THE FIFTH PLENIUM

The 5th plenium of CK of KPG was held toward the end of the month of December 1948 in the village P'pli in liberated Prespa. This plenium was called personally by Nikos Zaharijadis because he had made a report analyzing the battles and political situation to date. Among the other things he said he noted that it was time for the KPG to stop hiding the facts about the Macedonians and Macedonia. In his report, he recognized that the Macedonians in the battles that had taken place gave their all fighting heroically together with the Greek people, even though the Macedonians still did not know what they were fighting for, what rights they would have after the liberation of Greece.

At the 5th plenium, he noted the Macedonian people had to gain greater rights to form their own communist party but just for now to form KOEM, Communist Organization of Aegean Macedonia.

Zaharijadis also noted that two people from the KPG politburo were expelled, one from the left and the other as a right wing opportunist. The right wing one was Markos Vafiadis.

General Markos was expelled because he made a proposal that the DAG units should no longer wage a front line battle. Rather, all the big formations should be broken up into smaller groups to lead relentless artisan battles until better conditions were achieved. Because of this attitude, General Markos was called an opportunist by Zaharijadis and was removed from the role of commander of the DAG armed units and president of the Temporary Government. He was sent to the Peoples socialist republics.

The other expelled member from the politburo was Hrisa Hadzhivasiliu, who had opposed the Macedonian question.

In a later session, Zaharijadis mentioned that the victory was ours for so long as we had at least 20,000 fighters. He mentioned that we Macedonians wanted to have our own batallion. At the plenium he approved the Macedonians to form a brigade and a division but did not mention who would command it. Would it be Vajanas or someone similar?

It was as if Zaharijadis had forgotten that there was nowhere else to get more fighters.

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