Metodija Andonov-Čento

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Metodija Andonov-Čento
Методија Андонов-Ченто
People's Liberation Army of Macedonia); Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia

Metodija Andonov-Čento (Macedonian: Методија Андонов-Ченто; Bulgarian: Методи Андонов-Ченто; 17 August 1902 – 24 July 1957) was a Macedonian statesman, the first president of the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Macedonia and of the People's Republic of Macedonia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia after the Second World War. In the Bulgarian historiography he is often considered a Bulgarian.[1][2][3] The name of Čento was a taboo in Yugoslav Macedonia, but he was rehabilitated during the 1990s, after the country gained its independence.[4]

Biography

Early life

Metodi Andonov was born in

pro-Bulgarian to an ethnic Macedonian.[8]

Young Čento with his parents.

In 1926 he opened a shop and was engaged in retail trade and politics. On 25 March 1930 he married Vasilka Spirova Pop Atanasova in

Axis Powers during their invasion of Yugoslavia
.

During World War II

Čento during his internment in a labour camp in Bulgaria.

After the capitulation of Yugoslavia, Čento was set free from prison and came in contact with the right-wing Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) activists and pro-Bulgarian political forces.[9] The Macedonian communists also fell in the sphere of influence of the Bulgarian Communist Party under Metodi Shatorov's leadership, with whom Čento was also in close contact. Although he received at that time an invitation to collaborate with the new Bulgarian authorities Čento refused, considering that idea unpromising and insisting on independence. In 1942 Čento began to sympathize with the resistance and his store was used as a front for the Macedonian Partisans, which prompted Bulgarian authorities to arrest him. By the end of 1942 he was interned in the inland of the country and later sent to a labor camp.

Čento with his family.

Upon his release in the fall of 1943, Čento met

IMRO activists, related to the Bulgarian Action Committees
, who he wanted to associate to the administration of the future state.

Čento's goal was to create a fully independent

Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, Josip Broz Tito's envoy to Macedonia and Lazar Koliševski, the leader of the ruling Communist Party of Macedonia
.

After World War II

Čento as a prisoner in Idrizovo.

The new communist authorities started a policy fully implementing the pro-Yugoslav line and took hard measures against the opposition. Čento publicly condemned the killings carried out by the authorities in parliament and sent a protest to the Macedonian Supreme Court. He supported the Skopje soldiers' rebellion when officers from the

SFRY, which lacked the ability of the constituent republics to leave the federation, he defiantly left the parliament in Belgrade. After disagreements with the policies of the new authorities, Čento resigned.[citation needed
]

In 1946, he went back to Prilep, where he established contacts with illegal anti-Yugoslav group, with ideas close to these of the banned

IMRO terrorist, who supported a pro-Bulgarian Independent Macedonia as envisaged by Ivan Mihailov.[15][16][17] He was sentenced to eleven years in prison under forced labor.[18] He spent more than 9 years in the Idrizovo
prison, but as a result of the conditions there, Čento became seriously ill and was released before the end of his sentence. In his hometown, he worked digging holes for telegraph poles to save his four children from starvation. He died at home on 24 July 1957 after sickness from torture in prison.

Legacy

Macedonia Square in Skopje

Metodija Andonov-Čento was rehabilitated in 1991 with a decision of the Supreme Court of Macedonia in which it annulled the verdict against Čento from 1946.[19] In 1992, his family and followers established a Čento Foundation, which initiated a lawsuit for damages against the Government of Macedonia. Before Čento was rehabilitated in 1991 in Macedonia he was often described by the Bulgarian communist historiography as a Bulgarian.[20] He is still considered as such by some Bulgarian historians.[21][22] A similar view has been expressed by Hugh Poulton and therefore criticized by Victor Friedman,[23] though this view still exists in the specialized literature.[24]

Čento had a son, Ilija, and a daughter, Marija.[25] Ilija authored a book My Father Metodija Andovo-Čento in 1999. In it, he states that his father identified as a Macedonian and fought for Macedonian unity.[26]

VMRO-DPMNE commemorated him as a martyr for the Macedonian national cause and in their second term, he began to be regarded as the most important Macedonian statesman in modern Macedonian history. In 2010, a five-meter-tall marble statue was erected in his honor in Skopje, depicting him in civilian clothes.[19]

See also

  • President of the Republic of Macedonia

References

  1. ^ Rankovich himself opposes Cento's thesis of brotherhood with the Bulgarian people with an address to Pavel Shatev, already Minister of Justice, at a reception with Tito after the first session of the Chamber of Nations: "What are you looking for here, Bulgarian dog?" Cento witnessed this outburst. Returning from Belgrade, he declared to his friends: "Brothers, we are deceived! You know, we are Bulgarians and we thought like Macedonians to cross the bridge. Alas! There is no life with the Serbs". Коста Църнушанов, "Македонизмът и съпротивата на Македония срещу него", София, 1992 година, Унив. издателство "Св. Климент Охридски, стр 275-282.
  2. ^ "New Macedonia" under the heading "Against Cento's theses" writes: "We must fight against the Great Bulgarians, who today cannot openly say that Macedonia is a Bulgarian country and that Macedonians are Macedonian Bulgarians"... The most cruel provocation against the political understandings of Metodi Cento, which the YKP qualifies as Bulgarian, was carried out with the killing of 54 prominent Bulgarians in Veles. Славе Гоцев, Борби на българското население в Македония срещу чуждите аспирации и пропаганда 1878-1945, София, 1991 година, Унив. издателство "Св. Климент Охридски, стр. 183-187.
  3. ^ "After 45 years in the Republic of Macedonia, voices were heard for the rehabilitation of the first Speaker of the National Assembly, Metodi Andonov-Cento, but no longer as a Bulgarian, but as a "Macedonian"... Here are the reasons for the massacre of Metodi Andonov-Cento, one of the most - the bright personalities in the post-war development of Vardar Macedonia, allowed herself in those dark times of the Tito-Kolishev genocide against Bulgaria to express a different from the YKP, essentially Bulgarian-phile position. This is actually what the cational seal in Skopje is trying to hide, making timid attempts to his rehabilitation, but hiding the truth of why he was actually sentenced in such an unscrupulous manner to 11 years in prison." Веселин Ангелов, Премълчани истини: лица, събития и факти от българскарта история 1941-1989, библиотека Сите Българи заедно, Анико, 2005, стр. 42-44.
  4. ^ Stefan Troebst, “Historical Politics and Historical 'Masterpieces' in Macedonia before and after 1991”, New Balkan Politics, 6 (2000/1). "The historians gave up the ideological premises of Tito’s and post-Tito’s time relatively quickly. Thus, in those parts of the “masterpiece”, whose content consisted of those Macedonian political organisations from the time before 1944 and their fight against the forces that wanted to divide Macedonia, they introduced currents and persons who were until then taboos because of the ideology of the Communist Party. This refers to people such as Boris Sarafov, one of the main actors of the Ilinden Uprising in 1903, who was until then excluded from the national pantheon under the suspicion that he was a “Bugarophil”; to Todor Aleksandrov, who from 1919 until his murder in 1924 was president of the Central Committee of VMRO and who brought it onto a pro-world course; to Aleksandrov’s anti-communist successor Ivan Mihajlov from 1924 to 1934, and who then became leader of the right wing of VMRO; to the anti-communist leader of the partisans Metodija Antonov – Cento; the national communist dissident Panko Brasnarov; the Bulgarian party official Metodija Shatorov – Sharlo, positioned in Skopje, a city that was then under Bulgarian occupation; and it also referred to the Macedonian national revolutionary Pavel Shatev."
  5. ISBN 3034301960
    , p. 65.
  6. ISBN 0801494931
    , p. 318.
  7. ISBN 978-0-521-59733-3
    , p. 229.
  8. ^ Коста Църнушанов. Обществено-политическата дейност на Методи Андонов—Ченто (непубликувана статия); сп. Македонски преглед, бр. 3, 2002 г. стр.101-113.
  9. ISBN 9731997857
    , p. 200.
  10. ISBN 3486580507
    , p. 247.
  11. ISBN 1443888494
    , p. 294.
  12. ISBN 1538119625
    , p. 148.
  13. ISBN 1850655340
    , p. 103.
  14. ^ The Law for the Protection of Macedonian National Honour was passed in 1945. The act allowed the sentencing of citizens for collaboration, pro-Bulgarian sympathies, and contesting Macedonia’s status within Yugoslavia. The latter charge was used to sentence Metodij Andonov-Čento who opposed the authorities’ decision to join the federation without reserving the right to a secession and criticised it for not putting enough emphasis on Macedonian culture. For more see: Communist dictatorship in Macedonia. The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1945-1992). Communist crimes. Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.
  15. ISBN 1556557698
    , p. 50.
  16. ^ Indiana Slavic Studies, Volume 10; Volume 48; Indiana University publications: Slavic and East European series. Russian and East European series, 1999, p. 75.
  17. ISBN 0801421861
    , p. 203.
  18. ISBN 1403997209
    , p. 89.
  19. ^
    ISBN 9789731997858
    , p. 200.
  20. ^ БКП, Коминтернът и македонският въпрос (1917-1946). Колектив, том 2, 1999, Гл. управление на архивите. Сборник. стр. 1246-1247.
  21. ^ Добрин Мичев, Македонският въпрос в Българо-югославските отношения (1944-1949). Университетско издателство "Св. Климент Охридски", 1994 г. стр. 77-86.
  22. ISBN 9544960708
    , стр. 184.
  23. ^ He is so eager to accept Bulgarian claims that he uncritically reproduces Bulgarian allegations without any indication of their context or veracity ("Who are the Macedonians?", Hugh Poulton 1995: 118 – 119). He even implies that Metodija Andonov - Čento, the first president of the Macedonian republic was a Bulgarophile rather than a Macedonian nationalist . For more see: "Macedonian Historiography, Language, and Identity, in the Context of the Yugoslav Wars of Succession", in Indiana Slavic Studies, Том 10; Том 48, Indiana University publications: Slavic and East European series Russian and East European series, Bloomington. p. 75.
  24. ISBN 0815340583
    , Macedonia, p. 808.
  25. ^ "Изложба за Ченто во Прилепскиот музеј" [Exhibition for Čento in the Prilep museum]. Sitel. 20 July 2017.
  26. ^ "Окупација 1941". Мојот татко Методија Андонов-Ченто. Skopje. 1999. p. 106. Категорично кажав дека не се чуствувам Бугарин, ами Македонец и дека не сум се борел за обединување со Бугарија, туку за обединување на Македонија и за националните права на Македонците.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

External links

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