Metodi Shatorov

Biography

Shatorov graduated from the local Bulgarian Exarchate's junior school in Prilep and afterwards from the men's high school in Bitola. He also attended a pedagogic school in Skopie 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 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 Yugoslav Communist Party (YCP) since 1940. After the Bulgarian takeover of Vardarska Banovina in April 1941, the Macedonian communists fell in the sphere of influence of the BCP under Sharlo's leadership. The Macedonian Regional Committee refused to remain in contact with the YCP and linked up with BCP as soon as the invasion of Yugoslavia started. Sharlo refused to distribute the proclamation of the YCP which called for military action against the Bulgarians. He also became prominent with his anti-Serbian political views. The local committee of the YCP realised that the Bulgarian army liberated the local population from the oppressive and despised Serbian bondage. Shatorov, a dedicated anti-fascist, was credited with the slogan "One people, one country, one party", by which he approved the Bulgarian invasion.

While the Bulgarian Communists avoided organising mass armed uprising against the Bulgarian authorities in Vardar Macedonia, the Yugoslav Communists insisted on an armed revolt. Upon the decision of the Comintern and Joseph Stalin himself the Macedonian Communists were reattached to CPY. The Sharlo's leadership was terminated, but the vestiges of his policy among part of the 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 the Sharlo's pro-Bulgarian policy.

Consequently, for his actions Sharlo was expelled from the YCP and in the late 1941 he moved again to Sofia, where Shatorov 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.

Sharlo was heavyly wounded and disappeared under unknown circumstances on September 5, 1944 in a battle between partisans and gendarmerie on Milevi skali in the Rhodopi mountain. As Shatorov was previously sentenced to death by a Tito's tribunal, there are serious indications that he was killed by Josip Broz Tito's agents (allegedly in agreement with the International Department of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party) as a politically inconvenient leader. 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 September, 11, i.e. several days after the old regime's end, and until then he was not discovered neither by his comrades nor by the new authorities.

Shatorov's supporters in Vardar Macedonia, called Sharlisti, were systematically exterminated by the YCP since the autumn of 1944, and heavily repressed for their anti-Yugoslav and pro-Bulgarian political positions.

Significance

After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy for establishing a common Balkan Federative Republic and forced the creation of a distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness as a bridge between the two states. Hence, the Shatorov's policy was not in favour in both countries. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian Communist Party decided at a plenum in 1958 to change its course on the Macedonian Question. Afterwards, the concept for a Macedonian ethnicity and language was abandoned and Shatorov was fully rehabilitated in Bulgaria. After the breakup of Yugoslavia and the fall of Communism he was partially rehabilitated in the Republic of Macedonia only in 2005.