Review: A Greek tragedy (Greece: from resistance to civil war)

A GREEK TRAGEDY

Marion Sarafis, ed, Greece: from resistance to civil war, Spokesman Books, Nottingham, 1980, pp142, pbk £2.95 All the major protagonists in the Greek civil war have an interest in covering up the facts about this disastrous event for the Greek working class. British soldiers shot Greek workers to consolidate the position of Greek royalists and fascists and thus make the region safe for imperialism.

Stalin and his Greek followers stabbed the working class in the back to preserve their fragile unity with imperialism.

And everybody involved tried to bury the evidence which would have shown up the roles of the leading parties in Ruerdorffer was proved correct in 1914 and many times since. Unfortunately this grasp of the significance of internationalism for class politics has rarely been equalled in the labour movement. Building a revolutionary party The scientific merit of Zinoviey's study is that it clearly forces which lie at the root of socialanalyses the twin - the trade union bureaucracy and the petit chauvinism bourgeoisie. The first drove the SPD in the direction of to bourgeois society; the second pragmatic adaptation completed the degradation of the party into a vehicle for chauvinism and other forms of bourgeois ideology. His analysis shows that by allowing these influences to grow and prevail the party bred a working class leadership whose interests began to coincide with the interests of the ruling class. He demonstrates that this process is not the result of evil subiective intention or simple material self-interest, but that it originates in the narrow pragmatic outlook of reformist labour politics. Its source is in essence political.

This is the most important message of his book.

There is a conclusion which Zinovier did not spell out, although his analysis clearly points to it. The way to overcome the destructive influence of opportunism is toconstruct a party which is committed to fight for the independent interests of the working class. This means taking on the labour bureaucracy. Only then can a real struggle for power be waged. Those who have drawn the lessons should join us in building the RCP. Sabena Norton See F Richards, Prolonging the death agony: the rise, fall and 1 of social democracy, in this issue of Revolreconstitution utionary Communist Papers.

K Marx, 'Critique of the Gotha Programme", in K Marx and 2 F Engels, Selected Works, Lawrence & Wishart, 1973, p323.

Franz Osterroth and Dieter Schuster, Chronik der deutschen Socialdemokratie, Vol 1, Bonn, 1975, passim.

Greece: from resistance to civil war is a collection of papers given at a seminar at the London School of Economics. Although it only touches the surface it provides a useful insight into the way the experience of the Greek civil war remains the key issue in Greek politics In Nazi-occupied Greece the resistance movement (ELAS) was dominated by the Greek Communist Party (KKE). Like the resistance in Yugoslavia, ELAS managed to defeat the Nazis without the intervention of the Allied armies. But the Western allies saw the growing authority of ELAS in Greek society as a threat to imperialist interests.

Britain in particular was determined to prevent the emergence of a potentially hostile regime in the Eastern Mediterranean. In the notorious secret agreement of October 1944 Stalin agreed with Churchill that Greece should become a part of Britain's sphere of influence. There was only one small obstacle to the realisation of this agreement: the workers and peasants of Greece, mobilised under the One myth that still persists about the Greek civil war is that Stalin played the key part by betraying ELAS to the British through his deal with Churchill, and by refusing to 30

give the resistance movement any support during the Battle of Athens in December 1944. All this is true. But the defeat of ELAS cannot be simply attributed to the manoeuvres of the leadership of the international communist movement in the Soviet Union. The decisive factor in the defeat of ELAS was that it put its trust in the communist party in Greece.

Even before Stalin signed the agreement, voted to form a Government of National Unity with Greek royalists, Nazi collaborators and social democrats at a conference in May 1944 in the Lebanon.

Stalinist betrayal was not peculiar to Greece: Stalinistled resistance movements throughout Europe were prepared to ignore the aspirations of the working class and hand power over to the Allies. The main difference in Greece was that when KKE delegates took back the Lebanon agree.

ment it was rejected by the ELAS rank and file.

The British knew that the situation was precarious so they pushed ahead in 1944 with their plan to integrate ELAS into a national army officered by British and Greek reactionaries. Despite widespread opposition, by August the ELAS leadership gave this plan its blessing. In October 1944 ELAS joined the Papandreou Government in inviting British troops to enter Greece of the British troops had a radicalising effect on the rank and file of ELAS. The KKE had to work overtime to prevent any incidents that might provoke the 'KKE considered some of the radical democratic reforms initiated by EAM-ELAS with deep mistrust and called to order all those who tried to accelerate the process of social transformation.

Particularly, it opposed all activities that might result in conflict protests led to the shooting of unarmed ELAS supporters by the police in Athens on 3 December 1944. This precipitated the Dekemvriana the Battle of Athens - that began the civil war between the British army and the Greek reactionaries on one side and ELAS on the other. Stalin backed up the British and demonstratively sent his ambassador to deal with the imperialis: backed puppet government. The KKE more capitulated and under the Varkiza agreement handed over ELAS arms to the British.

The British took over control of Greece: 'Accused or common crimes for every act of political resistance made under the occupation. thousands of men and women imprisoned, deported, shot by the [Greek] fascists - their opponents of yesterday. Under the shadow of British legitimacy gangs of militia turned without restraint upon the former partisans and without formal proceedings "liquidated" the militants and fighters Repression has been a consistent feature of Greek 'democracy' ever since. The ELAS rank and file, despite its heroic record of struggle and strong sense of social justice, because it accepted the premises of the KKE's politics. It had rejected the Lebanon agreement because of the inclusion of monarchist fascist collaborators in the National Government - not because it was a government of the bourgeoisie. Once the Battle of Athens exploded into a civil war the KKE leadership doomed the resistance movement to defeat.

British and American imperialism faced a movement whose leadership did everything possible to contain the struggle.

The papers presented to the LSE seminar diplomatically ignore the sensitive period between 1947 and 1949. The story of the Greek civil war still remains to be told. Only who are committed to the interest of the Greek proletariat and are prepared to challenge Stalinism could ever produce such a study.

Andrew Clarkson 31

THE BELATED RISE