Page 406 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

406 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

to prepare this region, as well as some towns in Western Macedonia, for annexation by Alba-
nia. That is why in the towns of Tetovo, Gostivar, Debar, Strouga and Ohrid, Bulgarian and
Albanian Committees were created, and struggles between them started. At the time of Had-
jikimov’s visit in Gostivar, this town was full of German, Albanian and Italian flags. Bulgar-
ian and albanian committees were struggling between themselves. the albanian Committee
in Debar was most active. It organized demonstrations and meetings on the occasion of the
liberation. There were slogans for unification with Albania. The Albanian committee here
was in connection with the one in Prizren, Kosovo, so that the behavior of the Italians, and
of the Albanians expressed self-confidence. That is why here were neither Bulgarian meet-
ings, nor the Bulgarian symbolical shout “Hurray” (contradicted to the Serbian “Zhivio”). A
th
secret and silent conference in a house of a Bulgarian teacher on April 24 was everything
that could be done. That committee in fact could function only as illegal. The Italian occu-
pational powers did not approve the activities of Vassil Hadjikimov. They arrested him for
several hours. So he did not succeed in organizing CCs in Strouga and ohrid. However, such
committees arose.
In one of the biggest towns of Vardar Macedonia - Bitolja, the Bulgarian population had
to wage a struggle to seize the town hall from the Serbian administration. In fact the struggle
was not against the Serbian administration, but a problem of obtaining proofs about the eth-
nical picture of the town, which the population had to present before the German powers.
The Bitolya townsmen organized a committee before the arrival of Hadjikimov. Such was
the case with other towns in Macedonia, too. This shows that the organizations of Bulgarian
CCs in Vardar Macedonia in 1941 was a spontaneous activity of the Bulgarian nation for its
self-organizing, and not the initiative of several hot-hearted patriots.
The creation of the CCs should not be regarded as the isolated efforts of a small number
of intellectuals. All Bulgarian in Vardar Macedonia were involved in this patriotic deed dur-
ing the critical times of 1941. This was a process of whole nations’ self-determination, an
expression of the will of the people to join Bulgaria after being liberated from the Serbian
yoke.
While in 1941 the population in Vardar Macedonia strongly expressed its Bulgarian feel-
ings, only several years were enough to change the direction of development of the Macedo-
nian Question. What were the factors most important for that. First, here was the recognition
that those people were not Serbians. Second, this kind of policy was useful to justify the re-
tention of Vardar Macedonia within the Yugoslav federation. A non-Bulgarian, non-Serbian
population of Slavs could belong to a federation of Slavic peoples as one of the fraternal
nations. A third reason for recognizing the Slavic Macedonian nationality was “to eliminate
the Bulgarian consciousness of the vast majority of Vardar Macedonians”. Thus the Com-
munist party of Yugoslavia not only recognized a new Macedonian nationality, but also un-
dertook vigorous steps to encourage differentiating Macedonian from Bulgarian language.
The Macedonian language, reinterpretation of history, the Macedonian church, and all other
attributes of a distinct nationality played a major role in de-Bulgarizing the Macedonian
population.”
That Slavo-Macedonian language didn’t exist up to the WWII, and that it was elaborated
after the war, the US strategic leadership was well aware of. In a document that I found