The Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (, Antifašističko sobranie za narodno osloboduvanje na Makedonija; Serbo-Croatian: Antifašističko sobranje narodnog oslobođenja Makedonije ; abbr. ASNOM) was the supreme legislative and executive people's representative body of the communist Macedonian state from August 1944 until the end of World War II. The body was set up by the Macedonian Partisans during the final stages of the World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia. That occurred clandestinely in August 1944, in the Bulgarian occupation zone of Yugoslavia. Simultaneously another state was declared by pro-Nazi Germany Macedonian right-wing nationalists.

History

First session (under occupation)

Significance

The first plenary session of ASNOM was convened underground on the symbolic date of August 2 (Ilinden uprising day) 1944 in the St. Prohor Pčinjski Monastery, now in Serbia. The most important assembly decisions were: The first session was opened with the anthem of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) - "Rise up dayspring of the freedom" and the unofficial Yugoslav anthem - "Hey, Slavs". The Assembly issued a Manifesto which described Vardar Macedonia's position under the old Yugoslavia as that of a colony and declared 'brotherhood and unity' with the other Yugoslav people. It also stated its support for the equality of all nationalities in Macedonia and called on Albanians, Turks and Vlachs to join the national liberation struggle. A call for the "unification of the whole Macedonian people", i.e., in the whole of the geographical region of Macedonia, was also made. Panko Brashnarov, a former member of IMRO and oldest member, chaired the inaugural meeting, and Metodija Andonov-Čento was elected as president. Both wanted greater independence for the future republic. They saw joining Yugoslavia as a form of second Serbian dominance over Macedonia and preferred membership in a Balkan Federation or else complete independence. Čento and partly Brashnarov clashed with Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, Josip Broz Tito's envoy to Macedonia. One of the contributors in the Assembly was Kiro Gligorov, the future first President of the Republic of Macedonia. According to some researchers the first session was manipulated by pro-Yugoslav representatives, and the number of present delegates is disputed.

Developments

In early September, Nazi Germany briefly sought to establish a puppet state called independent Macedonia. However, the state was de facto not established due to the lack of any military support. Despite this, it was declared by Macedonian right nationalists on 8 September. After Bulgaria switched sides in the war on September 9, the Bulgarian 5th. The army stationed in Macedonia moved back to the old borders of Bulgaria. In early October the newly formed Bulgarian People's Army together with the Red Army reentered occupied Yugoslavia. The Germans were driven off from Vardar Macedonia in late November by the Bulgarian Army "By 23 October the Bulgarians had reached the vicinity of Podujevo, in the north-eastern corner of Kosovo; another Bulgarian force was also closing on Kumanovo, a strategically important town just to the north-east of Skopje. For a crucial period of a fortnight, however, this front remained more or less static. This was thanks to two factors: the disruption of the Bulgarian army by the sudden removal (at Russian insistence) of its old officer corps, and the dogged resistance of the Scholz Group, which was assisted by up to 5,000 Albanians in the Prishtina-Mitrovica area (of whom some belonged to the security force recruited in Albania by Xhafer Deva, and 700 were members of the Skanderbeg division) as well as some local Chetnik formations. The Germans formed a plan for the orderly evacuation of their forces, which they were able to carry out on schedule, abandoning Skopje on 11 November, destroying installations at the Trepcha mine on the 12th and leaving Prishtina on the 19th, from where they retreated north-westwards into Bosnia. Accounts of these events published in post-war Yugoslavia give the impression that the Germans were driven out by the Partisans, who 'liberated' the cities of Kosovo by force. There was some fighting by a combined force of Yugoslav and Albanian Partisans in Western Kosovo, mainly against the remnants of the Skanderbeg division; but these actions were quite insignificant compared with the Soviet-Bulgarian advance. The war diary of the commander of the German Army Group 'E', with its detailed day-by-day record of military actions in Kosovo, contains hardly any references to Partisan actions at all. The general pattern was that the towns in Western Kosovo were 'liberated', i.e. taken over by Partisan forces, only after the Germans and their auxiliaries had left; in Eastern Kosovo it was the Soviet and Bulgarian forces (with some Yugoslav Partisans attached to them) who took over, also after the Germans had got out." For more, see Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York University Press, 1998, pp. 310-313, ISBN 0814755984. with the help of the Macedonian Partisans.

Second session

ASNOM became officially operational in December, shortly after the German retreat from Skopje. During this session, Lazar Koliševski, the new leader of the Communist Party of Macedonia, was declared the first deputy of Čento in the ASNOM presidency during the second session of this assembly on 28–31 December. In September 1944, Koliševski, who was a prisoner, was freed by the new Bulgarian pro-communist government. At the same session, a decision was taken a tribunal to be created, that will judge "the collaborators of the occupiers who have panned the Macedonian name and the Macedonian national honor". as part of an attempt to differentiate an ethnic and political Macedonian identity, separate from Bulgarian.

Third session

On the third session held in April 1945, the body transformed itself into a republican parliament. Čento was replaced by Koliševski, who started fully implementing the pro-Yugoslav line. He strongly supported the promotion of a distinct ethnic Macedonian identity and language in SR Macedonia. ASNOM formed a committee to standardize Macedonian and its alphabet. In December 1944, ASNOM rejected the first committee's recommendations as pro-Bulgarian. It formed a second committee, whose recommendations were accepted in April 1945. The (second) committees' recommendations were strongly influenced by the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.

Legacy

At the end of 1944, the law for the protection of the Macedonian national honor passed by SR Macedonia's government, for which the Presidium of ASNOM created a special court to implement it, persecuted Bulgarian individuals. In the 1940s, ASNOM's first leaders Čento, Pavel Shatev and Brashnarov were purged from their positions, then isolated, arrested and imprisoned on fabricated charges, as foreign agents, having pro-Bulgarian leanings, demanding greater independence, collaborating with the Cominform, forming of conspirative political groups, demanding greater democracy and the like. In present-day North Macedonia, ASNOM became an "object of memory".

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