Until 1913 the majority of the Slavic-speaking population of all three parts of the region of Macedonia identified as Bulgarian. In October 1925 the Slavic population in the Bulgarian part of Macedonia repulsed a brief invasion by Greece, fighting alongside the Bulgarian army. During World War II, most parts of Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia were annexed by Bulgaria, and the local Slavic-speakers were regarded and self-identified as Macedonian Bulgarians. Not until much later did the process of Macedonian national identity formation gain momentum. After 1944, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia a connecting link for the establishment of new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating there a development of distinct Slav Macedonian consciousness. The Communist Party of Greece as well as its fraternal parties in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, had already been influenced by the Comintern and it was the only political party in Greece to recognize Macedonian national identity. The region of Vardar Macedonia received the status of a constituent republic within Yugoslavia, the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. The local Slavic population was proclaimed to be ethnically Macedonian - a new nationality meant to be different from the Bulgarians or Serbs.