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Bloody Christmas (1945)

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(Redirected from Bloody Christmas 1945) 1945 purging in SR Macedonia

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The Bloody Christmas (Bulgarian: Кървав Божик, romanized: Karvav Bozhik; Macedonian: Крвав Божиќ, romanized: Krvav Božikj) was a campaign in which several hundred people of Macedonian Bulgarian descent were killed as collaborationists by the Yugoslav communist authorities in the Socialist Republic of Macedonia in January 1945. Thousands of others who retained their pro-Bulgarian sympathies or views, suffered severe repression as a result. However many people accused of pro-Bulgarian orientation, (in most cases they were pro-Independence and anti-Yugoslav), were also arrested, sentenced on fabricated charges and imprisoned.

After the end of the Second World War, Bulgarians in the so-called "new lands" in Vardar Macedonia, briefly annexed to Bulgaria during the war, were persecuted using charges of "great-Bulgarian chauvinism". During the Cold War, the event was silenced by the communist authorities. To wipe out the Bulgarophile sentiments of parts of the local population, the Yugoslav communists started a process of nation-building.

From the start of the new Socialist Republic of Macedonia, accusations surfaced that new authorities were involved in retribution against people who did not support the formation of the new ethnic Macedonian identity. The number of dead "traitors" and "collaborators" due to organized killings of Bulgarians during Bloody Christmas and afterwards is unclear, but some sources put the number of victims at around 1,200. The idea was to weaken the Bulgarian intelligentsia in Macedonia, to eradicate the Bulgarian self-identification of parts of the population, and to speed-up the process of Macedonisation. At the end of 1944, a law was passed for the protection of the Macedonian national honour, which legalized the persecution of people who openly expressed Bulgarian self-identification. Special courts were also set up to protect Macedonia's national honour.

During the terror of January 1945, on the road between Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa, and on the hills of Galičica mountain near the village of Oteševo and other villages, more Bulgarians were executed. Most of the bodies were disposed of in Lake Prespa. Nearly all inhabited places in Vardar Macedonia provided victims for the campaign. In several cities in Vardar Macedonia, where people's courts were set up, death sentences over citizens charged with "great-Bulgarian chauvinism" were issued. In Skopje, in 1945 alone, 18 trials were held with 226 defendants, 22 of whom were sentenced to death. In Štip in the same period, seven Bulgarians were sentenced to death. Ten Bulgarians were sentenced to death in Prilep and in Veles. In Bitola, nine were sentenced to death.

The central Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) expressed discontent with these actions of the Communist Party of Macedonia (CPM), with an exchange of letters showing that the latter misunderstood the repressions to be greenlit by the former. The CPY struggled in these earlier years to assert itself over the affairs of the CPM, which was subject to considerable factionalism at the time. To make matters worse, the CPY's former representative in Macedonia with considerable understanding of the regional situation, Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, had been recalled earlier in November 1944 and replaced with the less knowledgeable Miha Marinko.

According to Bulgarian sources, between 1945 and 1946 over 4,700 Bulgarians were massacred or went missing. As a result of the purge, up to 100,000 people were deported, displaced, imprisoned, persecuted or sent to concentration camps in Yugoslavia. The bodies of 50 executed victims were exhumed near the village of Letevci on June and July 1996. In 2005, a scholarly conference was organized in Veles to commemorate the murder of more than fifty locals but they were portrayed as patriotic Macedonians wrongly accused of pro-Bulgarian sentiments.

See also

Notes

Informational notes

  1. Additionally, some 100,000 people were imprisoned in the post-1944 period for violations of the law for the "protection of Macedonian national honor," and some 1,260 Bulgarian sympathizers were allegedly killed. (Troebst, 1997: 248-50, 255-57; 1994: 116-22; Poulton, 2000: 118-19). For more see: Roudometof, Victor (2002) Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question. Westport: Connecticut: Praeger. p.104. ISBN 0-275-97648-3

References

  1. The most poignant example of Communist Party of Macedonia excess was Bloody Christmas: a series of pro-Bulgarian Macedonian purges that started in January 1945. For more see: James Horncastle, The Macedonian Slavs in the Greek Civil War, 1944–1949, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, ISBN 1498585051, p. 107.
  2. Bechev, Dimitar (2009) Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia. Scarecrow Press. p.287. ISBN 0810855658
  3. Poulton, Hugh (2000) Who Are the Macedonians?. C. Hurst & Co. p.118. ISBN 1850655340
  4. ^ Tchavdar Marinov (2010). "Historiographical Revisionism and Re-Articulation of Memory in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". Sociétés politiques comparées: 11.
  5. Zahariadis, Mickolaos (2005) Essence of Political Manipulation: Emotion, Institutions, and Greek Foreign Policy. Peter Lang. p. 85. ISBN 0820479039
  6. Djokić, Dejan (2003). Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918-1992, C. Hurst & Co. p. 122. ISBN 1-85065-663-0
  7. Phillips, John (2004) Macedonia: Warlords and Rebels in the Balkans. I.B. Tauris. p.40 ISBN 186064841X
  8. Michev, D. (1994) The Macedonian Question and the Bulgarian-Yugoslav Relations 1944-1949. (in Bulgarian) Sofia:St. Kliment Ohridski University Publishing House. pp.80-82
  9. (1992) Macedonianism and Macedonia's Resistance Against It Kosta Tsarnushanov. Sofia: (in Bulgarian) St. Kliment Ohridski University Publishing House. Chapters 25 and 26
  10. Angelov, Veselin (2003) Macedonian Bloody Christmas. Sofia: Galik Publishing House. pp.179-201. ISBN 9548008777
  11. Serafimov, Tsanko (2004) Encyclopedic Dictionary of Macedonia and Macedonian Affairs (in Bulgarian) Orbel. p.298.
  12. Horncastle, James (3 June 2019). The Macedonian Slavs in the Greek Civil War, 1944–1949. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 107–108. ISBN 978-1-4985-8505-7.
  13. Stoyan Raychevski (2005). The Genocide Against Bulgarians in the 20th Century. Bulgarian Bestseller. p. 105.
  14. Rae, Heather (2002) State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 277. ISBN 052179708X
  15. Keith Brown (2003). The Past in Question: Modern Macedonia and the Uncertainties of Nation. Princeton University Press. p. 211. ISBN 9780691099958.

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