Greece

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GREECE.

THE ASIA MINOR DEBACLE
WORLD WAR II AND OCCUPATION
LIBERATION AND CIVIL WAR
THE JUNTA AND RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC
POLITICAL CHANGES AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE 1980S AND 1990S
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Greece became independent from the Ottoman Empire by 1830, and during the nineteenth century the modern nation aimed at territorial expansion with the view to incorporating the Greek-speaking Christian Orthodox communities of the Ottoman Empire into the Greek kingdom. This project was known as the Megáli Idéa (Great Idea). The territorial expansion was nearly completed in the first two decades of the twentieth century. As a result of the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) Greece increased both its population and territory by 70 percent, and lands of the Ottoman Empire were incorporated into the Greek state, notably Macedonia. The outbreak of World War I brought turmoil in Greek politics because of the dispute between the prime minister Eleutherios Venizelos (1864–1936) and King Constantine I (r. 1913–1917; 1920–1922) over the issue of Greece's participation in the war. The relations between Constantine and Venizelos deteriorated and the latter, who supported the entry of Greece in the war on the side of the Entente powers, resigned in 1915. It was the beginning of the conflict between republicans and royalists (known as the "national schism") that dominated Greek society and politics throughout the interwar period and reflected the conflict between the forces of capitalist modernization and social reform on the one hand and those of conservatism and small-holding peasants on the other. Venizelos abstained from the elections of 1915 and his supporters, backed by the Entente troops, led a coup and established a rival "government" in Salonika in August 1916 in opposition to the royalist government in Athens. The Entente powers repeatedly intervened in Greek politics in an attempt to obtain Greece's participation in the war, showing little concern about its sovereignty. In December 1916 British and French troops landed in Athens but retreated when skirmishes broke out. In June 1917 the Entente powers demanded that the Germanophile king leave the country. Constantine departed and Venizelos again became the prime minister of a deeply divided country.

THE ASIA MINOR DEBACLE

Greece finally entered World War I, in its very last phase, on the side of the Entente. Greece's territorial gains this time proved to be short-term. After the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) Greece took over the administration of the Smyrna region in Asia Minor, a former Ottoman land. Despite Venizelos's diplomatic triumph in the elections of 1920 he was defeated by the royalists, who took advantage of the war weariness of the population, and Constantine returned to the country. Greece sent troops to Asia Minor to defend its territorial gains against the rising tide of Turkish nationalism led by Mustafa Kemal. The Greek military campaign against the Turkish troops failed, and the Turkish counteroffensive resulted in the defeat of the Greek army and the expulsion of the entire Greek populations from Asia Minor in 1922. The flight of about 1.3 million Greeks from Turkey was later ratified by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which also provided for the transfer of 380,000 Muslims to Turkey in the framework of the forced exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey. The defeat in Asia Minor caused a major political crisis. A Revolutionary Committee of officers forced Constantine to leave the country for a second time and a Commission of Inquiry put the blame for the Asia Minor debacle on leading royalist ministers and officers: six of them were sentenced to death and executed. Constantine abdicated and retired to Sicily, where he died soon after. After a plebiscite in April 1924 the monarchy was abolished and Greece was proclaimed a republic.

The defeat of Greece in Asia Minor (known to Greeks as the "Asia Minor catastrophe") marked the end of an era of territorial expansion and nationalism, while at the same time the arrival of destitute refugees represented an immense challenge that called for social reforms. The government with the aid of the Refugee Settlement Commission undertook a major program of settlement for the refugees. Half of the refugees (638,000) were settled in Macedonia, which thereafter became predominantly Greek. As part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912, Macedonia had been inhabited by an ethnically mixed population. Generally speaking, the exchange of populations and the arrival of refugees transformed Greece into an ethnically homogeneous country, even though there were small minorities of Jews, Muslims, Slav Macedonians, and Albanians. The influx of the refugees accelerated the process of land reform and large estates were broken up into smaller landholdings, which were distributed to the refugees. The refugees who settled in the cities (363,000 in Salonika, Athens, and Piraeus) provided abundant cheap labor and contributed greatly to the growth of Greek industry in the interwar era. The territorial and demographic changes had political repercussions as well. Greece was politically divided between the more conservative indigenous populations of "Old Greece" and the more liberal or radical refugees who inhabited the newly acquired lands.

After a period of political instability (1924–1928) Venizelos won the elections of 1928. One of his important achievements was the détente in Greek-Turkish relations, although he failed to respond to the new circumstances created by the world economic crisis. Venizelos lost the elections of 1932 and that defeat marked the end of republican hegemony and liberal economic policy and the beginning of a new period of political instability. Republican officers attempted twice (in 1933 and 1935) a coup against the royalist Populist Party, actions that fueled anti-Venizelist sentiments and led to a purge of the republicans from the state apparatus, which triggered a backlash by royalist conspirators. One of them, General Kondylis, staged a coup and organized a rigged plebiscite in November 1935 that restored the monarchy in Greece. In the beginning King George II followed a policy of reconciliation between republicans and royalists, forced dictator Kondylis to resign, and called for elections. The elections of 1936 produced a stalemate between the two major political parties and turned the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), which held the balance of power, into a significant political actor. In April 1936 the king appointed General Ioannis Metaxas, leader of a minuscule extreme rightist party, as the new prime minister. On 4 August 1936 Metaxas, having the consent of the king, proclaimed dictatorship using as a pretext the labor unrest (a general strike was organized for the next day) and the communist danger. The Metaxas dictatorship (1936–1941), lacking any political constituency, never became popular and was conditioned on the king's support.

WORLD WAR II AND OCCUPATION

When World War II broke out Metaxas worked hard to keep Greece out of the conflict without jeopardizing good relations with Great Britain. Benito Mussolini, however, wanted to demonstrate to Hitler that Italy was an equal and victorious Axis partner and picked Greece as an easy target. Italy attacked Greece in October 1940 but the Italian offensive was checked by the Greek army and the Italian troops retreated to Albania. In April 1941 Germany intervened and invaded Greece. The government and the king fled to the Middle East, and the country was ultimately divided by the three occupying forces (Germany, Italy, and Bulgaria), and a collaborationist government was installed in Athens. The economic dislocation of the country due to the war and the severity of the German occupation created serious food shortages in the urban centers. In the winter of 1941–1942 the population of Athens faced a terrible famine that caused the death of more than thirty thousand people. The dire living conditions drove many people to form committees to address the food shortage problems, which often became the nuclei of the Resistance in the urban centers. In 1942 the Resistance spread to the countryside and grew to become one of the largest resistance movements in occupied Europe. The Communist Party together with other small socialist parties founded the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its military wing, the National People's Liberation Army (ELAS), which were by far the strongest resistance organizations in occupied Greece. The Resistance was, however, intertwined with a civil war between rival resistance organizations (leftist and rightist), but mostly between ELAS and the Security Battalions, Greek armed units that collaborated with the Germans in campaigns against the guerrillas. The brutality of the German occupation reached its climax in 1943–1944: sixty thousand Greek Jews (mostly from Salonika) were deported to be exterminated in concentration camps; hundreds of civilians were executed on the spot in mass executions in places such as Kalavryta, Kommeno, and Distomo; villages were razed to the ground in retaliation for guerrilla attacks; and hostages were taken and later executed after roundups in Athens neighborhoods.

LIBERATION AND CIVIL WAR

Greece was liberated in October 1944. When the government-in-exile and prime minister George Papandreou arrived in Athens the country was controlled by EAM. The civil war during the occupation had heightened political tensions. The government and the British feared that the communists might attempt a coup and sought to disarm ELAS. A new bloody conflict broke out in Athens in December 1944. The government with the support of British troops forced ELAS to evacuate the capital and after the Varkiza Agreement (February 1945) the guerrillas surrendered their arms. After the disarmament of the ELAS a period of "white terror" followed during which the ultra-royalist armed bands unleashed a campaign of violence against the leftists in the countryside. The Communist Party abstained from the elections of 1946 and in a climate of disorder and terror the royalists won the absolute majority. The polarization was further aggravated when the royalist government held a rigged plebiscite in September 1946, in which 68 percent voted for the return of the king to Greece.

The armed groups formed by leftists who took to the mountains to escape from right-wing violence began to swell in 1946 and a full-scale civil war between the army and the communist guerrillas of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) broke out (1946–1949). The failure of the army to defeat the guerrillas alarmed the United States, which viewed the Greek civil war as another instance of a Soviet-inspired communist expansionism. The declaration of the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) outlined the U.S. foreign policy of "containment" vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, and it was accompanied by generous economic aid to Greece and Turkey, which proved to be crucial for the military victory. On the other hand, the DSE, despite its initial success, faced insurmountable problems, such as few reserves, inferior weapons, and the limited support of the neighboring socialist countries, while the shift from partisan to regular army tactics increased its casualties. The Greek Civil War took a heavy toll: thirty-eight thousand soldiers and guerrillas were killed, seven hundred thousand peasants became war-stricken refugees, and twenty-five thousand boys and girls were evacuated by guerrillas from the war zones to the socialist countries, while in the final stages of the war about fifty-eight thousand people fled the country and became political refugees.

The civil war had a major impact on political developments in Greece. In the following decades political discrimination against the Left became an integral part of the state policy, a combination of anti-communism and nationalism characterized the official ideology, and the army gained considerable political power. Marshal Alexander Papagos, commander-in-chief of the army during the civil war, and Constantine Karamanlis were leaders from the Right who became prime ministers successively (1952–1955 and 1956–1963) and laid the foundations for the economic reconstruction and development. Greece became tied to U.S. security interests and to NATO while at the same time Karamanlis pursued closer relations with Western Europe and in 1961 signed the treaty of association with the European Economic Community (EEC). The elections of 1963 brought to power the Centre Union and George Papandreou once again became prime minister. The center-left policy of Papandreou's government alarmed King Constantine II (r. 1964–1973) and the army and in July 1965 he was forced to resign when the king refused his request to take over the ministry of defense. Mass demonstrations followed for weeks against the "royal putsch" that ushered in a period of political instability. New elections were called for May 1967 but they never took place. On 21 April 1967 a group of officers organized a coup to preempt the forthcoming victory of the Centre Union in the elections.

THE JUNTA AND RESTORATION OF THE REPUBLIC

The military dictatorship or "colonel's junta" (1967–1974) was a violent reaction of the extreme right in the army against the drive for the democratization of the political structures and institutions that the Centre Union represented. After the abortive counter-coup of the king (December 1967), the dictator Colonel George Papadopoulos became the strong man of the regime. Despite his efforts to give a democratic facade to his regime, political protests against the dictatorship mushroomed in 1973 and culminated in the occupation of the Polytechnic School by students in November 1973, which was violently suppressed by the army. Papadopoulos was then overthrown by one of the hard-liners of the regime, Brigadier Demetrios Ioannidis, head of the military police. The fierce nationalism of the new dictator provoked a major debacle. The junta organized a coup in Cyprus (15 July 1974) and overthrew President Makarios, who fled the island. Turkey took advantage of the opportunity to invade Cyprus (20 July 1974) and has since occupied the northern part (40 percent) of the island. Within a few days the junta collapsed and Karamanlis, who returned from France, became the new prime minister (24 July 1974).

The fall of the dictatorship coincided with the end of Greece's "economic miracle." For twenty years (1953–1973) Greece had an unprecedented economic development as the GDP grew annually by 6.9 percent and the per capita GDP was quadrupled. Greece was no longer a predominantly agrarian country as the number of farmers were reduced (from 58 percent to 40 percent) and the contribution of agriculture to the national economy was halved (from 30 percent to 16 percent). The industrial sector grew, especially the chemical industry, metallurgy, and shipbuilding. During the same years the construction sector took off and became one of the main investments for the middle-classes. The boom of the construction sector was a direct outcome of the internal migration from rural areas to the cities. Athens attracted most of the internal migrants and its population nearly doubled between 1951 and 1971 (from 1.3 million to 2.5 million). During the same period there was also a significant wave of emigration abroad. Between 1951 and 1971, 758,000 Greeks emigrated to Western Europe, the vast majority to West Germany.

POLITICAL CHANGES AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE 1980S AND 1990S

The reestablishment of democracy in 1974 ushered in a new era of political stability and modernization. Karamanlis, founder of the New Democracy Party (ND) and prime minister between 1974 and 1980, took the necessary steps to consolidate democracy. After a referendum over the issue of monarchy Greece was proclaimed a republic, the Communist Party (after twenty-seven years of being banned) was legalized, the leading cadres of the dictatorship were prosecuted and received heavy sentences, and, in what represented a sharp symbolic break with the past, the vernacular (demotiki) instead of the formal (katharevousa) became the language of the state. The other objective that Karamanlis accomplished, despite the reservations of the European Commission because of the poor economic performance of the country, was Greece's entry into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1981. With Greece's democracy consolidated, the next step was the introduction of social reforms. The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), with a rhetoric that mixed nationalism, socialism, and populism and Andreas Papandreou's charisma, appealed broadly to the middle and lower classes and to leftists who had been persecuted for decades.

PASOK won the 1981 elections with the slogan "Change," which denoted both the need for reform in Greek society and for political change. With the exception of a brief period of Centre Union rule, this was the first time in the postwar years that the power was not in the hands of the right wing. PASOK introduced reforms that were long overdue, such as the recognition of the leftist resistance to the Axis occupation, the right of the political refugees of the civil war to return, the institution of civil marriage, the democratization of the universities, the establishment of a national health service system, and so on. The Greek economy, however, continued to decline. The intensification of competition after the entry of Greece into the EEC and de-industrialization, the overextension of the public sector, and heavy borrowing brought the economy to a dead end in the mid-1980s. At the same time corruption scandals caused disillusionment with PASOK. In 1989 the ND, which won the elections but lacked the majority of the seats in the parliament, took the hitherto unprecedented step of forming a coalition government with the Left. In the elections of 1990 the ND won again and, now with a majority in the parliament, Constantine Mitsotakis became prime minister. The liberalization of the economy and austerity measures resulted in social unrest and union strikes, while the nationalist fervor over the name "Macedonia"—Greece's northern neighbor, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) sought to use the name, which most Greeks strenuously rejected—brought disarray in the party.

After the elections of 1993 Papandreou again became prime minister but due to failing health was succeeded in 1996 by Kostas Simitis. PASOK followed an economic policy similar to that of ND but sought the consensus of the trade unions. In the 1990s the economy recovered and Greece entered the Economic and Monetary Union 2000) thanks to a large extent to the EU funds, the increasing competitiveness of domestic businesses, the reduction of public expenditure, and the boost that came with winning the competition to host the summer Olympic Games in 2004. The downside of the economic recovery, however, was high unemployment (10 percent), especially among the young and women, the growth of poverty, and widening of economic inequalities. Social discontent with the economic policy of PASOK was expressed in the elections of 2004, in which ND won a clear majority and Kostas Karamanlis, a nephew of Constantine Karamanlis, became the new prime minister. The most significant social phenomenon in the 1990s was the arrival of about one million immigrants, mostly from Albania and the former Soviet Union, which constituted a new experience for a hitherto largely linguistically and religiously homogenous society. The transformation of Greece from a country of emigration into a country of immigration reflects the economic development and social and cultural changes that took place in the last decades of the twentieth century and will shape the Greek society in the future.