Alija Avdovic – a fighter for freedom and equality

On the territory of today's Republic of Macedonia, people of different nations, religions and cultures live for centuries. Different states and administrations, but also peoples who have always strived for a prosperous state in which everyone would have complete freedom, simply equal opportunities, rights and obligations. With this ideology, the generations of Macedonian citizens were born and died. In the period between the two world wars living in the Vardar part of Macedonia in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was not easy. In the conditions when the authorities do not recognize the existence of Macedonians, but also Bosniaks, who, except in the territory of historical Bosnia, live in all parts of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the struggle for freedom and equality of all peoples living in it is intensified even more. This struggle for the preservation and building of a national identity had a revolutionary socio-economic character, as it sought to abolish class domination over most of the population. The bearer of this struggle was the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). In this movement, Macedonians and Bosnians saw a chance to realize their aspirations to build a state in which they would be equal to other nations of former Yugoslavia. In the Vardar region of Macedonia, the bearers of this ideology and the revolutionary movement alongside the Macedonians were also Bosniaks. One of the first and most important Macedonian revolutionaries was a Bosniak Alija Avdovic. It starts its activity from the earliest days of the organized communist movement in Vardar Macedonia. Better to say, one of the founders of the movement, when in the spring of 1933, the Provincial Committee (PK) of the CPY for Macedonia is formed. Believing that Yugoslavia is possible only as a community of equal peoples, but also as a community in which there is no class domination, Alija Avdovic is actively working on raising awareness and creating revolutionary cells that will enable the realization of this idea. Why he was driven, convicted, and imprisoned. But nothing has crushed him in this fight. In the onslaught of fascism when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was occupied, and the movement grew into a unified armed resistance to the freedom of the future common state of equal peoples, its work was gaining in intensity. The new fascist authorities have tried to arrest and destroy all the more significant revolutionaries. In August 1941, he was arrested and then shot by a young life, but whose work and ideas were extended to live and partially realized in the anti-fascist struggle and the creation of a new Yugoslav state.