The Anti-State Newspaper in the US

The ideology that was affirmed in print matches the official doctrine of North Macedonia. The effect of the actions that America took was striking. In a series of reports, Trud reveals both lesser known and unknown facts about the struggles of Macedonian-Bulgarians between 1944 and 1991.

It is highly unlikely that there is a Bulgarian citizen who is not interested in the Macedonian propaganda in Bulgaria and who hasn’t heard of The People’s Will, a quasi-underground newspaper published with the mission to spread propaganda. The ideology found in its pages is identical to the official doctrine of North Macedonia, and accordingly it is filled with anti-Bulgarian rhetoric. Nevertheless, the newspaper is officially distributed in Bulgaria with few people knowing that it’s been declared an anti-state publication in America. The story of the newspaper is actually a story of Bulgarian communist foolishness and carelessness regarding the Macedonian question.

The newspaper was first published in 1938 in Detroit under the guidance of the Bulgarian Communist Party. During this period, the paper was approved by the Comintern Macedonianism; a large number of Bulgarian immigrants to the U.S. and Canada came from Macedonia. Thus, the newspaper officially claimed it was a “newspaper for the Bulgarians and Macedonians in America.” The newspaper did not have any real influence until 1944 and was published with the intent of spreading propaganda.

With the establishment of communist regimes in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia by the end of 1944, things started to change drastically. At the time, the new Yugoslav dictator Josip Broz Tito, had no American support, and BCP did him a favor. The BCP’s newspaper hired editor Viktor Sharenkov under the authority of the Macedonian-American national assembly, chaired by Smile Voydanoff and secretaries Georgi Zaikov and Nikola Kovachev.* The newspaper and its publishers fully condoned dissemination of Yugoslav anti-Bulgarian propaganda in the United States. For example, they organized a fundraiser to build a hospital in Yugoslav Macedonia, but the funds went missing. They also assisted Dimitar Vlahov on his visit to the U.S. and supported the position he took against Macedonian-Bulgarian immigration before Macedonian national organizations, despite efforts to take control of these organizations. The Macedonian-American National Union received medals from Yugoslav authorities in 1946 for these accomplishments.

It is difficult to speculate where this worsening situation would have gone if U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark had not released a list on Dec. 5, 1947 of 90 organizations the American government believed to be “anti-state” and disloyal to the idea of freedom and democracy. This list included the Macedonian-American National Union and the aforementioned newspaper. On May 28, 1948, the U.S. government added 32 names to the list of anti-state organizations in the U.S. This occurred after an FBI investigation found that all 122 organizations contributed to the Communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe. This is how radar systems were illegally delivered to Yugoslavia for military purposes. The American press dismissed information about the misuse of donations and the fact that a relatively small percentage of the money raised was used as it was intended. New organizations emerged, including the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans and the American Slav Congress, which worked to spread Macedonian ideology overseas.

The effect of the actions that America took was striking. The Macedonian-American National Union decided to hold its own congress in Detroit on Sept. 5, 1948. One hour into the congress, not a single delegate had arrived other than members of the leadership. An intense search for local Macedonian immigrants began, and after several hours, the congress was founded with a total of 27 additional delegates. Voydanoff’s report was so confusing that no one understood it. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief reported that 479 people refused to read his paper because they didn’t share his ideas. It was rumored that this was because the newspaper was written in a ‘Slavic’ language.

To understand how irrational the Macedonian-American National Union’s behavior was, one can compare it to the 27th Congress of the Macedonian Patriotic Organization that took place on Sept. 5 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The banquet hall held only a few hundred people, so an additional wing was built. The Macedonia Liberation Movement raised $7,200 and in so doing, drew attention to the rough situation in Bulgaria.

This example proved there was no support for the BCP union. A few weeks later, BCP union secretary Zaikov was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for subversive activity against the U.S. He was later extradited to Bulgaria. Although the Macedonian-American National Union was dissolved, the newspaper continued to publish.

In the period that followed, the newspaper reported on the BCP’s twists and turns over the Macedonian question. First it defended a pro-Bulgarian Macedonianism counterweight to Yugoslavia. But when the BCP returned to historical reality in the early 1960s, you could see a change in the newspaper. The newspaper organized cultural and educational activity among fellow Bulgarian-Macedonians.

The newspaper did not have a large readership in the United States because it remained close to the Communist regime in Sofia. Consequently, the newspaper stopped publishing in 1978. Yugoslavia took advantage of the closure and in October 1980, took over publication under the paper’s original name in Sydney, Australia. A year later, the newspaper moved to London where it resumed publication until April 1992. It was later published in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. Georgi Hristov, known as Jan Pirinski, served as editor-in-chief until his death.

The fact that the newspaper spread Macedonian ideas was probably the reason it depended on the authorities in Skopje. This was confirmed publicly in 2021 when a North Macedonian journalist named Vele Mitanoski wrote about Pirinski’s death on Facebook and said that right after Pirinski joined the Bulgarian intelligence agency in 2002, the first document he signed was a paid order to transfer funds to the newspaper, adding that former Macedonian President Kiro Gligorov arranged for this aid.

Mitanoski was a correspondent with the Yugoslav Information Agency Tanug and later an information agency director and official in the office of public relations. He’s known in Macedonia as ‘the person who knows too much’. He writes about Skopje’s long intervention in Bulgaria’s inner affairs and the financing of Macedonian propaganda and separatism in our country.

The history of the newspaper demonstrates the long and irrational path Bulgarian national politics took on the Macedonian question. The case of the newspaper is an example of how Bulgaria has disrupted the Macedonian liberation movement since 1944 by helping a Macedonian newspaper. However, by declaring the paper to be anti-state, the United States supported the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia.

*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, the names of Georgi Zaykov and Nikola Kovachev could not be independently verified.