Crusade Without the Cross:
The Paradox of the Greek Left

5,455 words

To Francis Parker Yockey
In memoriam

Following the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949, many of the defeated Communists fled to countries behind the Iron Curtain. Most of them were to die before they could see their homeland again. Those who survived in the exile, came back to Greece as late as 1975. For not all of them wanted  to compromise with the right-wing 1949-1974 regime of Greece. Still, do you know what was the first reaction of the defeated fighters upon reaching the countries of the Soviet bloc, late in the 1940s? When they were asked to take a bath for sanitary reasons, they declined; for they did not want the oil spread on their body by the Orthodox priests during the christening ceremony to be removed!

Such was the statement of a Greek Communist intellectual in Paris, in 1995. I was bewildered. I was then considered to be a “specialist” on the relations between Greece and the countries of the Eastern bloc and I thought I knew “everything” on the “colonies” that the Greek Communists had founded mainly in the “People’s Democracies” and in the Soviet Union. I knew that the Greek Orthodox clergy had supported either overtly or in veiled terms the Communist “rebellion” in Greece. Still from the Greek Church’s backing up the Communists to the latter’s desire not to “lose the oil of the christening” there was a big gulf. That is why upon my coming back to Greece, I started looking into the matter. The result of my research? My Paris interlocutor was right.

It is not possible to recount the history of the Marxist ideas in Greece, without taking into account the Greek Orthodox Church. And so for two reasons: a) The Modern Greek nationhood relies wholly upon the Church. As a matter of fact, Greek is considered to be every Orthodox Christian who “recognizes the spiritual jurisdiction of the [Greek] Patriarchate of Constantinople”;[1] and b) thanks precisely to the Greek Church, Materialism was disseminated in the Balkans and, further, was raised to “official”, i.e. State ideology in the Romanian countries long before the 1789 Revolution in France.[2]

This story of materialistic ideas that were spread in the Balkans by the Greek Orthodox Church is a long (and very interesting) one. The roots are to be found in Byzantium itself. For from the eleventh century on, a revival of Platonism and neo-Platonism took place in Constantinople; and this revival led up to a kind of crypto-paganism. The 1453 capture of the Byzantine capital by the Ottomans put an end to this neo-platonic current; and Gennadius I Scholarius, the first Constantinopolitan Patriarch to be in office following the fall of the Byzantine Empire, directed the philosophical research of his flock towards the “beacon of Aristotle’s thought.” Still, this direction was to have very important consequences.

Ecclesiastical Preamble

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Constantinople/Istanbul was criticized prior to the 1821-1829 Greek War of Independence very mildly by the Left, viz. the Greek Enlightenment scholars and their disciples. And for good reason; for the Greek Enlightenment, thanks to the protection of the Orthodox Church, anticipated the French one by several decades. In other words, materialist doctrines were being taught throughout Greece by Greek Orthodox . . . clergymen. And as a result the Enlightenment principles became the State Ideology in Balkan countries long before they prevailed in France.

In such a contradictory evolution, two characters assumed the key role, namely Cyril Lucar (1572-1638) and Theophilus Corydaleus (1570-1646). Both were disciples of Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631) at the University of Padua; and both wholeheartedly adopted Cremonini’s materialistic interpretation of Aristotle’s thought.[3] For if St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) had managed to espouse the creeds of the Roman Catholic Church with Stagirite’s teaching, it was Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525), professor at the Padua University from 1509 to 1512, who paved the path to the Enlightenment.

P. Pomponazzi published in 1516 his book De immortalitate animae (= On the Immortality of the Soul). He had moved at that time from the University of Padua to the one in Bologna; the impact of his book’s coming out, nonetheless, was terrible throughout Italy and even Europe. It triggered a real revolution in Christian thought; and this revolution was to culminate in 1517, i.e., merely a year later, with Luther’s Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum, i.e., the famous Ninety-Five Theses.

As a matter of fact, Pomponazzi overtly disagreed in his book on the Immortality of the Soul with St Thomas Aquinas’ teaching. The latter, based on the Aristotelian intellectual production, professed that the human soul could survive separation from the body; yet Pomponazzi declared that the soul’s survival was incompatible with entelechy, i.e., the Actualizing Form, a fundamental concept in Stagirite’s thinking and teaching. The corollary was the solemnization of the belief that the human soul was tied irreversibly to the human body; and so all doors were opened to materialism.

It was C. Cremonini who crossed triumphantly the door opened by Pomponazzi. He was appointed professor at Padua University in 1591, and since the Papal jurisdiction did not encompass Padua (for it was protected by the Venetian Republic), he felt free to propagate his Aristotelian-based materialism. His enthusiastic admirers and followers saw in him Aristoteles redivivus (= Aristotle reborn), the princeps philosophorum (= Prince of the Philosophers), the genius Aristotelis (= Aristotle’s genius) and so on.[4]

The result? When Cyril Lucar, Cremonini’s student and follower, became Patriarch of Constantinople, he appointed Th. Corydaleus, also a follower of Cremonini, director of the Patriarchal Academy,[5] a prestigious institution of higher learning. Most likely it was in 1625;[6] and so Materialism came under the aegis and the virtual protection of the Greek Patriarchate, the leading one of the Orthodox Christendom. So, the Patriarchal Academy developed into the avant-garde of the European Left.[7]

That is why the “progressive mind” of the Patriarch Cyril I Lucar is nowadays enthusiastically acclaimed in Greece and in the Western countries as well. No matter that he was converted to Calvinism and even wrote a Confession of Faith clearly endorsing Protestant theses:[8] Confessio fidei reverendissimi domini Cyrilli, Patriarchae Constantinopolitani nomine et consensus Patriarcharum Alexandrini et Hierosolymitani, . . . , scripta Constantinopoli mense Martio anni 1629.[9] He was of course anathematized by an Ecclesiastical Council held in Constantinople in 1638.[10] Still, his memory remains unharmed.[11] For the Left-wing intelligentsia see in him the “Father of the Greek Enlightenment.”[12]

It is true that he founded an important printing house in 1627,[13] the first Greek one in the Levant. What is more, he was put to death by the Ottoman authorities, due mainly to accusations of the Jesuits who saw in him a bitter foe of the Roman Church. Still, the truth is that he was a Calvinist[14] and most likely a materialist.

His companion and zealous ally, Th. Corydaleus, was undoubtedly a materialist; and he did not dissimulate his ideas, though he was a Greek Orthodox clergyman. Unlike Cyril Lucar he did not suffer death at the hands of the Ottomans. Quite the contrary! He was ordained Metropolitan Bishop of Naupactus and Arta.[15] Further, he founded a school in Athens, his native city, where he continued teaching materialism shrouded in Aristotelian thought till the end of his life. He created chaos in his Metropolitan See; he became a monk in 1622 and renounced his vows in 1625; yet he was never stigmatized by the Greek Orthodox Church.[16] And the Ottoman authorities, properly “indoctrinated” by the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, ever never bothered him.

He wrote several books that enjoyed great popularity in both Greece and the Graecized Balkan countries as well up to the late eighteenth century. Needless to say that this popularity was mostly due to the high regard the Greek clergy had for them.[17] The result? The Maurokordatos family, a rich and very influential Greco-Jewish Constantinopolitan one, managed to have Sevastos Kyminitēs, their protégé and an ardent Corydaleus’ supporter,[18] appointed as head of the Bucharest Princely Academy. This Academy, along with the Patriarchal one in Constantinople, was a renowned educational institution, one of the very few in the Balkans at that time. No sooner than appointed, S. Kyminitēs began propagating materialism rooted in Aristotle’s thought. And even though he was totally disliked by his students, he enjoyed the protection of the Maurokordatos family, was a favorite with the Patriarchal Court at Constantinople and the Ottoman authorities as well. He maintained, therefore, his post until 1702, the year of his death. The corollary was that thanks to him materialism became the state Ideology in the Romanian Lands, Walachia and Moldavia,[19] then vassal countries of the Ottoman Empire.

The Left in Independent Greece

The Modern and Contemporary Greek people is a multiracial mixture. Since acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate at Constantinople was, in practice, the exclusive criterion of being regarded as Greek, it goes without saying that Modern Greeks are descendants of all the Balkan’s Christian nations – and mainly of Albanians, Slavs, and Romanians.[20] Civil strife flourished in such an ambiance; and democratic/socialist ideas thrived as well.

The first wholly democratic current, with obvious tendencies to turn actually into a socialist movement, was that of Theodōros Grivas, in Acarnania, viz. the south-western part of Mainland Greece. Thanks to his achievements during the Greek War of Independence, Grivas was a general of the Greek Army under Otho, the first King of Greece (1832-1862). Nonetheless, he had in view a radical change of Greece’s Statehood structures. In the framework of the revolution that put an end to Otho’s reign, in October 1862, he formed a “People’s Army” 4,500 strong, and declared he was “ready for a march to Athens” with the intention of proclaiming the Republic, endow Greece with a federal structure, and “rehabilitate the landless peasantry.” In short, he was in open conflict with the Provisory Government that assumed power after King Otho’s fall, and aspired only at establishing the so-called “Royal Republic” regime. Undoubtedly, Grivas had sympathizers in the main agglomerations of the country; that is why his “Popular Army”, wherein mostly landless peasants were recruited, struck terror among the wealthy social strata. Had he survived and put into effect his “march to Athens,” the course of the Modern History of Greece would be different. But in 1862 he was 65 years old and suffered from asthma; and he passed away on October 24, 1862 (Old Style).[21]

Rumors are going about him even today in Mainland Greece. He is said to have been poisoned by the British; and that he wanted to capture Athens in order to paint red the royal palace. Be that as it may, not only had the 1862 Grivas movement a clear-cut socialist character but many partisans of him proved to be ready to rise up in arms against the establishment.[22] It was on his ‘precedent’ that the communist uprising would be molded in the twentieth century.

* * *

The Greek Communist Party was founded on November 17, 1918 as the Socialist Labour Party of Greece.[23] It was renamed Communist Party of Greece (Kommounistiko Komma Hellados/K.K.E.) not earlier than late November, 1924.[24] From its very beginning, the K.K.E. had three key problems to cope with: a) the Macedonian Issue; b) the Trotskyite current within it; and c) the elaboration of a “revolutionary process” fit for Greece.

As for the first question, it must be kept in mind that the autochthonous population of Macedonia were Slavs; and those Slavs had often a Bulgarian national conscience. Whatever the fact of the matter, Macedonians were seeking independence; and the Greek Communists toed that very line in 1922.[25]

Such a decision, quite in accordance with the traditional/initial Marxist internationalism, was utterly disapproved by the public opinion of Greece and was abandoned at last. Pantelēs Pouliopoulos, nonetheless, the first Secretary-General of the newborn K.K.E. was put on trial and got eighteen months in prison.[26] Following his release in 1926, he was re-elected Secretary-General; yet he was at odds with the Party apparatus – already a Stalinist one. As a result he deserted the K.K.E. and founded his own Communist group,[27] baptized “Spartacus” after the journal they were publishing from 1928 on.[28]

The Greek “Spartacists” were overtly Trotskyites; and their deep disagreement with the Stalinist K.K.E. arose early in 1934. For it was then that Pouliopoulos published his book “A Democratic or a Socialist Revolution in Greece?”[29] and turned down the “revolutionary process” advocated by the K.K.E. The latter, obviously based on the Russian experience, “deserted” the workers and was seeking an alliance with the democratic bourgeois parties and, above all, the peasantry. Pouliopoulos and his Trotskyites, on the other hand, insisted on the necessity to propagate Marxism among the 100,000 “industrial proletarians,” dwelling mostly in Piraeus, the seaport of Athens.[30]

As for Piraeus, Pouliopoulos was correct: the workers there were mostly Right-wing or overtly fascists.[31] He tried, nevertheless, to indoctrinate them with Marxism’s Trotskyite variety but in vain. Meanwhile the K.K.E. concluded alliance with the Liberal Party (founded by Eleutherios Venizelos prior to World War I); yet this rapprochement accelerated the march of Greek politics towards the authoritarian government established jointly by King George II and his Prime Minister, Iōannēs Metaxas, on August 4, 1936.

Pouliopoulos, further, had a tragic end. Arrested by the Police of the authoritarian government in 1937, he declined the “offer” to leave his “homeland.” He was, therefore, imprisoned and, following the 1941 occupation of Greece by the Axis Powers, he was interned in an Italian concentration camp. At last, he was shot in 1943 by way of reprisal for a guerrilla attack against an Italian military train.[32] And an important “detail”: one of his “companions” was Andreas Papandreou,[33] who accepted the police’s offer to leave Greece, fled to the United States, became a university professor and, thanks to his American citizenship, Prime Minister of Greece in 1981.[34]

Civil Strife (1942-1949)

The authoritarian government established in August, 1936, stopped the Communist Party’s course to power. Still, the K.K.E. had one more card to play, namely the refugees who had immigrated into Greece from Turkey in the early 1920s. That was due to an agreement concluded by the two countries at Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1923, following the crushing defeat the Greeks suffered at the hands of the Turkish Nationalist Army. In the framework of this agreement, a compulsory exchange of populations was bilaterally agreed; as a result, ca. 1,500,000 people fled from Turkey into Greece.

If truth be told, this exchange had little, if any, relevance with the two involved countries. The crux was Macedonia and the framework, nay, the very basis of the machinations was the famous dogma of Sir Halford Mackinder. According to the latter’s doctrine if the “Slavs.” in practice the Russians, achieved to put under their control the seashore of Macedonia, they would “stand” as “world masters.”[35]

It is certain that Sir Halford Mackinder, one of the founders of the Jewish-run London School of Economics, announced his theory in 1904. Still, this announcement was all but a crystallization of ideas existing long before Sir Halford. For early in the nineteenth century the British Foreign Office already saw in the Ottoman Empire (that ruled Macedonia at that time) a “bulwark against Russian expansion.”[36] The collapse of this “bulwark”, nonetheless, was easily foreseen after the 1878 Berlin Congress. The corollary was that Greeks, under undisputable British influence, should be substituted for the autochthonous Macedonians. Such Greeks would come only from Asia Minor. That is why the 1923 Greco-Turkish “compulsory” exchange of populations was notified in advance by Eleutherios Venizelos as early as 1914.[37] The bulk of Macedonian Moslems (ca. 500,000 people overall) had emigrated into Turkey as soon as the Balkan wars were over. The Greeks, in essence the Christian Orthodox dwellers of Anatolia, were exhorted by the “heads” of their communities to leave their homeland (most likely upon advice of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul); and so in spite of the entreaties of their Turkish compatriots to stay.[38]

Therefore, the point is that the 1,500,000 people who immigrated into Greece and used to live there in unpredictable misery, were hopeful that they would soon be back in their homeland; but in 1926 their hope proved to be vain. That is why they took up the Communist ideology. The repercussions on Greek politics would be very serious.

In fact, from the early 1920s on the electoral strength of the K.K.E. was steadily rising. From 2% of the electorate in 1929, it attained 5% in 1932, 6% in 1933 and 9.5% in 1935.[39] It was one of the strongest Communist parties in Eastern Europe; and it is an irony that Greece was the sole country to escape from the Iron Curtain.

* * *

In 1941 Greece was occupied by the Axis Powers, namely Germany and Italy. Still, in that very year, on September 27, 1941, the National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleutherōtiko Metōpo/E.A.M.) was founded, wherein the K.K.E. was the leading force.[40] On June 7, 1942, moreover, the “armed struggle” against the occupation troops began by the E.A.M.’s “military arm,” namely “People’s National Liberation Army” (Ethnikos Laïkos Apeleutherōtikos Stratos/E.L.A.S).[41] The latter was under a leadership of Arēs Velouchiōtēs, a fortune-hunter who soon proved to be a military genius. From 1943 on, the whole of Greece was ruled by E.A.M. and strictly controlled by E.L.A.S. The Right-wing guerilla forces were speedily and savagely exterminated. The only exception was Epirus, where there flourished a nationalist armed movement, the “National Troops of Greek Partisans” (Ethnikai Homades Hellēnōn Antartōn/E.O.E.A.), guided by Napoleōn Zervas, a commissioned officer of the (regular) Greek Army.

Needless to say that E.A.M./E.L.A.S. were particularly powerful in the very regions where the Th. Grivas’ socialist movement had taken place in the nineteenth century. Still, it is essential to insist on the fact that the Communist-run guerilla troops were substantially assisted by the Greek Orthodox clergy. Even two Metropolitan Bishops overtly adhered to E.A.M.,[42] whilst the rank-and-file of E.L.A.S. included priests in cassocks.[43] The behavior, on the other hand, of the E.L.A.S. troops towards the Orthodox clergy and, generally speaking, the Church was more than kind.[44] For the Communist-run E.A.M. used to see in the Church a pillar of its power.

Thanks to the “Revolution” proclaimed by Arēs Velouchiōtēs already in 1942, ten to seventeen Italian and German divisions were nailed down in Greece early in 1943.[45] So, towering were the ambitions of the Communists: they considered the “struggle” against the occupation troops as the “First Stage” of the “Socialist Revolution in Greece.” Yet they reckoned without their host; and in that very case the “host” was Stalin. In May, 1943, he actually dissolved the Comintern, because “he had never seriously endorsed the [Trotskyite] idea of the World Revolution.”[46] The “dissolution” was, moreover, a friendly gesture to Great Britain and the U.S.A.; for Stalin was already preoccupied with the reconstruction “of his devastated country.”[47]

Late in September, 1944, the Greek Government “in exile” at Cairo was informed that the dogma of Sir Halford Mackinder was again in force. For the British wanted a cordon sanitaire to be formed by the countries on the north-eastern Mediterranean seashore, in order to stop the “Russian expansion.”[48] Such a country was, of course, Greece; and Stalin speedily agreed not to send Soviet troops in the Greek parts of Macedonia and Thrace.[49] In the evening of October 9, 1944, Churchill had a meeting with Stalin in the Kremlin: the agreement was “formally” concluded; and the British Prime Minister stated the following on October 27, in the House of Commons:

Upon the tangled questions of the Balkans, where there are Black Sea interests and Mediterranean interests to be considered, we were able to reach complete agreement and I do not feel that there is any immediate danger of our combined war effort be weakened by divergences of policy or doctrine, in Greece, Roumania, Bulgaria or Yugoslavia and, beyond the Balkans, Hungary. We have reached a very good working agreement about all these countries singly and in combination, in the object of . . . providing . . . for a peaceful settlement after the war is over.[50]

That meant that Greece was to be held under exclusive British control and that Yugoslavia was not going to be encompassed in the “Russian sphere of influence.” As a result, the Russophile E.A.M./E.L.A.S. were abandoned – and the tragedy of the Greek Left began.

* * *

During the operations against the occupation troops, the E.L.A.S. units were abundantly supplied by the British. And when, in October, 1944, the Germans evacuated Athens, the Communists considered the time to be ripe for the power to be seized by themselves. Early in December, 1944, therefore, a huge demonstration took place in the very center of the Greek capital; yet, contrary to what was going on so far, the Police opened fire. It was the beginning of the Civil War or, according to the Communists, the “Second Stage” of the “Revolution.” Churchill was eloquent in Parliament:

So far as has been ascertained the facts are as follows: the Greek Organization called E.A.M. had announced their intention to hold a demonstration on December 3rd. The Greek Government at first authorised this, but withdrew their permission when E.A.M. called for a general strike to begin on December 2nd. The strike in fact came into force early on December 3rd. Later in the morning the E.A.M. demonstration formed up and moved to the principle square of Athens, in spite of Government ban. On the evidence so far available I am not prepared to say who started the firing which then took place. The Police suffered one fatal casualty and had three men wounded. The latest authentic reports give the demonstration’s casualties as 11 killed and 60 wounded.[51]

Moscow remained silent, nay, indifferent.[52] What is more (and strangely enough) the battle in Athens were fought not by the well-trained units of E.L.A.S.[53] but by the latter’s Athens reserves – in fact bands of ill-equipped teenagers who were literally massacred by the British troops then occupying Athens.[54] Even today the accusations of “betrayal” against the 1944 Communist’s leadership are common. Still, the facts are not yet established. Two things are clear, nevertheless: a) the head of the Athens police force at that time, Angelos Ewert, was a British agent;[55] b) the Communist leadership that fled to the U.S.S.R. after the final defeat suffered by K.K.E. armed forces at the hands of the National Army in 1949 were never trusted by Stalin and, as a rule, met a “bad end.”[56]

In January, 1945, an agreement was reached between the British and the Communist troops. The latter laid down their arms, and were given the promise that they could develop freely political activity henceforth. Yet Churchill was determined to have “no peace without victory.”[57] A reign of terror followed;[58] A. Velouchiōtēs was murdered in 1945; and exasperated the Greek Communists triggered off the so-called “Third Stage” of their “Revolution” in 1946. In practice this was one more phase of the Civil War. It was to last until the summer of 1949. The Communist Army was defeated by the well-equipped National one and thanks to Tito’s attitude as well; for the latter, after his rupture with Stalin, overtly toed the line of the Western Powers.

All that time the Russians remained silent; and their “expansion” towards the Mediterranean Sea never took place. Simultaneously, autochthonous Macedonians, of Slavic stock, regarded as “Communists” by the Greek authorities, left their homes and fled either to Yugoslavia or in other countries of the “Iron Curtain.”[59]

Greece was once more a “Western Country.”

As an Epilogue

In April, 1967, two or three days after the military coup, at 2.00’ in the night, there was a ring at the front door. I woke up at once, though I sleep very soundly; I rushed out of my room and I went to look at what was going on.

All my family was up and about: three policemen had entered our home and were searching my father’s bookcase. Needless to say that they were silly people. What were they expecting to find out? The “dangerous” books, viz. the Marxist ones, were already carried by my Mother to the house of her own parents; and no policeman had the idea to search over there. The search, however, was about an hour long; afterwards, the policemen said good bye, and left our home.

That night I slept on my parents’ bed, between my dad and my mother, although I was 15. If truth be told, I was then and there like a baby; and my father kept patting my head, in order to calm me. The day after all our phone communications (either at home or in my father’s lawyer office) were cut off. You can imagine what it means for a barrister not to be able to make a phone call. Fortunately, we were without telephone only a year. For in 1968 we had again the ‘right’ to call up. 

It was this way that my High-School classmate and daughter of a leading Communist lawyer, answered to my entreaty. I had asked her to give an account of her experience – in her capacity as member of an influential family of the Greek Left; and she described to me the “most terrifying night” in her life. Her father was the Secretary-General of the E.A.M. in Thessaly; he was sentenced to death by a Court-Martial in the 1940s and he survived thanks to personal and family connections. Yet he was tired by his bitter experience of the “lost Communist Revolution”; and a couple of years following my classmate’s “most terrifying night”, he passed away due to a heart attack.

The military coup in question was the one brought off in Greece on April 21st, 1967. It had little (if anything) to do with Fascism. It is well-established today that its main reason lay in Mackinder’s dogma. The 1967 Six-Day Arab-Israeli War, triggered off in the first decade of June, was in view long before it started. And it was clear that, following either an Arab victory (not likely) or defeat (most possible) the Soviet “presence” in the Eastern Mediterranean would be considerably increased.[60] Meantime, Greece was in a long political crisis; and the political ascendancy of Andreas Papandreou would undoubtedly pave the way for a “mass infiltration” of “Communists”, i.e., Russophile Left-wing people into the Greek State apparatus.[61] That is why the Israelis and the “military establishment” of the United States stirred up the coup and, of course, approved of it, whilst the U.S.A. Department of State disavowed it.[62]

This is the framework wherein the tragedy of the Greek Left took place. The Greek Left knew very little about Marx and Marxism. As a rule, the E.A.M./E.L.A.S. people used to see in Communism a remedy for the traumas that Greek National Life was leaving on their psyche. The refugees from Asia Minor wanted to go back to their “homes” and were frustrated by the foiling of their expectations. The peasants wished to have a less hard life. Educated people, like the father of my classmate, were seeking for the modernization and, if possible, Europeanization of the incredibly archaic social structures of Modern and Contemporary Greek nationhood. Almost the whole of them were conservative householders and good members of Greek Orthodox Church’s congregation. They were engaged in a “Crusade” in order to cure the painful paradoxes of Modern Greece. Yet they did not realize that their “Cross” was lost in the pitiless implementation of Mackinder’s Geopolitics.

Notes

[1] Correspondance du comte Capodistria, président de la Grèce, I (Geneva : Cherbouliez, 1839), p. 265.