Dimitris Sotiropoulos reviews Children of the Dictatorship in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (original) (raw)
AI-generated Abstract
The review provides an analysis of Kostas Kornetis' book on the political and social history of Greece under the Colonels' regime (1967-1974). It synthesizes various political science perspectives while emphasizing the role of cultural studies and social movements. The book explores the student resistance against the dictatorship, particularly focusing on the 'Polytechnic Generation'. Kornetis highlights the gap between the students' hopes for a democratic transformation post-dictatorship and the eventual return of pre-1967 political elites. This review also draws comparisons to 1968 revolts in Europe and discusses the influence of cultural change on political mobilization.
Related papers
This article addresses the question of political violence and focuses on armed opposition groups during the military dictatorship in Greece (1967–74). It examines the diverse ideas about the use of violence among the opposition circles in Greece and abroad in order to place the political violence in its specific historical context and highlight their differences from their Western European counterparts. Also, using interviews of activists from several opposition groups, the article discusses how they frame their experience from the 1960s and lend legitimacy to their past actions. In the early hours of 21 April 1967 unfamiliar noises woke up the people in the cities. It was the sound of military trucks and tanks in the streets and then the sound of military marches on the radio. A voice on the radio announced that the army had taken over power to save the Greek nation from demagogues and subversives. The coup of Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos on 21 April 1967 came as a shock, just a few weeks before the elections that, according to all predictions, the Centre Union (Enosis Kentrou) would have won. There were rumours about a coup, but very few believed them and almost none was prepared for the eventuality. Seven thousand people were arrested and imprisoned in the first days, and one person, Panagiotis Elis, was killed while in custody. The colonels suspended the articles of the constitution that guaranteed civil liberties; freedom of expression was suppressed; the press was censored; political parties and unions were banned; and demonstrations were prohibited. In the following months many people, students in particular, fled and organized the campaign against the dictatorship in various European countries. Those who continued to live in Greece knew that there was no way out: if they wanted to fight against the dictatorship,
The collapse of the Colonels’ regime in Greece in 1974?
A concise analysis of factors that contributed to the collapse of the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 (or "Colonels' regime"). Essay submitted for HY465 - The International History of the Balkans since 1939: State Projects, Wars, and Social Conflict, with Dr Svetozar Rajak at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
This thesis addresses a major issue in contentious politics. Why are revolutionary groups resilient in Greece? Greece has experienced regular instances of political violence in the past decades – from low-level phenomena, such as vandalisms, riots and clashes with the police, to high-level occurrences, such as the operation of clandestine groups. Particularly critical has been the rise of a series of revolutionary groups from the 1960s onwards. Identified as clandestine left-wing groups that organise underground and use violent methods to disrupt the political system and cause radical political change, revolutionary groups have been one of the most enduring challenges faced by the modern Greek state. By employing mixed methods for a deep analysis of the phenomenon’s causes in Greece, this thesis shows how the emergence of the revolutionary groups can be traced back in the military junta’s era (1967 – 1974) – making Greece the oldest and most protracted case of revolutionary violence in Europe, and one of the most resilient globally. To trace the phenomenon, this thesis follows a relational analytical approach (McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly 2001; Alimi, Demetriou and Bosi 2015) that emphasises the role of mechanisms and posits the content of interactions as key to the understanding of groups’ violence. Based on a comparative design across generations of armed groups and the study of their communiqués, this research provides a detailed analysis of the mechanisms that facilitated the radicalisation process of two different revolutionary groups: the Popular Revolutionary Resistance (LEA) (1965 – 1974) and the Revolutionary Organisation November 17 (17N) (1975 – 2002). By combining a process-oriented approach with an analysis of the groups’ collective action frames and framing strategies, this thesis traces the similarities and dissimilarities of the two contentious episodes, revealing the recurring mechanisms that triggered the revolutionary groups’ emergence, resilience and decline in Greece.
Explaining an Activist Military: Greece until 1975
2005
ABSTRACT The paper aims at explaining the high degree of the military's involvement in Greek politics in the 20th century. It argues that focusing either on Huntington's “professionalization” thesis or the more sociological accounts of socio-economic development can hardly give an explanation for the Greek armed forces' military interventions in political life in general, and the 1967 coup in particular.
The reaction of the Communist Party of Italy to the Colonels dictatorship in Greece (1967-1974)
The Greek World in Periods of Crisis and Recovery 1204-2018, 2020
This paper aims to illustrate how the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) reacted to the Greek Colonels' coup d'ètat and how it interpreted the authoritarian regime with respect to a series of issues such as the relations with the Greek resistance organizations, the position to keep after the Greek Communist Party split, the repercussion on the internal Italian political development and the changing international context of an changing Cold War (détente). This presentation at the beginning briefly outlines the PCI perspective on the Greek political and social situation since the end of the Greek Civil War until the outbreak of the military intervention (1949-67). Italian communists pay close attention to the political developments in Greece since the civil war (1946-49) and in various circumstances help Greek communists to find a shelter in Italy after the outcome of their homeland conflict. It is also telling the fact that the closer to the PCI trade union organization (CGIL), activated connections and cooperation with the Greek communist trade unionists since the early Sixties thus establishing a small though important network as it clearly emerges from the documents collected in the CGIL archives in Rome. This archival collection helps sketching out the Italian communist position with respect to the colonels' regime from a different and for many aspects privileged position. The network established between communist trade unionists resulted helpful also during the Colonels' years when the Greek workers politically close to the KKE created the AEM (Workers Liberation Front) anti-regime organization massively backed by the CGIL and the PCI for what regards issues such as economically helping the families of political prisoners, organizing rallies and campaigns of solidarity among Italian workers (with massive strikes and coordinated blockades of Greek ships at anchor in Italian harbors during symbolic yearly recurrences such as the 1st of May or the 25th of April, day of the Italian liberation from Nazi occupation) and at the level of the international trade union organization such as the International Labour Organization. It is also remarkable what emerges from the correspondence between PCI and Greek trade unionists collected in the archive, that describes the party support for the whole spectrum of Greek worker resistance organizations, and not only the communist one: the PCI supported economically and politically (besides AEM) also ESAK and DEKE, closer to the resistance movement PAK which was led by Andreas Papandreou. Public support to the cause of Greek resistance was not the only activity of PCI and Italian Communists organized also clandestine missions to rescue political prisoners from the Greek jails. In this framework older generations of Italian partisans such as Rosario Bentivegna went secretly by boat to Greece, sometimes as alleged tourists, to rescue leading members of KKE, members of the Greek resistance during World War II and of EAM during the civil war. It is very interesting to retrace through the archival documents the reflections and relationship that arise during those missions between Greek and Italian communists for what regards the history and the political development of both countries. Social fabric as well as balance of political power in the two countries are quite different since the early Fifties. Nevertheless during the second half of the Sixties things change and the two countries face similar issues: political instability, strong conservative currents in both State institutions but also a clear desire of larger and larger emerging social groups to gain political dignity and power. Within the Italian Left the Greek coup d'etat provoked a large echo especially in the circles around the editor Giangiacomo Feltrinelli who had close connections with the international left. In 1968 Feltrinelli published a leaflet on a impending military intervention in Italy including an appendix of the Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos on the Greek coup, a kind of political warning on a similar outcome of the Italian political crisis. The Greek left in 1968 suffered a split after which the communist movement emerged even more divided and weaker. The PCI faced this internal break keeping a stance of a continuous call to unity against the right-wing military regime in the name of anti-fascism but the archival documents shed light on divisions, conflicts and also bitter arguments on how to deal with that split. This troubled situation in the Italian Communist Party both at the central and at the local level is fueled by the Greek split and anticipates in some way the communist reflection that later led to the Italian path toward the so called eurocommunism. The KKE split embarrassed and put in a difficult position the Italian communists as it emerges also during the organization of the party's festivals (“Festa dell'Unità”) in which the two Greek communist parties (KKE and KKE of interior) did not want to share the same stand (as recommended by their Italian comrades) and sometimes argued and clashed as we can see from the internal documents of the party's Bureau of Foreign Affairs during summer 1972. The Italian Communist Party followed with particular attention the Greek developments both in the communist organization and in the anti-regime activities of resistance. In particular the PCI is a point of reference for a wide spectrum of junta's opponents and among the archival material we can read the correspondence between Alexandros Panagoulis and the general secretary of PCI Enrico Berlinguer where the Greek calls for the establishment of a radio station for the resistance in Italy with the help of the Italian communists. The archival material collected in the Gramsci Institute as well as in the CGIL archive (both in Rome) help focusing on specific aspects of the Greek regime and at the same time gives the chance to follow the troubled path of such a relevant part of the Greek and Italian left in years of crisis. It is quite interesting to notice that those years (1967-1974) represent the prelude for crucial internal developments in both countries with the failed attempt of historical compromise in Italy and the Metapoliteusi period in Greece.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
Related papers
Cerami C., Civil Resistance from the End of the Cold War to the 21 st Century: A Historical Perspective, in Nuovi Autoritarismi e Democrazie: Diritto, Istituzioni e Società (NAD), Vol. 4, N. 2, 2022, pp. 27-52, ISSN 2612-6672, 2022