CHAPTER 20
In Controversial Battles
I. The "Popular Front" in America
II. World War II Period
III. The Dilemma Goes On
THE involvement of American Slavs in leftist causes was proportionately high in relation to their number. Documents of book length resulting from hearings and investigations in Washington after World War II reveal strong Bulgarian participation during the fate 1930s and early 1940s. In order to comprehend better the reasons for the enthusiasm shown by the Bulgarians in these controversial battles it should be pointed out that many of them believed in Slavic solidarity and that traditionally they were friendly to Russia because she had liberated their country from the Turks in 1878. In addition, during some twelve years, the famous Bulgarian Communist revolutionary Georgi Dimitrov had been at the helm of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow.
The Communist Party of the U.S.A. paid a great deal of attention to Slavic immigrants. For years the Croatian Frank Borich had headed the South Slav Bureau of the Communist Party of U.S.A. Its organ was the Daily Worker in New York. [1] This paper had reported on all South Slavic radical activities for many years and had printed articles by many leading South Slavic radicals.
In 1923 the left-wing Socialists led by the Bulgarian Todor Cvetkov weeded from the South Slav Section of the C.P.U.S.A. Together with the Croatian Djuro Kutuzović, he formed the Yugoslav Educational League in Chicago. They appealed to the Bulgarians and all South Slavs. Also trying to gain audience among them during the late 1920s was a New York monthly Slavjanski Jug — The Slavonic South. [2]
All Bulgarian organizations and papers, from the extreme right to the extreme left, denounced the royal dictatorship in Yugoslavia. In opposing King Alexander's policies many Bul-
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garians and Croatians formed a common front in America. Among them the Socialists were especially active during the 1930s. The Socialist Labor Party of America, during these years of Depression, tried to gain the support of the Bulgarians. It published numerous books and pamphlets in Bulgarian and in other South Slavic languages. They were often translations from Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and other Socialist ideologists. The party sponsored a Bulgarian weekly Rabotnicheska Prosveta (The Workers' Enlightenment) in Granite City, Illinois.
A majority of these Socialists' shunned Communist influence and leadership. The leading Bulgarian Communist in America was George Pirinsky whose real name was George Zaikoff. Many of his articles appeared in the radical Bulgarian press signed George Nicoloff. In an article that was printed in the summer of 1935, Pirinsky quoted a letter from G. Dimitrov dated May 13, 1934, which is very important because it presented the official line of the Soviets in favor of Macedonian independence. [3]
On October 9, 1934 in Marseilles, France, a Macedonian revolutionary, Vlade Chernozemsky, assassinated King Alexander of Yugoslavia shortly after he landed at the port for an official visit. Another who was killed was Louis Bartbou, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. The assassin was a member of Mihailoff's Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation. The attentat was organized by the Croatian revolutionary Ustasha movement which operated from Italy. The tact that a Macedonian killed the Serbian king was interpreted as a revenge of the Macedonians for the king's brutal rule in Macedonia. The event gained wide publicity in the American and international press and was debated at the League of Nations in Geneva. Chernozemsky who was killed on the spot by a French officer was hailed by Macedonians in America as a hero and martyr.
The violent end of a Thilkaii dictator resulted also in strained relations between several ethnic groups. Louis Adamic, who in his writings had predicted such an end for King Alexander, was attacked by the king's defenders, particularly by some Serbian and Yugoslav-oriented papers. Some of these papers were subsidized by the Belgrade government. [4]
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I. The "Popular Front" in America
In 1935 the Comintern in Moscow ordered all Communist parties in the world to start collaborating with all anti-fascist groups and individuals. Ceorgi Dimitrov, the leader of the Comintern, having established relations with the leading American leftists, instructed them to utilize services of sympathizers, particularly the left-wing writers. [5]
Dimitrov especially praised the work of George Pirinsky. This was publicized in the Daily Worker; in its issue of August 31, 1935, Pirinsky appealed to American Bulgarians to heed the call for action by their countryman Dimitrov. The weekly Narodna Volya (People's Will) an organ of Pirinsky's Macedonian American People's League, frequently writing about Dimitrov, constantly appealed for creation of a Popular Front in America. In 1937 Pirinsky was held under deportation warrant by the U.S. Department of Justice on a charge of illegal entry, but the charge was subsequently dropped.
By 1939 the Communist Party of Yugoslavia also embarked on a Popular Front policy and started to pay increased attention to its active supporters among the immigrants in America. On the eve of World War II the Yugoslav Communist Party, led by Josip Broz Tito, was well organized and became more active abroad. Immigrants in the United States and Canada were instructed to collaborate with the Bulgarian and other Slavic Communist organizations and leftist groups. When in late August 1939 the Soviet government signed a pact with Nazi Germany (which had been the main target of attack by the Popular Front), the Communists in America wore caught by surprise. Now they adopted a new line, namely that America should remain strictly neutral in the European war that broke out in September 1939. On December 3, 1939, a conference of delegates of many Slavic organizations, with a generous sprinkling of Communists, took place in Pittsburgh to discuss future actions. In all such gatherings the Bulgarians were well represented. [6]
II. World War II Period
In early April 1941 Hitler's armies, together with their allies, swept into Yugoslavia and Greece. Tbe Bulgarian army marched
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into Macedonia and parts of Serbia proper. It seemed that the old dream of uniting all of Macedonia was finally a reality. Bulgaria as a member of the Axis powers annexed Yugoslav and Greek Aegean territories. Remembering the fate of their fatherland at the end of World War I, the Bulgarians in spite of their joy over the liberation of Macedonia were apprehensive. The Serbian and Greek ethnic press immediately started a vicious campaign against the American Bulgarians; branding them as supporters of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
In late June 1941 the Germans began their invasion of the Soviet Union and in his battle for the survival of the Soviet state Stalin appealed for help from Communist and Popular Front members in Europe and in America. Tito and his Communist partisans started to wage a guerrilla war against the Germans and Bulgarians in Yugoslavia, and he included under his sponsorship the Communists in Macedonia. In America the Bulgarian and Macedonian leftists formed a common front with aff other pro-Tito South Slav groups.
Soviet General Alexander Gundorov, president of the All Slavic Committee in Moscow, appealed to the American Stavs to get organized and help the Soviet Union which was fighting tor survival. A mass meeting of various Slavic representatives was held in Gary, Indiana, on September 2, 1941. The Macedonians were also present. The principal speaker was Ceorge Pirinsky. [7]
These activities received a boost when after December 1941 the United States entered World War II and began to send massive military aid to its new ally, the Soviet Union. A huge All-Slavic Congress convened in Detroit on April 25 and 28, 1942. Some twenty-five hundred delegates represented all Slavic ethnic groups. The congress received telegrams from the president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Kalinin, and from President Roosevelt who assured the delegates that "America is proud of its Slavic citizens." To this the delegates responded with an enthusiastic telegram claiming to speak in the name of "fifteen million Americans of Slavic descent." [8]
It was in Detroit on this occasion that the American Slav Congress was founded. Its purpose was to operate as a powerful pressure group in behalf of Soviet foreign policy within the
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United States. Its organ became The Slavic American. The American Slav Congress was actually a subsidiary of the All Slavic Committee in Moscow. Members of the American Slav Congress were the Macedonian-American People's League and the Bulgarian-American People's League whose president was Victor Sharenkoff. The president of the ASC was Leo Krzycki (of Polish descent) while the secretary general became George Pirinsky. He was for years the most active of all the leaders of this movement: He showed fanatical devotion to the cause.
The cause prospered in America because of America's alliance with the Soviet Union. Pirinsky and a host of other Bulgarians spared no effort in getting the support of the Slavic masses for the Soviet Union and Communist-led liberation movements in the homelands. To show this support some sixty thousand Slavic Americans in Soldiers Field in Chicago answered the call of the American Slav Congress on July 19, 1942. The Bulgarians and Macedonians were also present and "outstanding Americans were induced to sponsor this and other meetings of the American Slav Congress in line with the spirit of American-Soviet cooperation at the time." [9]
A great majority of Bulgarians in America, were loyal to the U.S. government and supported the war effort. Thousands of them joined the armed forces and fought with distinction. Hundreds were killed and wounded on many fronts. On the home front among the Slavic workers, who comprised fifty-three percent of the work force in the heavy and essential industries, thousands were Bulgarians.
During the weekend of July 17–18, 1943, the Michigan Slav Congress held a mass gathering of Slavs in Detroit. A meeting of some five thousand people was also held at Keyworth Stadium in Hamtrack and the left-oriented Bulgarians and Macedonians came together to discuss their wartime actions. The principal speaker at the stadium was George Pirinsky. [10]
III. The Dilemma Goes On
The delegates of the Macedonian left participated also on August 7, 1943, in the mass gathering at the Slovenian National Home in Cleveland where Louis Adamic and Zlatko Baloković
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founded the United Committee of South Slavic Americans. Adamic was elected its president while several Bulgarians and Macedonians joined its national board. The main purpose of the Committee was to promote the cause of a Communist Yugoslav federation under Tito. One of its republics would be Macedonia.
In the same year Adamic's My Native Land was published. It was hailed by the Daily Worker and other Communist and leftist papers. In this controversial book Adamic advocated the establishment of a Yugoslav or Balkan federation which would be "a republic within the Soviet Union, and would most likely be headed by Tito or Dimitroff." Or, as he wrote, "there may be a number of small Soviet republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, etc." [11]
The role of Adamic, Baloković, and Pirinsky was gratefully acknowledged by the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia which met at the Bosnian town of Jajce in Conununist-controlled territory on November 29, 1943. This event is regarded as the beginning of the Communist Yugoslav Republic. The Council sent a message of thanks to the South Slavic leaders in America. Tito himself later, in March 1944, sent a letter addressed to Adamic and a message to "dear brothers across the ocean." [12]
By the end of November and beginning of December 1943 during the Teheran Conference (Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin attending) the U.S. government recognized Tito's National Liberation Front and pledged his fighting partisans military and diplomatic support. This encouraged leftist sentiment among the South Slavs in America even more and increased the dilemma of many Bulgarians and other non-Communist South Slavs. Various leftist organizations and hundreds of tireless activists collected large sums of money, great amounts of food, clothing, and medicine for the partisans in Yugoslavia. Baloković headed the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief for the people in the homeland and in Allied refugee camps. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was the honorary president of this relief commitee. Over $750,000 were collected in the United States in cash and millions of dollars worth of material aid. A substantial amount was donated by American Bulgarians and Maceadonians. [13]
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Closely related to the American Slav Congress was the International Workers Order, a Communist front organization with some 160,000 members. It had special sections for the Bulgarian and individual South Slavic groups. The Bulgarians were well represented at the second congress of the American Slav Congress assembled (with some twenty-five hundred delegates) in Pittsburgh during September 23-34, 1944. The South Slavs comprised a majority. They met in an atmosphere of jubilation over the victories of the advancing Soviet armies in East Europe. Again the speakers stressed that the Congress represented fifteen million Slavs. The entire war industry depended on them. One million Slavs were fighting in the U.S. armed forces. The guest speakers included Harold I. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior. [14]
With their mother country fighting on the side of Germany, loyal non-leftist Bulgarians who abstained from all pro-Soviet activities found themselves in a difficult position. The Bulgarian and other leftist papers labeled them pro-German and anti-American. The Macedonian Patriotic Organization still advocated the cause of an independent and united Macedonia "where all the nationalities will have equal rights and duties." As expressed in their weekly, the Macedonian Tribune, they continued to oppose the aims of Greece and Yugoslavia to retain parts of Macedonia and the goal of the Bulgarian government to absorb all Macedonia within Bulgaria.
The non-leftist Bulgarians were disturbed by the whole campaign of defamation that was waged against them. They tried to explain to the American public why Bulgaria under King Boris sided with the Axis powers. Thus the Bulgarian Bureau of Information in Oak Park, Illinois, attempted in various publications to defend the cause of a free non-Communist Bulgaria. [15] On the other hand, leftist publications like Narodna Volya and Trudova Macedonia and the Bulgarian Telegraphic Agency propagated establishment of a Communist Bulgaria. They supported the pro-Tito Macedonian Liberation Front in occupied Yugoslavia which fought for a Macedonian republic within a Yugoslav feneration.
In September 1944 the Soviet army overran Bulgaria. A Communist-dominated coalition government was installed in Sofia
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and it declared war on Cermany. A few months later the whole of Yugoslav Macedonia came under Tito's rule. After his victory in May 1943, a federal republic was proclaimed in Belgrade in November of the same year and Macedonia became one of its six federated republics with a capital in Skopje. Tito and his Macedonian collaborators now claimed that the Macedonian question was solved once and for all.
During the summer of 1945 the Macedonian Patriotic Organization printed a book The Case for an Autonomous Macedonia. The old Macedonian problem was presented entirely through the eyes of foreigners: French, English and American scholars, missionaries, and writers. This publication came out at the time when many South Slavs and Americans protested against the bold leftist pro-Soviet campaign and the authorities in Washington became apprehensive about the rising leftist anti-American propaganda.
The third American Slav Congress convened at Manhattan Center in New York during September 20-22, 1946, with some seventeen hundred delegates present. George Pirinsky, the executive secretary of the ASC, delivered the keynote speech its which he sharply criticized American foreign policy and the alleged American "intervention" in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The main speakers included the Soviet general Gundorov and the Bulgarian Communist from Sofia, Tsols Dragoicheva. She brought the greetings of Georgi Dimitrov who now ruled Bulgaria, having returned from Moscow after many years of absence. The Yugoslav Communist delegates were denied entry to New York by U.S. authorities; the relations between the United States and Yugoslavia were at a low point after Tito's forces had shot down two U.S. airplanes over Slovenia, killing several Americans. Stalin sent his greetings in a telegram to this congress Izvestia in Moscow on September 24 published a very favorable account of the congress quoting Pirinsky, Adamic, and others who in their speeches denounced the U.S. "imperialist" policies. [16] This was the time of the "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union. In September 1946 Bulgaria was proclaimed a People's Republic and the young King Simeon was expelled from the country. The relations between Bulgaria — now a docile Soviet satelite and the United States became
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very strained and for a long time there were no diplomatic relations. In Bulgaria many Bulgarians were accused of being American spies and condemned by "People's Courts" to death or years of imprisonment, while thousands of anti-Communists were either liquidated or sent to concentration camps. As in Yugoslavia, all political opposition was eliminated. By violating wartime agreements, the Russians gained strict control of the Balkans, and while U.S. authorities started to investigate the leftist activities during and after the war, Pirinsky and his men would not cease their determined course of action. Thus on the occasion of Dimitrov's sixty-fifth birthday, the Narodna Volya devoted its June 20, 1947 Issue to him. The paper reported that the Bulgarian-American People's Union sent him a letter stating: "We Bulgarians in the United States wish you health and a long life to lead the Bulgarian people..." [17]
The Bulgarians in America were by various means induced to send food parcels, clothing, and other items to the homeland. The extent of this aid is evident from the report of the U.S. Department of Commerce which made public the fact that between July 1, 1947 and June 30, 1948 alone $3,747,000 worth in parcels was sent to Bulgaria. The value of parcels sent to Yugoslavia during the same period was $4,427,000. Considering the fact that there are more than ten times us many immigrants from Yugoslavia as there are from Bulgaria, the amount of this kind of aid to Bulgaria was indeed substantial.
In May 1949, the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Attorney General branded the American Slav Congress and its affiliates as "a Moscow inspired and directed federation of Communist-dominated organisations" seeking by methods of propaganda to influence the ten million people in this country of Slavic birth or descent. Its aim was, they claimed, "to utilize Slavic organizations in the United States as a pro-Soviet fifth column." [18]
In June 1948 Stalin expelled Tito and his Communist Party from the ranks of Cominform (which replaced the defunct Comintern) and this Soviet-Yugoslav break caused a split within the Communist ranks in the United States. A majority of their organizations in the United States sided with Stalin and took an anti-Tito position. Neither this split nor the condemnations
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by U.S. authorities could deter the American Slav Congress from holding its fourth congress in Chicago during September 24-26, 1948. However, shortly before that Pirinsky was arrested. The Soviet government sent a telegram to the American Slav Congress protesting Pirinsky's arrest and hailing him as "the fighter against fascism, and for peace and democracy." The congress stood up for Henry Wallace as the presidential candidate on the ticket of the Progressive Patty. The speakers and various papers supporting the American Slav Congress accused the United States of planning a new war against the Communist states in Europe. Pirinsky was later released and, while fighting deportation, continued his campaign against American foreign policy. And on March 14, 1949, the Bulgarian Home Service radioed from Sofia that "the American Slav Congress condemned the Atlantic Pact project." It quoted Pirinsky still as the "general secretary" of the ASC who denounced NATO and American goals. [19]
During the years of investigation and hearings in Washington, the reports and documents printed in the course of what sometimes seemed a "witch hunt" against the radical activists, included all details of activities and published names of all the people involved. Among the several Bulgarian and Macedonian left-front organizations mentioned was the Bulgarian-American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born. Along with various Slavic committees for the protection of the foreign bom it was a part of the nation-wide American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born. The authorities labeled it a hard-core Communist front movement whose main purpose was to prevent deportation of leftist activists. In spite of these efforts some South Slavic leftists were either deported or left the country voluntarily. In fact, immediately after the war many relinquished their American citizenship to assume government posts in Communist-ruled countries. [20]
Many American Bulgarians and their fellow Slavs were perplexed by the investigations. Except for hard-core active hundreds of them were far from being Communists and had only followed what had been in wartime the official American policy of alliance with the Soviets. A historian of immigration
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may be surprised to find even the name of the old friend of Slavic fellow citizens, Emily Greene Balch, on a list of left-front activists. [21]