One of the most famous Macedonian actors Gjorgi Kolozov was one of the thousands of Macedonian citizens who were targeted by the former secret service. Documents from UDBA files recently released by the State Archives reveal that many artists and actors were followed and processed by police services solely because of their publicly stated views.
The documents published from Kolozov’s dossier clearly show that he had been followed since he was a student.
In addition to the documentation, there are notes that were manually written by those in charge of snitching on him. According to these records, Kolozov was accused of allegedly supporting Bulgarian ideas. The text indicates that he often traveled to Sofia and spoke Bulgarian with a colleague at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts.
In one of the police notes, at the time he was a student there is also a description of a 1976 incident at the Kumanovo National Theater buffet. The reason for the event was that Kolozov asked why there was a mass invasion of taking trips to Greece and whether people traveling there knew where they were going.
Further in the note, where it is demanded that Kolozov be held accountable, there is a description of a conversation in which Kolozov claimed that Greece, unlike Bulgaria, was terrorizing the Macedonians. Kolozov’s dossier is one of nineteen dossiers published in a volume dedicated to artists. Among them are the cases of Siskov, Gane Todorovski, Ante Popovski, Mile Nedelkovski… The archive documents show that a large number of persons were hired to monitor them, such as their secretaries, even relatives and neighbors who constantly gave UDBA information on each word or movement. Artists were followed through well-organized networks, and censorship methods were constantly used as forms of pressure.
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