Georgievski: Official history concealed partisan massacres of opponents

Former Prime Minister Ljubço Georgievski has brought renewed attention to a controversial issue concerning the way the history of Yugoslavia and the Second World War was written. In his latest statement, he claims that official educational programs spent decades obscuring the dark side of the partisan movement.

According to Georgievski, generations of students were not presented with a complete picture of events. He argues that the territory of the former Yugoslavia was engulfed in bloody conflicts that were far more complex than the traditional division between “the good” and “the “bad.”

He singles out Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular, where, according to him, the fiercest civil war took place during the Second World War. In that confrontation, Croats, Muslims, Serbs and partisans fought one another to the point of annihilation.

Georgievski focuses especially on the actions of partisan formations during 1942-1943.

“So, we understand and learn that the partisans, too, during 1942-1943, carried out mass massacres in Montenegro and Bosnia,” Georgievski said.

He says official school textbooks attributed the crimes solely to the Chetniks, while, in his assessment, historical facts show that the partisans also carried out brutal liquidations of civilians.

Georgievski links this chapter to what is known in history as the “leftist deviation.”

“Although in our textbooks the massacres were attributed only to the Chetniks, this now also has a name—the so-called leftist deviation. When the partisans, in practice, carried out massacres against the population that did not want to join them in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as many other myths surrounding that Yugoslav army,” he stressed.

Through these statements, the former prime minister also challenges the portrayal of the partisans as an infallible antifascist movement.

His criticism also extends to the way the military victories of the Yugoslav leadership at the time have been presented. Georgievski claims that major and unnecessary losses were often concealed behind the offensives that were frequently glorified.

“We understand that in all the offensives, the main victory of the General Staff and Tito was the heavy massacres of the partisan forces they had,” Georgievski concluded.

His views constitute a direct challenge to the historical interpretation constructed over decades. They fuel debate over the impact of ideological censorship and the romanticization of the victors on the way the history of these lands has been told.