This conversation between Anna Coopey and Zinovia Lialiouti took place online on 11 March 2026. It is the first podcast from the second series of Conversations on Communism. The series is introduced by Henry Stead.
HS. Welcome back to Conversations on Communism. This podcast forms part of a long-term research project called Brave New Classics, which investigates leftist receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity. Our first series of podcasts, released in 2016 and 2017, was co-hosted by Dr Elinor Taylor, and me, Henry Stead. Elinor and I interviewed several special guests to help us shine a light on the rich and diverse cultural life of the British Communist Left.
This season we have a new subject, in that we’re turning attention to the twentieth-century Greek Left, and a new host in Anna Coopey. Anna is a postgraduate researcher at the University of St Andrews, exploring anti-fascist receptions of Greco-Roman antiquity.
To kick off the series, Anna tracked down an expert on the complex and fascinating history of the twentieth-century Greek Left, Zinovia Lialiouti. They met online, and the connection was not always that great, but the full transcript is available as ever on our website, bravenewclassics.info.
So, Anna, over to you.
AC. Modern Greek history is often obscure and unknown, particularly for classicists, whose attention is more often drawn to the 400s BCE than the 1940s. However, it is a history that, in many ways, encompasses the trials and tribulations of twentieth-century Europe, and functions as a microcosm of the broader international conflict that would shape the world later on: the Cold War. It’s something too that listeners of this podcast will need to be familiar with. The characters we will be profiling lived through a turbulent time, and were often subject to brutal and systematic repression which shaped not only their lives, but also their work, and, in a climate of strong far-right nationalism, their approach to classical Greece, their own national past. It’s only by having a handle on that context that we can fully appreciate the Greek Left’s interactions with antiquity.
To tell us about this, I tracked down Professor Zinovia Lialiouti from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. I met with Zinovia in Athens over Teams, so, as Henry said, the audio was not always great, but the conversation was certainly sparkling.
AC. Hello, Zinovia!
ZL. Hello.
AC. You are going to tell us all about the Left in Greece in the 20th century. So what was it like for the political Left in Greece at the beginning of that turbulent period of time?
ZL. Well, an important milestone in the history of the Greek Left at that period was the founding of the Greek Communist Party. The party was established in 1918 as the Socialist Workers’ Party of Greece originally, and in 1924 it was renamed as the Communist Party of Greece. The emergence of the party at this period was closely connected to the early development of socialist thought, especially in the city of Thessaloniki, and especially within the city’s Jewish community. At the beginning of the 20th century, Thessaloniki was a multi-ethnic city of the Ottoman Empire, and it became a part of the Greek state in 1913. In a recent monograph and actually an award-winning study on the history of Greek communism, Kostis Karpozilos has highlighted the strongly transnational character of the party during its early years.
This can be seen in the background and trajectories of its members, as well as in its political orientation. The party also had a distinctly youthful character during this period. The Communist Party took a clear stance against the Asia Minor campaign, which began in 1919 and ended in a painful defeat for Greece in 1922. Electorally, however, the Communist Party remained relatively small.
It first participated in national elections in 1926, receiving 4.4% of the vote. Its support reached approximately 9% in the elections of 1935, the highest percentage it achieved during the interwar years. And in the election of 1936, the last election held before the dictatorship that followed, it received approximately 5.8% of the vote. Party members faced significant repression.
During the short-lived dictatorship of Pangalos from 1925 to 1926, many communists were persecuted. Another important development that shaped the party’s trajectory was the aftermath of the Asia Minor Catastrophe in 1922. More than one million refugees arrived in Greece from Asia Minor. Their arrival transformed the composition of the Greek working class.
The Communist Party developed strong ties with many of these refugee communities, which later became an important part of its electoral base. During the 20s, the Communist Party of Greece supported the position of a united and independent Macedonia. This stance led to the party being stigmatized by its political opponents as being anti-national. Its critics argued that the position undermined the territorial integrity of the Greek state.
And this particular decision would have long-term consequences for the party’s place within the Greek political system. During the 30s, the Communist Party strengthened its presence in public life. It played an increasingly important organizational role within the labour movement and in strike organizations. Another important milestone came in May 1936 with the tobacco workers’ strike in Thessaloniki, which was supported by the party.
The strike was met with extreme violence by the police. 12 people were killed during the crackdown. And this event left a deep mark on Greek political but also cultural life because it inspired the famous poem, Epitaphios, by the poet Yannis Ritsos. Finally, it is worth noting that the roots of anti-communist legislation in Greece can also be traced to this early period. In 1929, the government of Venizelos introduced the so-called Idionymo Law, meaning a special crime, a thought crime actually, which made it possible to criminalize the political and trade union activities of the Left.
AC. Fascinating. Okay, thank you for that overview. So I’ve got one question, which is to do with the international character of the party that you mentioned, the Communist Party that you mentioned. Am I right in thinking that quite a couple of the leading characters in the movement were educated in the Soviet Union?
ZL. That comes from a later phase. In this phase, some of the leading figures had this cosmopolitan background, originating from places outside the official Greek territory. But yes, later on some of them have an education from the Soviet Union.
AC. Okay, perfect. So we’ve hinted at dark days to come. Can you tell us a bit more about the Fourth of August Regime that sort of monopolized Greek politics from the 1936 onwards?
ZL. Yes, the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas was established in 1936 and it outlawed the Greek Communist Party. Moreover, the regime’s security apparatus launched an especially harsh campaign of repression against the Communist Party. Its organizational network was dismantled and many of its leading figures were imprisoned or sent into exile.
Numerous party members as well as other left-wing citizens were arrested and subjected to brutal torture. Many were exiled to remote islands or they were held to the newly established camp for political prisoners at Akronafplia. There were even several cases of political assassinations of communists and trade unionists. And it is also worth noting that the regime’s security services exploited the severe organizational blow that they had dealt to the party. They managed to infiltrate its ranks by using foreign party members who had turned against it in order to undermine the organization from within and deepen this climate of confusion. More broadly, the Regime of the 4th of August was defined by a strongly anti-communist and also anti-parliamentary orientation overall.
It is also worth mentioning that this regime had some fascist affinities as well. It was not a proper totalitarian fascist dictatorship in itself, but it had some strong fascist influences.
AC. And obviously, fascism would become all the more present in Greece in the occupation. I have a question about national history during the 4th of August Regime. Did Metaxas and any of his cultural attaches or whatever engage with antiquity in any sense? What was their approach to the Greek historical past?
ZL. They have this ultra-nationalist perception and this mythical selective reading of Greek history. It is also interesting that they tried to establish a cultural connection with natural Germany and they exploited the ancient Greek legacy and art in that respect. Also the Metaxas regime built a very systematic campaign of engaging with Nazi Germany in this respect, in exchanging antiquities, organizing exhibitions. And we could also remember that this is the year of 1936, Olympic Games hosted by Nazi Germany. And all this propaganda campaign led by Leni Riefenstahl in this particular reading of the Greek body and this mythical figure and reading of Greek history. And the Metaxas Regime exploited this aspect to strengthen its ties with Nazi Germany. Even though the Metaxas regime did not challenge the pro-British orientation of Greek foreign policy, he did not challenge ties with the United Kingdom, but nevertheless he tried also to strengthen his ideological and cultural ties with Nazi Germany. Greek antiquity was instrumental in that respect.
AC. Okay, so at some point this relationship with Nazi Germany and also a vague relationship with Fascist Italy changed quite dramatically. When was this?
ZL. Yes, because Fascist Italy was hostile to Greece. Fascist Italy has this agenda of territorial expansion, and Greece was among the victims of that agenda. So that was engendered in October 1940, when Fascist Italy invaded Greece after submitting an ultimatum to Metaxas, demanding the country surrender to the Italian troops and Metaxas declined.
AC. And that’s been memorialised in modern history now, right?
ZL. It has been memorialized in this symbolic word saying no. So Metaxas did not actually say just no. He replied actually in French. His actually reply to the Italian ambassador was “alors, c’est la guerre”. But this symbol, the unanimous rejection of Italians’ position by the Greek public opinion and Greek society saying no, this was the main slogan of, you know, Greek soldiers rallying for war.
AC. Okay, so the beginning of the Second World War kind of and the Greco-Italian War, we’ve understandably got a lot of leftist soldiers or intellectuals or politicians in prison because of Metaxas. What happens then? How do they get involved in the World War?
ZL. The organizational structure of the Greek Left had already been severely weakened before the war. And the repression imposed by the dictatorship of Metaxas had dealt a major blow to the movement and many of its leading members were imprisoned. It’s very interesting that this aspect of the story has recently returned to the centre of public debate in Greece. I don’t know if you have followed the news, but there was the publication of photographs from the execution of 200 communists by the Nazis in Kaisariani on the 1st of May of 1944. And this brought renewed attention to the fate of these political prisoners. Most of them, the people that were executed, had already been imprisoned by the Regime of the August 4th. And after the German invasion, they were not released. Instead, the authorities handed them over to the occupying forces. Despite, however, these heavy losses, the Communist Left moved very quickly to organize resistance against the occupation, in line with the strategy adopted by the Communist International in 1935, calling for broad popular fronts against fascism. Greek communists vowed to build a wide coalition. Already by September 1941, just five months after the German invasion, the National Liberation Front, known as EAM, had been established.
It would become the largest resistance organisation in occupied Greece, eventually counting as many as 2 million members. In February 1942, its armed wing was formed. The Greek People’s Liberation Army, ELAS. It too became the largest armed resistance force during the occupation. Both EAM and ELAS proved remarkably effective in mobilising the population.
They drew on powerful national myths and symbols, especially the memory of the fighters of the Greek War of Independence of 1821, to inspire resistance among the Greek people. Their activities were wide-ranging. Beginning in 1942, and particularly during 1943, EAM organized large-scale strikes and mass mobilizations. These actions resulted in casualties, but they also produced important political outcomes. Among other things, they helped prevent the expansion of the Bulgarian occupation zone in northern Greece, and they blocked plans to send Greek workers to Germany for forced labour. EAM also played a crucial role in confronting the devastating famine caused by the occupation, especially in region of Athens and in many island communities.
The famine is estimated to have claimed the lives of around 200,000 Greeks. So in response, EAM created networks for collecting and distributing food to the suffering population. And by March 1944, the resistance movement had established a governing structure in the liberated areas of the country, the so-called Political Committee of National Liberation, often referred to as the Mountain Government.
In the fall of 1944, this committee joined the Government of National Unity.
AC. And you mentioned I think what is called in anglophone textbooks at least Free Greece.
ZL. Yes.
AC. Can you tell us a bit more about the structure of that?
ZL. It was a very dynamic and innovative structure for its time. It is worth mentioning that it is the first time that women got the right to vote in Greece. It’s out to organize the liberated parts of Greece. A difficulty, however, is that it was very remote from the capital and it also lacked international recognition, because international recognition was granted to the so-called Exile Government, which was stationed in the Middle East. It had also to deal with the suspicion or the hostility of the United Kingdom, British foreign policy. And it also had to survive in a very fluid environment because occupation forces were still present in Greece. And this was a very quickly changing environment.
AC. So the Germans left in 1944. Who then came in?
ZL. Okay, that is a very complicated story, so let’s go back to what happens with the Government of National Unity. Very soon, tension emerged between the Left and its partners in the government, as well as the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom maintained a strong military and political presence in Greece. Now, even during the occupation, the British had grown increasingly suspicious of EAM, concerned about the political ambitions of the Greek Communist Party. Now within the Government of National Unity, two issues became major sources of conflict: how to reorganize the Greek army and the disarmament of the resistance organizations. So the tension soon escalated and by early December, especially on December 3rd, 1944, police forces opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in Athens.
These killings triggered the wider conflict in the capital between British and Greek military and police forces on one side and the EAM-aligned forces on the other. These clashes continued until January 1945. They were essentially the first phase to the Greek Civil War. The fighting ended with the Varkiza Agreement in January 1945, but this settlement proved very short-lived.
AC. And so the Varkiza Agreement: not very popular, am I right in saying?
ZL. I guess so. It was a very fragile and weak agreement that was probably violated by all interested parties immediately after it was being signed. It did not help prevent the Civil War that erupted soon afterwards.
AC. There’s this one figure who’s really coming to mind, Aris Velouchiotis. I know he had a particularly negative response to the Varkiza Agreement. Could you tell us bit more about him?
ZL. For a big part of Greek society, especially during the years of occupation, he’s a mythical figure. A man of obscure origins before the occupation period, he turns into this very powerful military leader during the occupation years.
We know his portraits by contemporary observers, Greek and foreigners, British also, have many dark aspects. He is a very complex man, but nevertheless, he is the one responsible for setting up the largest voluntary army Greece had ever known. And he was very effective in organizing the resistance movement. He was notorious for his cruelty towards his political opponents or dissidents within the organization. However, as I said, he was effective. In the final years of the war, he was controversial even within his own party, even within the Communist Party.
He came in opposition, he was in conflict with the leadership of the Greek Communist Party and was eventually isolated by his own party and he faced eventually a tragic death. However, I believe he was instrumental not only in terms of organizing militarily the resistance movement but also in gaining popular support.
Some of his speeches, some of his political rhetoric was particularly powerful. We have discussed, I believe, his Lamia speech after the liberation of the city of Lamia. How he manages to include, incorporate national symbols, national myths into a very powerful, popular narrative, demanding for the country’s liberation, and appealing to the average Greek. And he still remains a mythical figure for many till this day. Despite, of course, all the flaws and all the political mistakes he made or the violence that he may have advocated. It is violence in the years of war, occupation.
AC. Yeah, I vividly remember being in Athens last year and walking past a bookshop and there were about 10 different biographies of Aris. So it’s very interesting the way that he…
ZL. Yes, he’s a larger-than-life figure, you know.
AC: He’s fascinating, he really is. You mentioned this speech that we previously talked about. I wonder if you could tell our listeners anything about that speech, particularly the way in which he uses cultural history in that speech.
ZL. He presents a national narrative integrating the heritage of ancient Greece and medieval Hellenism into a narrative that builds on the continuity of the Greek nation and of the Greek people. And the main unifying element in this story is the Greek people’s determination to resist against the occupation, against oppression, in all its various forms. This is not a communist rhetoric, an internationalist rhetoric, as one might have expected from a member of the Communist Party of Greece. This is a national rhetoric urging people to sacrifice themselves, to rally behind the claim for liberation.
AC. It’s very interesting when we consider the particular case of the KKE because from my own research I believe there was far less emphasis on the international character of the communist cause and a lot more focus on nationalism. So it’s really interesting how national history and cultural history play into that I think.
ZL. Perhaps it was their key to success. Imagine trying to persuade the population to risk their lives during the occupation years in the name of internationalism. I don’t know how far you would go with that. But rallying them with a discourse on the national cause, on the national sacrifice, and the continuity of these sacrifices throughout Greek history, evoking historical memory, is much more powerful, I guess.
AC. Absolutely. So we’ve talked about Aris’ role in the Civil War, but what happens generally?
ZL. After the Varkiza Agreement eventually collapsed, there is this important milestone, year 1946, which is a crucial turning point. By that year, violence against the Left, especially in rural areas, intensified and took the form of what came to be known as the White Terror. In protest against the political conditions, the Left made a very controversial decision to boycott the National Election of 1946, the first election held in Greece after a decade. After the election, political polarization deepened rapidly, and soon it escalated into civil war. This conflict would last until the summer of 1949. In choosing the path of armed confrontation, the Greek Left appears to have underestimated the realities of the international environment.
Moreover, the Soviet Union at the time proved unwilling to support the plans of the Greek Communists. In parallel, the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 further weakened the Communist side by disrupting one of its most important channels of support. At the same time, the United States intervened decisively in the civil war conflict.
With the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, Washington began providing extensive economic and military assistance to the Greek government in order to help defeat the communists. Facing far greater resources on the government side, the communist forces were eventually defeated militarily in August 1949. And in the aftermath of this military defeat, tens of thousands of leftists fled the country, seeking refuge to the Soviet Union and in other states of the Eastern Bloc.
AC. In Greece after 1949, we have a lot of leftists leaving. What about the leftists who stayed in Greece?
ZL. That was a very difficult path because the Civil War had a long-lasting impact on Greek politics, both at the level of institutions and at the level of ideology. For a large part of the political establishment, the Civil War was experienced almost as a continuing present. Institutionally, this was reflected in the continuation of the emergency legislation adopted during the Civil War, even after the conflict had ended.
This legislation restricted the aspects of political freedoms and allowed for the persecution of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs. Within this framework, the Communist Party of Greece, as well as the party’s newspapers Rizospastis, were outlawed in 1947. The party would only be legalized again after the end of the military dictatorship in 1974. The public administration was also purged of communists, as well as those suspected of sympathizing with the Communist Left. Thousands of public employees were dismissed. Left-wing citizens were detained in internal exile on remote islands, sites of exile that remained in operation well into the 60s. Leading members of the Communist Party were also brought to trial on charges such as treason or espionage.
One well-known example is the trial and execution of Nikos Beloyannis in 1952, together with Nikos Kaloumenos, Dimitris Batsis and Ilias Sargiriadis. The Beloyannis case provoked strong international reactions and widespread sympathy. Prominent figures, including Picasso, Charles de Gaulle, Charlie Chaplin, Jean-Paul Sartre, appealed to the Greek government to halt the execution, but they failed.
Another extension, let’s say, of the Civil War legacy was the use of the so-called certificates of political loyalty. These were documents issued by the police certifying that the citizen had no connection to the Communist Party or to communist ideology. In practice, such certificates were required for access to important aspects of social life, such as university admission, employment in the public sector, etcetera.
At the ideological level, the Civil War produced a new political divide in Greek society, a new cleavage. The divide between the so-called nationally-minded and the so-called non-nationally-minded. Within this framework, the Left was placed in the camp of the non-nationally minded, meaning that it was not considered a part of the national body. Another ideological consequence of the Civil War was that the concept, the idea of the National Resistance, particularly references to EAM, was pushed to the margins of the public discourse. In the post-Civil War period, it was largely excluded from the ways the state officially remembered and narrated the past. In place of the Communist Party, which could not operate legally in Greece, a new party was formed. It was called the United Democratic Left, and in place of the party newspaper Rizospastis, which was also outlawed, the newspaper Avgi was now published. In 1959 in particular, there is another very famous trial case. Manolis Glezos, who had become a symbol of the Greek resistance during the German occupation, was arrested and he was put on trial on charges of espionage.
At the time he had served as a member of the parliament for the United Democratic Left, and he was also the director of the newspaper Avgi. So his case also attracted international attention. For instance, [???], among others, intervened by appealing directly to the Greek prime minister on Glezos’ behalf. And Gleszos was ultimately sentenced to prison. In 1961, he was re-elected to parliament while still in prison, but he was released in 1962 following strong pressure from both Greek and international public opinion. But we should not lose out of sight that despite these restrictions, these restrictions of the post-Civil War political environment, the United Democratic Left managed to gradually gain support among broader audience. For instance, in the municipal elections of 1954, it won the three largest municipalities in the country, Athens, Piraeus and Thessaloniki. In the National Elections of 1956, it cooperated with the political centre, despite the division between them that stemmed from the legacy of the Civil War. And eventually, in the election of 1958, the United Democratic Left achieved a major breakthrough. With 25 % of the vote, it became the major opposition party in the Greek parliament.
A key factor behind this success was the party’s ability to undermine the accusation that it was anti-national. At the same time, it managed to link its left-wing rhetoric with broader demands for democratization and redistribution.
AC. Fascinating. It really draws to mind that there seems to be a perception that Greece in the 20th century, particularly in the 50s, was extremely repressive and extremely right-wing. And yes, it was repressive and there were right-wing parties in government, but there was still a strong opposition there.
ZL. There’s this term that has been coined to describe this very peculiar post-Civil War democracy in Greece. It has been called sickly democracy, meaning that political liberalism and parliamentarism are severely undermined by this function of a set of legislation stemming from the Civil War.
But yes, it is a very more complex story.
AC. So to kind of muddy the picture a bit, now we come to the second big regime and one that had a huge influence on the national narrative and a huge effect on the worldwide stage, the military junta. So could you tell us more about the Regime of the Colonels?
ZL. So in April, 1967, group of army colonels carried out a military coup in Greece, and they imposed a dictatorship defined by extreme nationalism and hardline conservatism. The officers who seized power justified their actions by claiming they were protecting the country from the threat of communism and from inept politicians. Almost immediately, the new regime launched a massive wave of arrests.
Thousands of citizens were detained, not only people associated with the political Left, but also democratic citizens who might have resisted the dictatorship. In 1967, for example, a member of the youth organization of the United Democratic Left, Yannis Halkidis, was shot and killed in cold blood by a police officer. Left-wing political organizations were dissolved, thousands of leftists were exiled to detention camps on remote islands such as Yiaros and Leros. The regime also imposed a very strict censorship. The censorship did not only suppress political speech, it also intervened in intellectual and artistic life, attempting to control cultural expression as well. In response to that, the Left organized the resistance in a network of underground groups that operated illegally under the dictatorship.
Throughout the seven years of military rule, the regime’s security forces systematically used torture against those arrested for opposing it. Some detainees did not survive these interrogations and the torture. One of them was Yiorgos Tsarouhas, a member of the Communist Party of Greece, a former member of parliament for the United Democratic Left. He had been active in the anti-dictatorial movement.
In 1968 in Thessaloniki, he died while being tortured by the police. The brutality of regime did not go unnoticed internationally. In 1969, the Council of Europe issued a landmark decision condemning the Greek junta for its systematic use of torture. The dictatorship also repeatedly targeted the student movement, responding with harsh repression. Many members of anti-dictatorial organizations were tried by military courts and sent to prison. The most dramatic confrontation came in November 1973 with the uprising at the Athens Polytechnic School. Students and citizens called for the restoration of democracy. The regime declared martial law and violently suppressed the revolt, killing dozens of civilians.
In the aftermath of the Polytechnic School Uprising, Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis overthrew Colonel Giorgios Papadopoulos and he took control of the regime. Under Ioannidis’ rule, the dictatorship became even more hardline, it intensified repression and it launched a new wave of arrests and torture.
AC. And the regime were particularly wedded to this idea that we’ve already mentioned of national-mindedness and national culture. And they had a very specific way of viewing that. Could you tell us a bit more about that?
ZL. Yes, it was a particularly narrow-minded, chauvinistic perception of Greek nationalism and national culture with a peculiar emphasis, almost comic emphasis on the Greek ancient civilization. And they staged these huge propaganda events in the capital and other towns, supposedly promoting the glory of ancient Greek civilization, but the results were actually comic. It was a particular kind of dictatorial kitsch that became infamous. What they actually succeeded in was undermining the perception of Greek culture in this particular format among Greek society and Greek public opinion than anything else.
AC. And it was quite brutally used as, I guess you could call it kind of reformation or correction in Makronisos, which I believe Yannis Hamilakis has called the Other Parthenon.
ZL. The Other Parthenon quote has been attributed to a conservative politician, Panagiotis Kanellopoulos. He has denied actually saying the phrase, so it is debatable whether he actually said it or not. But yes, it would be a notion that might have been used in the late 40s. The Makronisos prison camp.
Actually, I live across from Makronisos. If I turn my camera to the window, you can actually see it. Because I live across from Makronisos island.
AC. Oh wow!
ZL. Yeah. So, Makronisos Prison Camp began to operate in 1947. And it was originally destined for soldiers, soldiers of the National Army during the Civil War that were suspected to be communists, leftists, or leftist sympathizers. And thousands of soldiers were held there and they were subjected to physical torture as well as to psychological torture. They experienced both, yes, in the part of a reformation process and I will talk a little more about that. The interesting, not in a nice way, interesting thing about Makronisos camp is that in the spring of 1949 until the summer of 1950, it was not just meant to hold male soldiers, but also civilians, including women. So at that point, thousands of civilians, including women, were held in Makronisos. And after 1950, was also meant to hold soldiers again.
So there is an estimation that more than 50,000 people were accumulatively held prisoners in Makronisos. The idea was that communism was a sort of physical or mental disease that goes through your blood or your mind and that you might recover from that and be again integrated to society. But only after if you are subjected to this reformation process involving torture, propaganda, you know, physical and psychological violence and terror. And another interesting thing about the Makronisos concentration camp is that it was not a secret government project. It was made public and also it had international publicity as well. The Greek government publicized the Makronisos camp as a successful experiment, actually. So you have propaganda leaflets issued by the Greek government in the English language to talk about what is happening in the Makronisos camp. I mean, they do not say that we actually torture people there, but they speak about this reformation process. And they were very systematic in advertising the people that converted because thousands of people converted. They said that we are no longer communists, we despise communism, we do not want to be communists anymore. And they signed declarations to be able to leave the prison camp. And many of these reformed prisoners were used to supervise and suppress the other detainees. So they changed roles. That was particularly harsh and traumatizing as well. Another interesting chapter here is the awkwardness that the Left felt towards the people that were held in Makronisos and decided to sign a declaration, you know, saying we’re no longer communists just to return back to their families, to their loved ones. And these people were suddenly isolated because they did not fit in this heroic narrative of the communist who keeps on suffering and enduring and struggling for the cause because they were defeated at a subjective level.
Yeah, so thousands of people were left very vulnerable, very isolated from the group that was so important to them.
But you know, it is unthinkable for us. Mean, it’s an unthinkable experience to be held in a prison camp, being tortured, being away from your family, who might be unprotected at time and have to make this impossible decision.
Yeah, what I was trying to say is that the story of the Makronisos camp predates the military dictatorship. While other islands such as Leros was a particular prison camp that operated during the dictatorship.
AC. So it just seems like one big long history of oppression, really. Which gets a bit more urgent at points and a bit less urgent at others. So what happened after the fall of the regime?
ZL. After the dictatorship of the colonels.
AC. Yeah.
ZL. Well, in September 1974, the government of Constantinos Karamanlis legalized the Communist Party of Greece. With that decision, it abolished the legislation introduced in 1947, thus bringing to an end the 27 years during which the party had operated illegally.
At the same time, the emergency laws that had been introduced during the Civil War were gradually dismantled. The Communist Left was now accepted as a legitimate part of the political system. In this sense, the year of democratic transition, the year 1974, marked the closing of a long historical chapter, the enduring consequences of the Greek Civil War. During the period that is known as the Metapolitefsei, the Left became an equal participant in political life. The political system that emerged after the dictatorship was structured around three major political poles, although it was largely dominated by an intense two-party competition. An important milestone in overcoming the legacy of the Civil War, I think it came in 1982. That year, the government of PASOK brought a lobby for parliament, recognizing the National Resistance.
Despite strong opposition from the conservative camp, the National Resistance was officially recognized only in 1982. But the changes were not only institutional, there was also a deeper transformation in ideology, public discourse and political culture. The strong anti-communism that had characterized the post-Civil War era gradually lost its legitimacy in the years after the dictatorship, a different tone became common in the public debate. For instance, anti-American rhetoric gained much prominence. This was partly due to the experience of the military regime, which had maintained close relations with the United States government, and partly due to the trauma of Cyprus. The Turkish invasion and occupation of the island in 1974 coincided with and helped precipitate the collapse of the military dictatorship. So with this new national narrative, the Left gradually gained more prestige. Those who had been politically defeated in the Civil War were now increasingly seen as figures of resistance, both against the post-war political order and against the dictatorship itself. In this way, the idea of resistance came to be understood as a defining and enduring element of the political culture of Greek society. At the same time, the left-leaning cultural and intellectual production enjoyed a significant prestige in the years after the fall of the dictatorship. And perhaps it is also an interesting milestone that in 1989, a political development took place that carried a powerful symbolic meaning. For a brief period, the conservative Party of New Democracy and the Left formed a coalition government. Their stated goal was political cleansing and the investigation of corruption scandals associated with the PASOK government. The cooperation of these two historic political adversaries was of strong symbolic weight and in many ways it signalled the end of historical era.
AC. Okay. So. You mentioned this culture of resistance and endurance in political culture after the regime. I’m wondering how far that carries into education and I guess this moves into my last question which is about the legacy of the 20th century left in Greece. How is the history taught in Greece?
ZL. I guess both the Civil War and the earlier period of the Axis occupation and the National Resistance appear to function as a kind of cultural trauma for Greek society. At the same time, they both are powerful reference points in the formation of political identities and partisan loyalties. The strong public interest in historical works dealing with these events is telling. Equally telling are the political uses of the past and the emotions that it continues to evoke. Particularly in periods of political polarization and social tension, these historical memories tend to return to the centre of the public debate. This was very clearly visible during the economic crisis in Greece, especially in the years between 2010 and 2018.
During that period, political actors frequently evoked the past, and historical analogies were often used as a way to interpret the present, giving new political meaning to older historical experiences. In terms of education and school programs, I think that there is still a question of how the Civil War is dealt with.
It is not properly addressed in history textbooks, at least in schools. And this is a constant topic in the public debate, yes.
AC. The Civil War is obviously still quite controversial in Greece and people don’t really like talking about it. Why do you think that is?
ZL. Because it is an open trauma, guess. It is also very meaningful for the construction of political and collective identities. And depending on the period that it surfaces in the public debate, it can be instrumentalized. It is not always an expression of popular beliefs in the public concerns, but very often it is incorporated in political strategies, strategies of political communication.
AC. Could you give an example of that?
ZL. Especially in the years of the economic crisis and afterwards it becomes instrumental in the political strategies of both the Conservative Party and the Left. Perhaps a little of political context here is necessary. The economic crisis brought major changes to the Greek political landscape.
The traditional two-party system of the Metapolitefsei that had been based in the rivalry between PASOK and New Democracy that collapsed. In its place, Syriza, a party of the radical left with roots in the Euro-communist current, rose to power. And Syriza became a government party from 2015 to 2009.
So in this context, a party of the Left becoming the major governing party, and the restructuring of the whole party system, it sort of intensified the importance of the Civil War as a historical analogy instrumentalized in the political debate.
AC. Okay, okay. So I’m now thinking about politics today and how, if at all, this legacy is affecting politics today. What is the experience of the Left in Greece now?
ZL. Well, I think that the Left currently is in a phase of restructuring. It is definitely in a transition phase, I mean, in terms of party formations and electoral appeal. This part of the political spectrum is fragmentating and it is in search of a new identity.
AC. Mm-hmm.
ZL. But I would like to stress that in terms of its historical legacy, despite what might seem a marginalized position in the post-Civil War political system, the Greek Left did manage to exert a significant influence on the ideological and cultural life of Greek society. And I believe that in many aspects, this legacy is active today.
AC. And what about the KKE specifically, the Communist Party?
ZL. Yes, it has a relatively stable electoral appeal, but a very strong community of supporters, very militant and homogeneous community of supporters. In the years of the economic crisis, some observers claimed that the traditional Greek Communist Party would not survive. That the appeal of the radical Left and the fact that the radical Left came in government would diminish the prospects of the Communist Party. However, that assumption was not confirmed by political reality. The Communist Party of Greece denied any prospect of entering a coalition government in years of the economic crisis, any prospect of cooperation with the radical Left. But that did not eventually threaten its electoral appeal. It seems at the time quite stable for what is its appeal in the Greek society. And even though its electoral appeal is relatively stable, as I said, it seems to have a particular cultural strength, especially in terms of memory practices related to the 40s, the occupation period, the resistance and the civil war. And the Greek Communist Party seems to be very effective in terms of public history, in terms of organizing a particular narrative of this historical past and reproducing it and making it appealing, especially among younger generations. And the story with the photographs of the people executed in Kaisariani is also revealing in this respect. How it intensified this narrative of victims and heroes associated with the Greek Communist Left.
AC. Okay, not to bring the tone down, I’m wondering about the far right in Greece. Obviously, we’ve seen a worldwide rise in far-right parties and fascism here in Britain, in America, everywhere. Is that happening in Greece?
ZL. We had this huge challenge with the neo-Nazi party of Golden Dawn. Greek institutions managed to take control of the situation. They managed to put the leaders of the neo-Nazi party of Golden Dawn into trial for the crimes they had committed, the murders they had committed, and the party’s leadership is actually in jail now. And this party cannot participate in elections. This does not mean that the neo-Nazi challenge is completely over, but that was an important victory, I guess. So in terms of an official party formation, I think we had a positive outcome here in dealing with neo-Nazism. However, there are other several party formations that propagate a variety of extreme Right that is particularly alarming. And what is more alarming in my perspective is the diffusion of these ideas among parts of Greek society. So perhaps currently we are missing a strong party that could unify such beliefs, such ideas, as Golden Dawn. However, the diffusion of an extreme right belief system targeting immigrants, propagating conspiracy theories and irrational readings of political and social reality is very disturbing.
AC. Thank you very much to Zinovia for such a brilliant overview of the twentieth-century Greek Left. If you’d like to find out more about Zinovia or any of the topics discussed in this podcast, there are links and a suggested reading list in the description.
Thank you to Zofia Guertin for production and editing, to Henry Stead and Brave New Classics for the platform, and to all of you for listening.
See you next time – or, even, τα λέμε.
Further Reading and Listening:
- Mark Mazower (2001): Inside Hitler’s Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 (Yale University Press).
- Nikos Marantzidis (2023): Under Stalin’s Shadow: A Global History of Greek Communism (Oxford University Press).
- Neni Panourgia (2009): Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State (Fordham University Press).
- The Hellenic Heritage Foundation Podcast – especially their series on the Junta and the Occupation / Civil War.
- An article on the Kaisariani photos discussed in the episode: URL: The Guardian.
