The strongest criticism of the Bulgarian Party policy was articulated on the very same
day by Angel Cemerski, the President of the CC of the League of Communists of Macedonia.
While speaking on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the beginning of the revolution
and struggle for liberation in Macedonia, Cemerski sharply condemned the wartime policy of
the Bulgarian Party as well as those Macedonian communists who adopted the Bulgarian line.
Cemerski said, "the decision of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to begin armed struggle,
with the clear platform of a new Yugoslavia as a union of equal, sovereign, and fraternal
peoples, was an historical moment for the Macedonian people."
However, in those "fateful times," in
the year of 1941, according to Cemerski: at the head of the Provincial Committee of the Communist
Party of Macedonia was a person who not only was incapable of understanding the given situation,
but also tried through his policies to prevent the struggle of the Macedonian people.
At the very beginning of the occupation Metodi Shatorov-Sharlo broke contacts with the
Yugoslav Communist Party and unallowably annexed the Macedonian Party organizations,
joining them to the Bulgarian Workers Party (Communists) and thereby trying to break links
between our people [Macedonians] and the other people of Yugoslavia. His directives
to wait [with the armed struggle] even after the perfidious German attack on the Soviet Union,
as well as his slogans, which did not conform to the true situation at the moment,
not only disoriented the Party rank and file, but also clearly demonstrated that he accepted
the occupation of Macedonia by the greater Bulgarian fascists as a fait accompli,
and consequently accepted the greater-Bulgarian policy on Macedonia. In such activities,
he [Shatorov] was supported by the leadership of the Bulgarian Workers Party, and this
demonstrates clearly what the position of this leadership in that period was.
Today, from a distance of thirty-years, it is not difficult to see what consequences
an acceptance of the Shatorov platform could have had for our [Macedonian] individuality
and independence. By evoking the wartime Yugoslav-Bulgarian controversy over Macedonia,
Cemerski reprimanded the Bulgarian Party leadership for its role during the war. In the
remark that "even at the moment of the perfidious German attack on the Soviet Union,"
the Bulgarian Party policy was not correct, Cemerski not only stresses the contribution
of Macedonian Communists to the struggle against the German war machine, but he also denies
the ability of the Bulgarian Party leadership to evaluate correctly the situation in
Macedonia and to consider the Macedonian question as an element of the revolutionary
struggle in the Balkans.