Metodi Shatorov

Early years

Shatorov was born on January 10, 1897, in Prilep, then in the Manastir vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He graduated from the local Bulgarian Exarchate's junior school in Prilep and afterwards from the Bulgarian men's high school in Bitola.^[7] He also attended the Bulgarian pedagogic school in Skopje in 1914-1915. In 1918 the Bulgarian Army withdrew from Vardar Macedonia and Serbia annexed the area. He immediately emigrated to Bulgaria, where he became a member of the BCP in 1920. Furthermore, Sharlo was arrested for his participation in the September Uprising in 1923. In 1925 he became also a member of the IMRO (United) - de facto a BCP creation. As a significant party worker, he grew as a functionary of the Comintern and a member of the BCP Central Committee. He was imprisoned several times and emigrated to the Soviet Union for political reasons. During the Spanish Civil War Sharlo went to Paris as a coordinator of BCP.

During WWII

During World War II the Comintern sent him back to Vardar Macedonia (being then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia under the name 'Vardarska Banovina') to serve as a Secretary of the Macedonian Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) since 1940. After the Bulgarian takeover of Vardar Macedonia in April 1941, the local communists fell in the sphere of influence of the BCP under Sharlo's leadership.^[8] The Macedonian Regional Committee refused to remain in contact with the CPY and linked up with BCP as soon as the invasion of Yugoslavia started.^[9] The BCP supported the idea of a independent and unified Macedonia, contrary to the stance of the CPY.^[1] Sharlo refused to distribute the proclamation of the CPY which called for military action against the Bulgarians.^[10]

In May 1941, Sharlo issued a open letter in which he tracked the continuity of the fight for national and political liberation of the Macedonians, as a distinct ethnic group, to the Ottoman-era IMRO, personified in its leaders like Goce Delchev, Gjorche Petrov and Yane Sandanski, and condemned the Bulgarian regime for presenting the Macedonian culture as Bulgarian. Also he expressed his view to the BCP that the discriminational debates over to what extent the Macedonians were distinct from the Bulgarians had to be ended. However, another of his writings, could be interpreted as for him the concept who are the Macedonians was closer to the old view of the IMRO for a supranational, rather than an ethnic group. Sharlo urged for a fight against the Bulgarian imperialism, while he accepted the occupation of Macedonia as a done deal with assenting by plenty of the Macedonian and Bulgarian population.^[1]

He became prominent with his anti-Serbian political views and adopted a stance in favour of a Soviet Macedonia and of waiting for the Red Army, thus got in a firm conflict with the CPY.^[11]^[5] While the BCP avoided organising mass armed uprising against the Bulgarian authorities in Vardar Macedonia, the CPY insisted on an armed revolt. Upon the decision of the Comintern and Joseph Stalin himself the Macedonian communists were reattached to CPY.

Consequently, for his actions Sharlo was expelled from the CPY and in the late 1941 he moved again to Sofia, where he began working as one of the Bulgarian resistance movement leaders (under the nickname 'Panayot'). He was among the most active organizers of the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews. Shatorov played an active role in organizing terrorist attacks, such as the assassination of general Hristo Lukov. In the spring of 1943, he became a partisan in the "Panayot Volov"" detachment. Sharlo was appointed commander of the Pazardzhik Insurgent Operational Zone of the so-called People's Liberation Insurgent Army (NOVA).

Sharlo's leadership was terminated, but the vestiges of his policy among part of the Macedonian communist activists were preserved. Despite his expulsion, the new executive bodies of the Macedonian Regional Committees continued to share Shatorov's ideas until 1943. This policy changed since 1943 with the arrival of the Tito's envoy Montenegrin Serb Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo. He began in earnest to organise armed resistance to the Bulgarian rule and sharply criticized Sharlo's pro-Bulgarian policy.^[12]

Death and aftermath

Sharlo was heavily wounded and died under unknown circumstances after September 5, 1944, when a battle between partisans and gendarmerie on Milevi Skali in the Western Rhodope mountains, between Septemvri and Velingrad occurred. As Shatorov was previously subjected to devastating criticism from the CPY, there are alleged suggestion that he was killed by Yugoslav communists' order as a politically inconvenient leader.^[13] This happened only several days before the Communist coup d'état of September, 9 (backed by the Red Army) installed a new government of the Fatherland Front. As per the autopsy report, he died after 9 September, i.e. after the old regime's end, and until then he was not discovered neither by his comrades nor by the new authorities.^[14]

Shatorov's supporters in Vardar Macedonia called Sharlisti, were criticised by the CPY, and after WWII repressed for their anti-Yugoslav political positions. After the breakup of Yugoslavia and the fall of Communism he was partially rehabilitated in current North Macedonia only in 2005.

Biography

Early years

During WWII

Death and aftermath

Gallery

Footnotes

External links

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