14. PROGRESSIVE IDEAS
 

Now is the time for new thinking and approaches to the issues raised within this dissertation.

FIRST: we should disregard all the past dogmas that are at variance with the factual historic record. There is only one historic truth which requires a single thinking and understanding of fundamental points. It is obvious that the Bulgarian National Liberation Movement in Macedonia, both religio-cultural (Exarchate) and revolutionary (IMRO), was powerful simply because it had its own ethnic foundation. The Serbian and Greek religio-educational propaganda lacked any parallel foundation and accordingly had to resort to coercion to create Serbomans and Grecomans in Macedonia. When this failed they reverted to terrorism, then to the physical partition of Macedonia, after which they employed all available means to denationalize the Bulgarian-Macedonians.

SECOND: we should not fail to revise and acknowledge our past erroneous perceptions. Within the span of 32 years it was necessary for me to change my views about certain leaders of the MLM to maintain consistency with the historic truth, as it became available.

THIRD: we should be particularly wary of placing reliance on many old BCP documents concerned with the national question. This uncertainty should also extend to all documents produced within the period of sectarian-dogmatism and the Chervenkov "personality cult". We must be even more suspicious of the plethora of recent memoirs, and politico-propagandist publications in which leaders are embellished or slandered. The latter distortions are found in many current scientific and artistic titles.

FOURTH: we should critically evaluate all primary source material used in writing our history. Of immediate concern are the foreign falsified theses and altered documents. For example the original findings of the Serbian academic Iovan Tsviyit on the ethnographies of Macedonia were altered several times in the span of only 15 years to agree with the prevailing political requirements of the Serbians. These alterations (falsifications) cannot obviously be classed as source materials. In fact Tsviyit's correct findings are stated in the publication of the Carnegie Commission [34] (1914). Therefore to analyse the correct Serbian position we need to examine independent (non-Serbian) reports and the documents of the YCP from the early 1920s and before.

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FIFTH: we should be careful of formalism and Left terminology, which while part of our normal socialist schooling, often shrouds foreign, anti-Bulgarian propaganda with its underlying capacity to erode our national and patriotic education. Also, and often at present, instead of actually invoking a true class-party approach we represent old material under this new philosophy. But we should all remember that the ideology of stagnation, namely an accumulation of dogmas and their imposition, ultimately ends in the use of force, first over the mind, then over the physical body. For example the imposition of the concept of a Macedonian Nation, in the past and presently, is in reality national oppression and defacto denationalization. During the autumn of 1944 it claimed its numerous and treasured victims throughout the 3 parts of Macedonia. The initiative to promote the historic truth, the mistakes and vascillations until the April Plenum, the attempt to maintain the remnants of sectarian dogmatism and national nihilism, are crucial lessons for our universal advancement.
 

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34. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Report of the International Commission: to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars. Washington DC, Publication No. 4 (1914).