Gruevski's paternal grandparents came from the Ottoman Macedonia village of Krushoradi, where his grandfather Nikolaos Grouios (Nikola Gruev) (1911–1940) was born. Until the official Greek annexation after the Second Balkan War in 1913, it was under the jurisdiction of the Bulgarian Exarchate. The Greek administration later practised an assimilative anti-Bulgarian campaign, changing the names of local villagers to the corresponding Greek names. The village itself was renamed by the Greek authorities to Achlada in 1926. Gruevski's grandfather fought in the Greco-Italian War, where he lost his life. His name is mentioned on the war memorial in Achlada among the names of the locals who were killed during World War II. Years later, during the Greek Civil War, Gruevski's grandmother and father fled north to what was then Yugoslav Macedonia, where they changed their family name to Gruevski in order to gain citizenship through assimilation, as was the Yugoslav policy at the time.