CFM Files
United States Delegation Journal
USDel (PC) (Journal) 35
The meeting was devoted to two lengthy speeches by the Soviet and Yugoslav Delegates. M. Novikov (USSR) said that the Soviet Delegation categorically opposed the Greek demand which, although not put in concrete terms, appeared to be for one tenth of Bulgaria. He said that to accept such a claim would undermine the basis of peace in the Balkans. He then stated that the Soviet Delegation believed that the Bulgarian proposal for the cession of Western Thrace to Bulgaria was worthy of serious consideration. Bulgaria had been forcibly deprived of this territory in 1919 with disastrous economic results to Bulgaria and to the area itself. He referred to the series of decisions taken between 1913 and 1923 whereby Bulgaria had lost territory to which it was rightfully entitled. He recalled that the Soviet Union had participated in none of these decisions and that the United States Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference had favored the retention of Western Thrace by Bulgaria. The Soviet Delegation believed that the satisfaction of Bulgaria’s present claim would contribute to world peace and security. He invited the Commission to study the matter with great care and earnestness.
M. Pijade (Yugoslavia) noted that the Greeks had made no concrete proposal but had merely presented an ill-defined claim to a large Bulgarian territory, which gave evidence of their insatiable appetite. He then said that Bulgaria’s claim to Western Thrace was justified, and that the Yugoslav Delegation would support it. He referred to Greek territorial demands on all three northern neighbors and said that the problem of the Greek-Bulgarian frontier was not an isolated one. Greece was a dangerous source of trouble in the Balkans. He recalled that Greece had in the past acquired not only Western Thrace but also [Page 381] a part of Macedonia. Greece was now making further attempts to acquire more Macedonian territory and thus was raising this age-old problem in a new form. M. Pijade then reserved the right of Yugoslavia to pose the question of Aegean Macedonia (i.e. Greek Macedonia). He reviewed the history of the Macedonian question, pointing out that the Macedonian people had been partitioned among different Balkan states, but that they had a right to liberty and national unity like other nations. The Yugoslav peoples were helping in the struggle for national liberation of Macedonia and its unification in the Peoples Republic of Macedonia within the Yugoslav Federal Republic. The Yugoslavs were working for peace in the Balkans and for fraternal relations with the Greek people but not with the present rulers of Greece, who had imperialistic designs on neighboring nations and were a danger to international peace.45
- For a more detailed summary of Pijade’s speech, see Xydis, Greece and the Great Powers, p. 328.↩