.
Objectively speaking, Pontic Anatolians were indeed in the same position as the Armenians, but the colonial powers did not want an Eastern Roman Pontic state to exist; it was not part of their agenda. Even worse, if it existed, it could generate a serious Eastern Roman, Anti-Greek (Anti-Hellenic) dynamics. That is why, although Chrysanthus Philippidis, the bishop of Trabzon, traveled to Paris (in April 1919) to participate in the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) and demand an independent Republic of Pontus, the colonial gangsters of France, England and America refused to meet him. Even worse, they exerted their influence over Venizelos so that he takes distance from the representative of Pontic Eastern Romans. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabzon#Modern_era
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysanthus_of_Athens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Pontus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Peace_Conference_(1919%E2%80%931920)#Other_nations’_approach
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_S%C3%A8vres
{One of the interminable forgeries, tricks, schemes and fallacies perpetrated and diffused by the disreputable Wikipedia concerns the case of the Pontic Anatolians; although in the entry ‘Trabzon’ (section ‘Modern era’) the text offers a quite good coverage of bishop Chrysanthus’ presence in the Paris Peace Conference, in the entry about the ‘Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920)’, there is no mention of the Pontic delegation, demands and approach; they were not included even in the section ‘Other nations’ approach’ where there are brief presentations about Belarus, Korea and even the Aromanians!}
Also: Η ατυχής συνάντηση Χρύσανθου-Βενιζέλου στο Παρίσι και η άρνηση παροχής βοήθειας στους Έλληνες του Πόντου (:The unfortunate meeting of Chrysanthus-Venizelos in Paris and Venizelos’ refusal to provide assistance to the Pontic Eastern Romans) https://ellinoistorin.gr/?p=35623
To properly assess the vicious, deep-seated hatred harbored by the cruel regime of Athens -down to our times- against the Pontic Eastern Roman identity and integrity, one can search in today’s Greek mainstream media. In the following disreputable and shameful article, the authors pretend the following:
Γενοκτονία των Ποντίων, από το ψευδοκράτος του Πόντου (: Genocide of the Pontic Anatolians undertaken by the pseudo-state of the Pontus)
https://www.flash.gr/apopseis/1614503/genoktonia-ton-pontion-apo-to-pseydokratos-tou-pontou
In other words, the colonial stooges of the Athens regime -still today- accuse bishop Chrysanthus, because he (rightfully) wanted to keep the Pontic population in Pontus in view of a potential state or an autonomous region within a wider Armenia. He wanted to bring back to Pontus all the thousands of people who had fled to Russia; quite contrarily, the Greek authorities wanted to transfer these populations to Greece (before the Treaty of Lausanne) because, as I already said, they considered them as expendable stuff. To persuade the Greek authorities not to try to transfer the Pontic Anatolians, who had temporarily settled in Russia, to the Greek sector of Macedonia, bishop Chrysanthus presented the argument that these Pontic Anatolian populations were Bolsheviks, and if relocated to provinces around Salonica they could strike an alliance with the indigenous majority, namely the Slavic Macedonians.
This document demonstrates therefore that the Greek government, already before the defeat in Anatolia (1922) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), intended to arrange a final solution for the Macedonians, who were entrapped within its expanded territory, and that, even if the Greek army won over the Turks and the Treaty of Sevres remained in force, some sort of transfer of Eastern Roman Anatolian populations (from Pontus and Cappadocia) would take place.
Conclusion
Who was Markos Vafeiadis then?
It is essential to make this question for a second time in order to highlight hitherto unperceived facts and truths. Pretty much like the Macedonian minority, the newly formed Pontic minority of Greece was deprived of their right to education, national representation, linguistic integrity, and cultural identity. To be fully accepted into the fake Greek regime, a Pontic Eastern Roman had to unquestionably renounce to his aspirations, accept the pseudo-historical dogma of Hellenism, speak the fabricated Modern Greek language, and behave in a Westernized manner. What happened to the Pontic Eastern Romans in Greece is tantamount to spiritual genocide. It was not permissible to establish primary and secondary schools in Pontic.
I briefly discussed the issue in a recently published article in Greek; here you have the title and the links:
Ανύπαρκτη η Γενοκτονία των Ποντίων στην Οθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, αλλά Υπαρκτή στην Ελλάδα μετά το 1925
https://www.academia.edu/50286664/Ανύπαρκτη_η_Γενοκτονία_των_Ποντίων_στην_Οθωμανική_Αυτοκρατορία_αλλά_Υπαρκτή_στην_Ελλάδα_μετά_το_1925
The English translation of the title reads: ‘Pontic Genocide: Nonexistent in the Ottoman Empire, but Existent in Greece after 1925’
It appears strange, extraordinary or incredible, but it is not. In the Ottoman Empire and in Turkey, the Pontic Eastern Romans faced reprisals for the illegal deeds that were perpetrated by several Pontic activists, who wanted to work for states (Russia, Greece, England, France) that were in war with their own homeland (the Ottoman Empire). But there was no Ottoman or Turkish intention to physically annihilate the Pontic nation. Quite contrarily, in Greece, there was a malignant intention to carry out a spiritual genocide against the Pontic Anatolian refugees (‘prosfyges’), as they have done in each and every case of a misfortunate nation engulfed in that territory. Whereas all the refugees and the exchanged populations were Eastern Romans, the Greek governments wanted to Hellenize them like all the other populations (Vlachs, Albanians, Macedonians, Cretans, and the amalgamated ethnic groups that inhabited Mora, Rumeli and the islands in 1828).
Markos Vafeiadis was indeed a victim of the Greek state; simply, he did not have the lucidity to understand what was happening to him and to his Pontic compatriots, who formed one of the minorities of Greece after being transferred there. He was an evident victim of the Greek state propaganda that was successful enough to make him believe that he was a ‘Greek’ even at the time when he was a child living in the Ottoman Empire. Yet, in the Christian Orthodox Empire of Trabzon, which was defeated by the Ottomans and annexed to the sultanate in 1461 (8 years after the Fall of Constantinople), the noun ‘Greek’ (Hellene) was considered to be an excruciating insult; as a matter of fact, this was a common concept and belief throughout the Eastern Roman Empire since its inception.
And this concludes the case for Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera and for what they should have answered to Markos Vafeiadis in that meeting that is mentioned by Stojan Kochov. The correct response should be something like the following:
– You, Markos, do not belong to that colonial state in the first place, because you are a Pontic Eastern Roman and consequently not a ‘Hellene’; you belong indeed to the Pontic minority, pretty much like we belong to the Macedonian minority. So, the Anglo-French tool called ‘Hellas’ must be abolished, decomposed and reconstituted after the physical elimination of its capitalist elite, under another name (Roma’nia/Ρωμανία), and on totally different concepts, structures and alliance. Not one American, English or French must be allowed to stand on Balkan lands.
If Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera did not speak according to the aforementioned suggestion, this is due to their misperception of the modern state of Greece (since its inception) and to several changes that had occurred in the international Communist camp: in the early 1920s, the ideas and the concepts developed by Stalin in his article ‘Marxism and the National Question’ (Марксизм и национальный вопрос; which was initially published in March-May 1913 (in the Bolshevik monthly Просвещение / Prosveshcheniye / ‘Enlightenment’) were still in vigor. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_and_the_National_Question
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosveshcheniye
All the same, in order to fully control the Soviet Union and become the sole ruler in the 1930s, Stalin did not always respect the thoughts that he made and the ideas that he defended back in the 1910s. Even worse, having made many compromises with Churchill, particularly in the cases of Yugoslavia (50%-50%) and Greece (10%-90%), during the Fourth Moscow Conference (9-19 October 1944), and observing his victory at the battlefield being progressively transformed into a diplomatic defeat due to the Truman doctrine, the anti-Soviet ‘containment’ undertaken by the Anglo-Americans, the then rising Cold War, and the subsequent international isolation of the USSR, Stalin was in a defensive position; this would not allow him to remember anymore the article that he wrote in Vienna back in 1913. About:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Conference_(1944)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percentages_agreement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War#Beginning_of_the_Cold_War,_containment_and_the_Truman_Doctrine_(1947%E2%80%931953)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_events_in_the_Cold_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Doctrine
The aforementioned reality was hidden behind the meeting that Stojan Kochov so vividly narrated; it defined and compromised at the same time the positions taken by all the participants. It is certainly clear that Markos Vafeiadis threatened Mitrevski, Keramitchiev and Vera, but to no avail. Stojan Kochov should not forget that Markos Vafeiadis’ position was more endangered than that of his Macedonian interlocutors.
Few months later (August 1948), Vafeiadis was removed from his position and he had to seek safety in the exile (in the USSR). Even worse, he was later removed from office (1958) and even ousted from the Communist Party of Greece (1964). Following his delayed return ‘to his country’ (1983), his advanced humiliation involved the explicit support for an American citizen (the then Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou) and numerous other petty stories. This is what happens always to those who forget or confuse their identity.
Terminating this long review article, I must add that back in the 1960s, many people knew, remembered, and confessed in public that the reason for which the Greek representatives (and notably Eleftherios Venizelos) demanded the exchange of populations (to which the Turkish representatives consented) was the intention to relocate Anatolian populations in Macedonia and to thus change the percentage of the population, reduce the local Macedonians to a minority in their own land, and take the ethnic cleansing to a more advanced stage.
But Macedonians must comprehend that the culprit is not Greece; it’s France, England and America. Long before the arrival of the Greek army in Macedonia (1912), any visitor could see, when walking in the streets of Occupied Brittany, inscriptions warning the passengers that “Il est défendu de parler breton et de cracher à terre” (“It is forbidden to speak Breton and spit on the ground”).
It all started in France and England; and it spread out due to the incessant involvement of French, English, American and several other Western diplomats in Greek politics; actually, the term ‘involvement’ that I used is a eulogy. In reality, it is a continuous guidance that takes the form of order and execution, and in case of non-obedience, there are reprisals, removals or sudden deaths that are ridiculously explained. Since Day One after the establishment of the ‘Greek’ pseudo-state, the colonial powers controlled every local development. About:
https://www.amazon.fr/gp/customer-reviews/RKFA2QHX1QFBN?ASIN=B01MTNKJAH
Affiche « Il est défendu de parler breton et de cracher à terre »
https://fr-academic.com/dic.nsf/frwiki/549220
https://blogs.mediapart.fr/ker-beirhos/blog/050711/il-est-interdit-de-cracher-par-terre-et-de-parler-breton