Historein

Vol. 8, 2008

BOOK REVIEWS

Historein Historein https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.45

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Historein, H. (2009). BOOK REVIEWS. Historein, 8, 128-210. doi:https://doi.org/10.12681/historein.45

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Yannis Stavrakakis atic articulations of Lacanian theory with contemporary political analysis and critique The Lacanian Left: of hegemonic discourses and orders: Slavoj Psychoanalysis, Theory, Žižek’s combination of Lacanian psychoa- nalysis and Marxist tradition, Alain Badiou’s Politics reappropriation of Lacan’s thought, taking it in the direction of an “ethics of the event”, Er- Albany: State University of New nesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s endeavour York Press, 2007. 320 pp. to formulate a new vision of radical and plural democracy, but also, in the periphery of this circle of Lacan-inspired reorientation of po- litical theorisation, Cornelius Castoriadis and by Athena Athanasiou Judith Butler’s critical engagements. Through Panteion University a wide range of critical readings in political philosophy, Stavrakakis traces the conver- gent and divergent routes through which those theorists read and appropriate Laca- nian theory, perceive the politics of the Left, Yannis Stavrakakis’ The Lacanian Left: Psy- and, most importantly, actively engage in an choanalysis, Theory, Politics is an important emerging theoretico-political field that the and innovative exploration of the multiple in- author aptly calls the “Lacanian Left”. tersections between Lacanian psychoanalysis and critical political theory of democracy. It is a This is a divided, uneven, and heterogeneous valuable contribution to current theoretico-po- locus, however: a horizon – as both an ever- litical inquiries on how psychoanalytic theory negotiable demarcating limit and an enabling might reinvigorate political praxis today. Sta- opening of creative possibilities – constitut- vrakakis is associate professor of Political Sci- ed by (and as) the theoretical encounter be- ence at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki tween the symbolic and the real, knowledge and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Theoreti- and experience, the social and the political. It cal Studies in the Humanities and the Social is at this horizon of tension and possibility – Sciences, University of Essex. He is the author or, limitation and promise – that Stavrakakis of Lacan and the Politicall (1999) and co-edi- traces the political implications of (encoun- tor of Discourse Theory and Political Analysis ters with) the Lacanian real. This is, in fact, (2000) and Lacan and Science (2002). the question upon which Stavrakakis’ episte- mological and theoretical project is crucially In this collection of essays, Stavrakakis ad- premised: how to articulate a political theory dresses the ways in which Lacanian psycho- based on the recognition of the unrepresent- analytic theory, in recent years, has been con- able, incommensurable and irreducible real versing with political theory and critical analy- – in an approach involving the simultaneous sis. He highlights some of the most emblem- awareness that the real (the realm of expe-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) rience) can never be mastered by the sym- dimensions of social constructions and radi- bolic (the domain where theory is articulated) cal imagination, Laclau on the affective limits but also the recognition that nonetheless one of discourse and the political implications of should assume the impossible task of sym- lack, Žižek on the paradigmatic appropriation bolising the real. of Antigone in the conceptualisation of politi- cal praxis and the “radical act”, and Badiou on By focusing on the “encounter with the real”, the ethical implications of (a positive politics to use a Lacanian phrase, Stavrakakis is en- of) the event. gaged in the task of reorienting the way we ar- ticulate our theories so that the trace of experi- Stavrakakis explores what he perceives as ence – above all, the experience of our failure disavowal of the political in Castoriadis’ theo- to symbolically master the real of experience retical apparatus. Linking the Lacanian real – is not eliminated, foreclosed or mortified with the disruptive moment of the political, once and for all. Therefore, the crucial impetus he shows how Castoriadis’ vitalist account of this book’s argumentation is to track down of the autonomy of an essentialised and self- the limits that the real of experience poses to contained subject, coupled with an idealised signification and representation; those limits conceptualisation of human imagination, is are not merely prohibitive but also enabling related to the disavowal of negativity. This in the process of continuous (re)articulation disavowal of negativity, however, amounts of social and political identity. The impetus to to an ultimate disavowal of the encounter register such limits bespeaks a mode of the- with the political: a moment when the limits orising that is indispensable to the emerging of autonomy – limits marked by the always Lacanian Left, according to Stavrakakis, and it already impossible attempts to capture the is in this context that he seeks to encircle the real through symbolic means – are exposed. affective limits of discourse analysis while pro- Here, the crucial question is: what could be posing novel approaches to some of the most the future of radical democratic politics in urgent social and political riddles of our tumul- light of the negative, that is, the real, limits of tuous times, such as the relationship between human autonomy and creativity? politics and emotion, jouissance and discourse, representation and enjoyment, ethics and so- The intersection between affect and discourse cial change, but also phenomena and events preoccupies the author in his analysis of La- related to national identification and national- clau’s discourse theory. The author’s signifi- ism, consumerism, advertising, de-democra- cant starting point here is the acknowledge- tisation and European identity. ment that prior theoretical formulations within discourse theory have considerably neglected In its first part, entitled “Dialectics of Disa- the dimension of affect and jouissance. Laclau vowal”, the book offers a detailed theoretical and Mouffe’s reorientation of the political the- study of specific engagements with the multi- ory of the Left towards a “radical and plural de- faceted field of the Lacanian Left, putting spe- mocracy”, and Laclau’s later solo work, exhibit cial emphasis on the different ways in which suggestive conceptual affinities with Lacanian particular theorists converse with the nega- theory and negative ontology. Stavrakakis ac- tive ontology of Lacanian theory: Castoriadis knowledges the productive underpinnings of on the positive and creative (instead of the al- Laclau’s strategic attempt to employ the cat- ienating in Lacan’s perspective of negativity) egory of the real and jouissance, and to recon-

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ceptualise discourse with affect. Remaining ity and the negative dimensions of the real. critical of the ontological conceptualisation of Žižek’s theorisation of the act seems to un- discourse, when it is presented as an all-en- derestimate and bypass lack and finitude in compassing category within which the logic of favour of an unlimited positivity of human ac- jouissance is subsumed, he shows how La- tion. It tends to privilege the moment of the clau’s earlier (over)emphasis on discourse at political act as an apocalyptic or miraculous the expense of jouissance and the irruptions event, which exceeds the discursive limits of that affect manifests in the social field has the symbolic. Stavrakakis reads Antigone’s been changing gradually. lure for Žižek as symptomatic of his effective disavowal of the dialectics between negative The necessary question here is what concep- and positive, his negation of the encounter tual innovation would it take to reflect theo- with contingency and negativity: in appro- retically on the relation between signification priating Antigone as a heroic example of a and jouissance without neutralising the latter purely positive act, liberated from the bounds through its absorption into a concept of dis- of the symbolic order, Žižek transforms the course which remains intact, seamless, self- negativity of Antigone’s lack and desire to the enclosed and all-inclusive. Affect cannot be idealised voluntarist positivity of a glorious, reduced to merely an internal moment of dis- total ethico-political act. course. Insofar as we trace the affective limits of discourse through their vestiges within dis- Stavrakakis convincingly shows how Žižek’s course, we explore their constitutive relation. idealisation of Antigone as a model of radi- Employing the category of the real and accept- cal ethico-political action is in contradiction ing its paradoxes, Stavrakakis argues, ena- with his own Lacanian account of the act bles a fruitful consideration of affect and dis- as a non-subjectivist, non-wilful encounter course together, as two distinct and yet inter- with the real. The gesture of fetishising the connected realms. Laclau, on the other hand, act (in terms of a miraculous event auto- sees a double danger in the treatment of af- matically transubstantiating the negative to fect and discourse as two conceptually distinct positive) in the name of some political op- orders: first, the essentialisation of language timism bypasses the crucial dimension of and, second, the essentialisation of the oper- the lack in the socio-symbolic Other: “Thus, ations of the unconscious. For Stavrakakis, in opposition to Žižek’s strict differentiation however, taking into account form and force, between the ethics of assuming lack and a symbolic structuration and jouissance, is not politics of acts, why not see the assumption/ only a matter of theoretical sophistication, but institutionalisation of the lack in the Other, not also of theoretico-political strategy. as a limit but as the condition of possibility, or in any case a crucial resource, in ethical- The avowal of the constitutive dialectics be- ly assuming the radical character of an act, tween negative and positive is a crucial stake of relating ourselves – as divided beings – to in the way in which the Lacanian Left concep- events?” (124, author’s emphasis). tualises the act. With respect to Žižek’s theo- retico-political interventions on the act, Sta- In the second, more empirically oriented part vrakakis claims that the problem is the op- of the book, entitled “Dialectics of Enjoyment”, posite of the one associated with discourse Stavrakakis moves towards an analytical theory, namely, overemphasis on negativ- treatment of specific critical phenomena and

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) events that mark contemporary social and author elaborates on in the context of his criti- political reality. Through a comprehensive cal response to Laclau’s caveat that the treat- reading of multiple aspects of the Lacanian ment of the affective and the linguistic as con- Left, the various chapters of this part devel- ceptually distinct leads to an essentialist con- op important approaches to representation ception of language. and affect, signification and enjoyment. Cen- trally positioned in the inquiries that this part Stavrakakis dedicates three chapters to a seeks to unravel is the role of affectivity and careful examination of the ways in which enjoyment in political life and in political anal- processes of attachment to symbolic author- ysis. Within this general context, the author ity reproduce relations of subordination and discusses the role of the interplay between sustain social order with regard to nation- the symbolic and the real in identity-forma- alism, national identification and European tion and power relations. The argumentation identity, but also the capitalist administra- put forward in this section is informed by an tion of jouissance in various contexts of con- articulation of the problematic of the real qua sumerism and advertising. The author traces jouissance (enjoyment) with discourse theo- the longevity of national identifications in the ry, an articulation that Stavrakakis considers depth that certain national, cultural and reli- absolutely crucial for the Lacanian Left. gious attachments have historically acquired. “How come nationalism is still the primary lo- This part starts with a chapter dedicated to an cus – together with consumerism – of indi- attempt to widen and enrich poststructuralist vidual and collective identifications in late mo- political theory through addressing the affec- dernity?” Stavrakakis asks (191). Although the tivity of the political, and through engaging with discursive dimension is certainly important in the Lacanian insights on the relation between constituting and sustaining national desire, he the affective and the discursive. Late capital- claims, the symbolic aspect of national iden- ist consumer culture, the hegemony of adver- tification is not sufficient. Thus, the dialectics tising discourse, or, on a different register, the of jouissance is employed again as an organ- rejection of the European constitutional trea- ising line of explanation. What emerges then ty are phenomena that cannot be adequately as an imperative task is to take into account explained, Stavrakakis argues, without tak- the affective investments which confer on the ing into account the role of desire and jouis- nation its force (and not merely its form) as a sance. At the same time, the author critically pervasively desirable object of identification. addresses the normative deployments of the In terms of political action, what is at stake is affective lure in the service of conservative to resist the depoliticisation of politics and its discourses of political marketing, advertising reduction to unaffective technocratic admin- and nationalism, a strategy that signals what istration; in other words, what is at stake is to he aptly describes as “the passage from a so- infuse passion into the project of radical de- ciety of prohibition to a society of commanded mocracy instead of letting the politics of af- enjoyment” (22, author’s emphasis), and “our fect be monopolised by racist and nationalist interpellation as consumers in the society of aggression. commanded enjoyment” (251). A considera- tion of affect and discourse together, however, How can we then reorient the dialectic of af- needs to emphatically avoid any essentialisa- fect which is always already implicated in tion of affect; this is an important point that the power relations and in processes of social

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and political identifications? How can we re- Second, I would claim that while the role of store our faith in radical political criticism? affectivity in processes of identification and These are the questions that Stavrakakis subjectivity has been historically disregard- discusses in the concluding chapter. He ar- ed, downplayed, and/or reduced by theories ticulates a Lacanian response to post-dem- of social construction, this is not exactly the ocratic trends in late capitalist societies, one case with poststructuralist theory, at least not that seeks to radicalise and revolutionise de- with alll poststructuralist theory. I think that mocracy by infusing democratic ethics of the the epistemological slip underlying this con- political with the passion for transformation flation is the rendition of ‘poststructuralism’ (see, for example, Mouffe’s recent work on as a homogeneous subsystem reducible to agonism and passions in radical democratic merely an internal moment of the construc- theory) without succumbing to the temptation tionist paradigm. The emergence of post- of a normalisation/reduction of negativity in structuralist theory, especially in its ‘third- favour of a humanist essentialism and with- wave’ feminist and postcolonial modalities, out slipping into the dystopias of the old Left. is intricately connected with an awareness of the necessity to acknowledge, and reckon This is an immensely useful book for students with, the limits of constructionism. In such and scholars alike. I would like to propose two work, the subject is theorised as opaque, points for further critical reflection and discus- contingent, unknown to itself, affectively im- sion: first, I think that the acknowledgement plicated in the lives of others, and constituted and employment of the groundbreaking con- through processes involving loss and mel- tributions of feminist theory and postcolonial ancholia; the ontological certainties underly- theory in the theoretico-political horizon of the ing the category of the ‘human’ are suspend- Lacanian Left (in its wider sense) would have ed; desire necessarily remains unfulfilled. In further enriched the exploration of this intel- Butler’s Foucauldian and psychoanalytic ren- lectual landscape in significant and suggestive dition, for instance, the subject is theorised ways. Especially the contributions of contem- as a performative, melancholic agent that porary poststructuralist feminist theory in is- engages in discursive and affective process- sues such as the problematic of another (fem- es of identification inside (rather than outside) inine) jouissance, or the place of embodiment power structures. Affect is identified here as and enjoyment in the political, or the relation of a technology of power and a potential site of power to enjoyment, or the constitutive incom- agency, resignification, disruption and sub- pleteness of identity, or the identity/difference version. The melancholic subject, incomplete pair, or the implications of affect in the episte- and other to itself, does not break with the mological transition from paradigms of social law in pursuit of an ontological emancipation constructivism to Foucault-inspired reappro- which lies somewhere outside the bounds of priations of the discursive closure, poststruc- discourse; it is rather passionately attached turalism and theories of gender performativity, to the law on which it depends and against would have offered a valuable addition to an which it might rebel – in an endless spiral of already rich and nuanced site of reflection; in subjection and subjectivation: Antigone’s pol- such discussions, the author’s welcomed ref- itics is not one of oppositional purity, Butler erences to Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed and Ewa argues, but one of the scandalously impure.1 Ziarek could have been more complexly inter- It is to a reflection of this dialectic, a dialectic woven with the intertextual body of the book. without the miraculous and normalising mo-

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In all, Yannis Stavrakakis’ The Lacanian Left is Athena Athanasiou a stimulating book that puts forward insight- ful analyses of how psychoanalytic theory can Ζωή στο όριο: help us reconceptualise, redefine and reinvig- ∆οκίµια για το σώµα, το φύλο orate critical political theory and praxis today. και τη βιοπολιτική The book unravels the ways in which the dis- location by the other is, in fact, the ‘common [Life at the Limit: place’ of social passion: as emotionality and Essays on the Body, affect, as motion (συγγ-κίνηση) and passion Gender and Biopolitics] (πάθοςς), as passivity and passionate open- ness to be affected by others. The crucial Athens: Ekkremes, 2007. 320 pp. question that it inspires and explores is how the awareness of lack and of the limits of dis- course (the Lacanian negativity qua encoun- by Olga Taxidou ter with the real) can be fruitfully employed in the endeavour to understand and theorise University of Edinburgh the political and the affective aspects of iden- tification. Indeed, the careful exploration of this potential – its promise and its limitations – through engaging with the role of affect in the discursive constitution of the political is Athena Athanasiou’s recent book, Zoe sto the great merit of this book. orio, sets itself a tall task: no less than to re- define, or to scrupulously examine, the con- tours of what it means to be human in an age of biopolitics. In a collection of challenging essays, this subject is approached through NOTE the critical encounter of social anthropology, 1 Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship be- postcolonial studies and cultural-literary crit- tween Life and Death, New York: Columbia icism. As her subtitle indicates, Athanasiou UP, 2000, p. 5. reconfigures these relationships through a particular emphasis on gender and perfor- mativity, inflected by post-structuralist femi- nist philosophy and post-Lacanian psychoa- nalysis. At the same time, this study is acutely aware of its own geopolitical position; firmly located in southern Europe and the Balkans, it is informed by its specific politics of place and its complex and embattled relationships to in- ternational politics, globalisation and cosmo- politics, which is proposed as the book’s clos-

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ing gesture. Here, the term gesture is used es to be rendered in an overarching narrative, performatively not figuratively as the book is punctuated by a final conclusion. Athanasiou’s more interested in posing questions, strate- reading of the human and zoe throughout this gies of analysis, critique and activism, rather study delineates a Foucaultian archaeology, than in formulating solutions. with its complex and contradictory govern- mental strategies of power, rather than an From the subtitle onwards, Giorgio Agam- ontological category, where the human, in a ben’s work features prominently throughout vitalist and metaphysical tradition, defines it- this book. This reading of Agamben, however, self against both the ‘natural’ and the ‘techno- is a critical one that at once contextualises his logical’. In this sense, Heidegger’s reflections project in relation to Benjamin and Heidegger on technology appear central as they provide and points towards some of its limitations. an initial point of reference within the philos- Athanasiou traces the notions of bios and zoe ophies of modernity, where the categories/ (crucial for any attempt at defining the limits limits of the human, mechanical, natural of the human) through Heidegger’s work on and technological are reconfigured. And, of technology and Benjamin’s on violence, and course, these limits also propose political reframes these through the lens of contem- validation, visibility, rights and exclusions. porary feminist philosophy, citing the work of The violence of these governmental strate- Butler, Braidotti and Kristeva, amongst oth- gies themselves is never absent from this ers. Her reading of Heidegger, in particular, study, informing and haunting the narrative is rigorous and, for this reader, illuminating in throughout. This becomes particularly ap- the parallels it draws between his writing on parent as Athanasiou posits the body – gen- technology and his ‘metaphorical’ use of the dered, racial, and geopolitically located – at death camp, and Agamben’s later emblem- the centre of her concerns. Heidegger’s ‘phi- atic application of the same image/event to losophy without a body’ becomes stubbornly ‘stand in’ for the site of modernity, reconfig- embodied and Athanasiou further elaborates uring the contours of the human. This con- his non-instrumental conception of technolo- textual and intertextual reading of Agamben gy. Indeed, it is seen as crucial in the author’s sees his work as part of a philosophical tradi- theorising of the relationship between the tion, with the effect of deflating the somewhat body and history, which concerns her in the aphoristic tone of some of his writings. In the first group of essays in this collection. This same stroke, Athanasiou’s discourse also biopolitical reading of the human sees as its addresses the criticism of negativity (in the historical and metaphorical site the concen- quasi-existentialist/nihilist, not the Adornian, tration camp, which emerges as the ‘labora- sense) that the work elicits. Here her reread- tory’ of modern governmentality, to borrow a ing of Agamben through gender is crucial, term from the historical avant-garde (which, as her text, both in its themes and narrative, in many ways, met its death in the concentra- transpires as a proposition on philosophical tion camp). In this way, Athanasiou both ex- reflection andd political activism. pands and deflates an image/event employed by the negative dialectics of Adorno (‘the im- These debates are teased out through a se- possibility of poetry’) – remnants of which can ries of essays which, although they initially be seen in Agamben’s work – to encompass appear loosely connected, are interlocked in a vision of humanity that includes the death a somewhat contrapuntal manner that refus- camp not as aberration but as constitutive el-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) ement. Following a philosophical trajectory strosity, fuelled by the work of Rosi Braidot- from Nietzsche through Benjamin, Arendt, ti. Athanasiou’s reading of the Oedipus myth Agamben and Gillian Rose, Athanasiou reads and its appropriation by Freudian psychoa- the death camp not as the exception (the En- nalysis is read here – somewhat counterin- lightenment gone momentarily wrong or the tuitively but all the more effectively – through anguished cry of the sublime) but as the rule the figure of the Sphinx. This figure – gen- that occurred not despite our humanity but dered and racialised – becomes central to because of it. The first section of this book the construction of Oedipus as the first phi- ends citing the aphoristic but hopeful slogan losopher and to the positing of the myth as of “human, all too human”! the genealogy of Western metaphysics. The exclusion of the Sphinx and the aporia she The particular contribution that this study embodies in Freudian psychoanalysis is read makes is in the author’s emphasis on the pol- by Athanasiou as structural and formative to itics of gender and otherness. In an essay that the notions of subjectivity proposed. Follow- clearly exhibits her training in anthropology, ing the critiques of Felman and Caruth, Atha- Athanasiou presents an insightful and rigor- nasiou analyses how this Freudian notion of ous analysis of the so-called ‘demographic subjectivity is also a gendered one. Athana- problem’ in modern Greece. This she reads siou’s analysis of Oedipus (like Lacan’s ref- in conjunction with discourses of nationhood, erences) focuses more on Oedipus at Colonus kinship and reproduction. The anxiety-rid- (and not exclusively on Oedipus the King), in den and fear-inducing rhetoric of the public which the apolis Oedipus, like another Sphinx, sphere (in party political, media and medical hovers on the outskirts of the city (this time discourse) is analysed here in an attempt to Athens, for we have moved onto the level of scrutinise those governmental mechanisms consciousness, knowledge and pain) look- that define the limits and the rights of the hu- ing for a place to die. He himself is no longer man. Through a close analysis of state pol- within the limits of the human; he is a mon- icy, party-political discourse and the media, strosity, the negative of the original answer inflected by the interface between psychoa- he uttered to the Sphinx. Indeed, monstros- nalysis and anthropology, Athanasiou exam- ity and otherness are seen as central to any ines the nexus of gender-sexuality-reproduc- Oedipal notion of subjectivity as are the rela- tion-kinship relationships as fundamental to tionships between visual representation and delimiting the human, but also central in im- the word, embodiment and writing. Here, posing those limits. Her exposition of this Athanasiou writes in a long tradition of phil- “demographic panic” through this biopolitical osophical and anthropological reflection that reading also points towards the “melancholy encounters Oedipus as myth, proto-philoso- of the public sphere”, which introduces the phy and proto-anthropology. However, the next section of the book. textual Oedipus that we have inherited is a tragic drama. This reviewer appreciates that This section continues the critical interface it may be beyond the scope of her analysis, between anthropology and psychoanalysis but the aesthetic dimension of the Oedipus in a group of essays that examines Kriste- dramas rarely enters the discussion, and this va’s notion of abjection, the Oedipus myth and becomes all the more conspicuous as Atha- complex, and leads into an inspired study of nasiou’s narrative is otherwise very informed the encounter between technology and mon- and scholarly in tackling issues of represen-

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tation, visibility and embodiment: issues that stressing the significance of the visual in the all shape the tragic event and are present in representational economies discussed. The the philosophical/anthropological statements final chapter of the book proposes the cate- enacted and thematised, but also constitutive gory of cosmopolitics as a way of addressing of how the text functions as a work of art. the biopolitical dimension of life at the lim- its (and suggests further research and re- For this reviewer, the most exciting writing flection). The cover, comprising an image by in this book appears in the section that trac- Palestinian-born/London-based visual artist es the history, politics and aesthetics of the Mona Hatoum, acts as the perfect frame for antimilitarist, feminist movement Women in Athanasiou’s arguments. Black. Founded in 1988 by a small group of Jewish women from Israel, just one month This book could double as a companion to after the first Palestinian Intifada and with the Athanasiou’s recent edition of an anthology of support of Palestinian women, its first perfor- feminist criticism,1 which includes an exten- mative event was a march to the West Bank, sive introduction. Either way, it is a welcome opposing the politics of domination and ag- contribution to contemporary debates on bio- gression. Since then it has spread interna- politics and the human, informed by Athana- tionally, with women from Serbia, Croatia, siou’s rigorous renegotiation of these catego- Australia, northern and southern Europe and ries through gender and difference. However, the USA forming similar groups. The mem- her interdisciplinary approach never makes bers of Women in Black always protest in her narrative reductive as she writes with silence, their apparel and their civic posture ease within all the traditions she is referenc- drawing the links between political protest ing. This makes for a very dense but engag- and mourning. Here, Athanasiou’s narra- ing text, one that never looses its urgency or tive follows through her earlier reference to its political immediacy. Some of the essays Butler’s “melancholy of the public sphere”. have appeared elsewhere in English and The figure of Antigone proves central in trac- have been translated for this edition by Gior- ing a genealogy of this relationship between gos Karabellas and Ioulia Pentazou with clar- mourning and the law; Athanasiou reads this ity and style. Athanasiou gives the last word through Butler and Rose’s recent reconfigu- to the Women in Black, not so much for the rations of the tragic heroine. This perspective answers they provide to the issues she has she combines with the more philosophical/ delineated throughout her book, but for the anthropological work on mourning, citing questions they pose. Derrida, Caruth and Levinas, among others, to weave an account of the Women in Black that contextualises the movement and sug- gests its political efficacy. On the limits of the political and the aesthetic, this very performa- tive, civic and gendered event brings together NOTE all the concerns of the book and emerges as 1 Athena Athanasiou (ed.), Φεµινιστική θεωρία its primary gestus. Appropriately, the photo- και πολιτισµική κριτική, Athens: Nissos, 2006. graphs that accompany this chapter estab- lish links with the images of the concentra- tion camp evoked at the start of the study,

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presents, in a concise though enlightening fashion, the ideology of the development of technological determinism and the tech- nocratic movement in the Western world, Yannis Antoniou which influenced decisively the configuration of the engineering profession in America and Οι Έλληνες Μηχανικοί. Europe. The author has deemed this histori- Θεσµοί και Ιδέες 1900-1940 cal presentation necessary as it is well known [Greek Engineers. that the growth of Western societies inspired and shaped the economic, social and political Institutions and Ideas development of Greece, undoubtedly leaving 1900–1940] its mark also on the studies and the profes- sion of Greek engineers during the late nine- Athens: Bibliorama, 2006. 486 pp. teenth and the early twentieth centuries.

The second part offers a thorough presenta- tion of the growth of institutions of technical by Nikos Pantelakis education in Greece, from the Sunday School of Historical and Palaeographical Archive, Crafts, established in 1837, up to the foundation, National Bank of Greece in 1914, of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), otherwise known as the Metso- vion. In contrast to the University of Athens and the Hellenic Army Academy (Evelpidon), which This exceptionally interesting book about from the start were located at the apex of the Greek engineers, written by Yiannis Antoni- educational and social hierarchy, the Technical ou, presents in detail the economic, social and University developed into a high-ranking tech- political factors that shaped the studies and nological institution progressively, starting out profession of Greek engineers from the early as a part-time vocational school aimed at edu- twentieth century until the Second World War. cating capable master craftsmen for public and It also examines the currents of ideas they private construction works in the Greek capital. adopted during this time, as well as their in- As the author stresses, the idea that technology fluence on the development of Greek society. constitutes an application of science formed the Greek engineers, those who studied in Greece basic theoretical tenet of positivism and had a as well as those who studied abroad, are sig- significant effect on the professional awareness nificantly linked to the eventful course of eco- of engineers. The gradual advancement of the nomic growth and industrialisation in Greece. Technical University can be related to the inter- pretation of this ideology, which considered sci- The first part of the book provides the gener- entific and technological progress as a primary al framework of the conditions that prevailed objective, either additionally or as an alternative during the period under consideration in the to the official nationalistic one, to produce an economically developed societies of North ‘enhanced’ nationalism; an ideology which America and Western Europe, leading to the translated the Greek irredentist Megali Idea emergence of technological determinism (Great Idea) into the terms of rationalist, scien- and the technocratic movement. The writer tific and technical progress for the country.

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The benefactors of the Technical University, who partments: Architecture, Land Surveying (four were descended from the town of Metsovo, ex- years of study) and Mechanics (five years of pressed the spirit of this idea in a pioneering study). These changes, which involved the up- fashion. Their business activity developed grading of the curriculum and the increase in in Egypt and it appears that they were influ- the formal entry requirements for students, enced by the theory of Saint-Simon; due to this signalled the transformation of the institution. kind of ideological kinship, they figure among those who believed in the necessity of techni- The third period extended from 1887, with the cal and economic growth for Greece as well as foundation of the School of Industrial Arts as an the rational organisation of state and society. institution of higher technical education, to 1914. In the explanatory report on the law establish- The author divides the development of engi- ing the school, it was stressed that the School of neering as a discipline in Greece into four pe- Arts had been superseded by events and served riods. The first ranges from 1837 to 1862; that neither the objective of promoting the sciences is to say, until the Sunday School of Crafts was nor the increased technical requirements of the integrated into the secondary education sys- day; thus, reorganisation was essential. It was tem. According to its first director, the Bavar- also noted that the shortage of trained engineers ian noble Captain Friedrich von Zentner, it was in the country could be addressed through the founded to meet the need for the craftsmen qualification of personnel who could undertake necessary for the reconstruction of Athens public construction works, man state technical and other cities of the newly established Greek services and staff the private industrial sector. state. During that early period the school did This could be achieved through the adoption of not issue diplomas but basic certificates. Nev- new study programs of scientific and techni- ertheless, while it may be characterised as a cal content and through stricter admission re- lower-level vocational school – due to the way quirements. These changes, in conjunction with it operated, the lack of formal admission re- a reduction in the number of students, justified quirements, the absence of explicit criteria re- the transition of the school from the intermedi- garding the formal qualifications of the faculty ate to the higher education level. In its upgrad- and the vague duration of studies – it ranked ed form, the institution was comparable to the above elementary or even secondary educa- écoles des arts industrielles that were founded tional institutions, according to the author. in France at the time, which also began as sec- ondary-level schools. The reform addressed the The second period covers the period from 1863 need for technical executives, created by the es- to 1887. Initially, the school centred not so much tablishment of the public works department of on the introduction of new techniques or profes- the Ministry of the Interior as well a profession- sions as on the promotion of neoclassical aes- al body for civil engineers in 1878. According to thetics. Three separate faculties were estab- the author, while the school’s contribution to the lished: the Sunday School, a one-year course staffing of state services was significant, it had a of study for master craftsmen; the Daily School, limited effect on private industry. The particular a three-year course for those who intended pattern of education promoted the creation of a to work in the industrial sector; and the Arts professional, meritocratic elite. Under the influ- School, a five-year course of the so-called beaux ence of French grandes écoles, this model com- arts. In 1867, the Daily School was refashioned bined sophisticated training with selfless serv- as the Handicraft School, comprising three de- ice to state and society.

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During the fourth period, beginning in 1914, the School opened, followed, between 1890 and School became the National Technical Univer- 1905, by the Railways School, the Mining–Metal- sity (Ethnikon Metsovion Polytechnion), up- lurgy School and the Commercial Navy School. graded to an academic institution equivalent to In November 1905, the Commercial and Indus- the University of Athens. The law founding the trial Academy was recognised by the state as an Technical University organised it into schools institution of higher technical education equiv- of Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineer- alent to the National Technical University. This ing, and Architecture. It also established tech- decision was revoked a few days later due to nical faculties for secondary education with the hostile reactions from the students and pro- the foundation of schools for land surveyors, fessors of the National Technical University and mechanics, and foremen for the chemical and from the School of Physics and Mathematics of metallurgical industries. High school gradu- the University of Athens. Yet, this Academy had ates were enrolled following an admission been founded owing to the modernising bent test, as were – without prior selection – sec- of a few industrialists, headed by Othon Rous- ondary school (practical lyceum) graduates. sopoulos. They considered that the practical ed- The former had to submit a high-school certifi- ucation provided by the Academy constituted a cate, while the latter had to present evidence of necessary supplement to the theoretical thrust having progressed from the second to the third of the Technical University. In other cases, the year of high school. According to the same law, industrialists themselves provided on-site prac- the National Technical University would be the tical experience in their factories, as in the case sole institution in Greece offering degrees in of Theodoros Retsinas. In other cities of Greece engineering. Moreover, the law required that there were numerous commercial and agricul- new professors be drawn from the member- tural vocational schools. Eventually, the conflict ship of the Teachers’ Association. centring on the state recognition of professional studies and diplomas between the qualified en- The configuration of engineering as a new gineers and graduates of the National Technical social and occupational category was closely University, on the one hand, and the students linked to the growth of Greek economy, which of private schools and craftsmen, on the other, necessitated the undertaking of large-scale ended with in victory for the former. public works (in road, rail, and port building, etc.) that were essential for industrialisation. Until 1878, the state initially assigned the moni- toring and management of public works to me- From 1894 onwards, a number of private voca- chanic graduates of the Hellenic Army Acade- tional schools began functioning, often antago- my. During the Trikoupis premiership, the need nising the Technical University. The most nota- to guarantee an administrative framework ap- ble of these were the Commercial and Industrial propriate for the implementation and control of Academy and two evening schools in Piraeus, public works led the state to rearrange its tech- one run by the Piraeus Association and the oth- nical services, establishing an independent pub- er by the Prometheus Mechanics Society. The lic works directorate during the 1870s along with Commercial and Industrial Academy educated the constitution of the body of civil engineers. yeastmakers, winemakers, distillers, vinegar- makers, brewers, oil-industry workers, soap- The new electricity sector, booming indus- makers, perfumers, cheesemakers, silkbreed- trial activity, the management and extension ers and beekeepers. In 1899, the Agricultural of transport infrastructure, land reclamation,

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urban planning and water and sewage net- The third part deals with the inter-war years, works all demanded the services of specially when the National Technical University reinforced trained personnel. its position as an elite school. The elements that shaped it were the exceptionally high cognitive According to the author, it is obvious that dur- requirements for admission and the duration ing this period engineers became gradually of studies, as well as its extended administra- more prominent in public works, while they tive independence. The consensus among the remained absent from the Greek industrial en- majority of professors to place academic inde- terprises. During the 1890s, the requirements pendence before political preferences deterred of the industrial sector for specialised techni- any moves to undermine its independence. cal personnel were covered almost exclusively through the employment of foreign engineers The professoriate constituted a closed group and craftsmen. These persons were usually possessing the characteristics of a social elite. placed in management positions, assuming As persons of eminent social prestige, they also responsibility in the factory hierarchy so as enjoyed high earnings. The entry requirements to import industrial technology and to educate to this group were exceptionally high. This was the Greek craftsmen in the workplace. Human a body governed by self-formulated regulations. resources in the industrial sector were signifi- Beyond their professional and scientific qualifica- cantly enriched during the late nineteenth and tions, the prestige of these professors was also early twentieth centuries, with the recruitment strengthened through their appointment to pri- of craftsmen trained in the private vocational vate enterprises and key government positions schools mentioned above. related to public works and utilities, as well as the chemical and military industry. Their descrip- During the first two decades of the twentieth tion as a social elite is based on the statistics re- century new notions of scientific organisation garding family origins. From 1929 to 1937, 71 per of work emerged as the first generation of aca- cent of the students came from the middle- and demically trained Greek engineers took up posi- upper middle class, their parents being trades- tions in the new industrial units. Some of them men, freelance professionals, artisans, civil were graduates of the Technical University, while servants and persons of independent means. most had graduated from technical institutions abroad, mainly in Germany and Switzerland. A In the early 1930s, the discussions concerning review of careers of some (Nikolaos Vlangalis, the direction of studies revolved around two Alexandros Zachariou, Andreas Hatzikyriakou, axes: the first, centring on professionalism, Leontios Oikonomidis, Nikolaos Kanellopoulos, viewed education as being in the service of the L. Agrapidis, Kleonymos Stylianidis, etc.) leads technical needs of the state and the construc- us to assume that they formed a distinguisha- tion sector, while the second believed education ble grouping, not so much as a result of fortui- should be oriented towards science, technology, tous personal choices, but because a segment research and industrial applications. Notably, of the Greek bourgeoisie decided to participate in the dilemma of whether it should be a vocation- the industrial effort as entrepreneurs under the al school or technical university haunted the na- terms of Western-style capitalism. Based on ex- ture of Polytechnion during the interwar years. isting evidence, nevertheless, it can be presumed that most factories continued to function with- Another important parameter determining the out qualified engineers or production managers. profession was the establishment of profes-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) sional representative institutions for engineers, although Greece did not experience Western- starting in 1899 with the foundation of the Pol- style industrialisation to the full extent, it was ytechnic Association. In 1918, company execu- the extensive shipping and services sector that tives founded the Association of Technical Exec- shaped the Greek engineering profession. utives of Private Enterprises in order to defend their own professional interests. Similar efforts In the fifth part, the author exposes the tech- continued up to 1920, when the General Union nocratic reasoning used by Greek engineers. of Greek Engineers (GEEM) was established in While they initially adopted Saint-Simon’s order to offset the fragmentation of professional outlook on the role of technocracy, they ar- institutions. Then, in 1923 the Technical Chamber rived much later, in 1940, at the technocratic of Greece (TEE) was founded, which succeeded utopia of Nikolaos Kitsikis, who believed that in, finally, incorporating all the relevant profes- engineers should be acknowledged as a he- sional bodies. It also began, at the invitation of gemonic social force that would drive forward government authorities, a consultation process the modernisation of society. on technical subjects and technical education, gathering statistical information on the coun- Throughout, the author provides all the ele- try’s technical progress and the compilation of ments that are essential for an understand- relative registers, functioning as arbiter in tech- ing of the formative years of the socio-pro- nical disputes among members and between fessional group of engineers and their role in members and the state, as well as making an the development of Greek economy. An addi- intellectual contribution in the form of publica- tional asset is the fact that he has drawn on tions. The TEE promoted and defended the sci- information from the archives of the National entific aspirations and the professional interests Technical University as well as from Kitsikis’ of its members, while exercising disciplinary papers, located at the Heraklion Technical control. According to the author, this institution Vocational School. This wealth of informa- has been marked by the fact that it vacillated re- tion sheds light on multiple and interesting peatedly in an effort to balance its role as tech- aspects of the book’s theme. The tables pre- nical adviser to the state and as representative sented in the appendix to each chapter that of the professional interests of Greek engineers. provide statistics drawn from archival sourc- es will also prove useful to other research- Throughout the interwar years, TEE policy fol- ers. Were such a plenitude of sources also lowed aimed at guaranteeing the professional in- available as regards the personnel of large terests of its members. In order to safeguard the industrial enterprises, our understanding of ‘closed’ nature of the profession, it sought to lim- the role of engineers in the industrialisation it the number of students and graduates, as well of Greece would be greatly enriched. as the number of foreign engineers, in Greece. Be that as it may, it is the importance of rescu- The fourth part contains an extensive list of ing archives that emerges most strongly from engineers with their various specialties in this adroit presentation of information, a need their geographic distribution. It appears that still not fully grasped by Greek society, despite Greek engineers were inspired by an ideal the efforts that have been undertaken in recent of progress that identified the modernisation years. After all, until the not so distant past, pri- and Westernisation of the state with scientific, mary sources were salvaged almost exclusive- technological and economic development. And ly on the initiative of a few altruistic historians.

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the social and the corresponding symmetry between technical and social relationships. These differences aside, according to Edger- ton, the vast majority of historians of technol- David Edgerton ogy have so far focused on the relatively brief and geographically restricted context of the The Shock of the Old: invention and innovation of artefacts. By con- Technology and Global trast, his book urges us to turn from the pro- History since 1900 duction of technology to the use of technology in extended temporal and spatial contexts. London: Profile Books, 2006. 270 pp. But which technologies are indeed important? To answer this question, Edgerton rejects the canonical emphasis on invention and innova- tion and the associated focus of the innova- by Yiannis Garyfallos tion-centric history of technology. Studying technologies during the period of their inven- University of Athens and tion and their innovation does not help (or, National Technical University of Athens even worse, it misleads) us in our attempt to evaluate them. If we choose to deal only with such cases we are bound to narrow our per- ception of the technological phenomenon, in ways of both time and place. The correct way There has been a widespread assumption of to appraise technologies, Edgerton suggests, a ‘cultural lag’ according to which society is is to focus on their use (especially on their frequently unable to keep up with technolo- long-term and extensive use). This allows us gy. David Edgerton, Hans Rausing Professor to properly comprehend their effect on (and of the History of Science and Technology at thus significance for) the economy and soci- Imperial College London, suggests that it is ety in general, not to mention their effect in usually the other way round: technology, as turn on science and technology. In defence of he perceives it, has been in many cases un- his proposal, he reviews the historical litera- able to keep up with society. ture on some of the most “highly esteemed” technologies (Teflon, nuclear power plants, The history of technology has been studied Concorde, the contraceptive pill, malaria con- under many theoretical lenses. At the two trol methods), while he also calls for historio- extremes, we find internalist assumptions graphical attention to the existence of histori- about a technical evolution of artefacts and cal alternatives to such technologies. techniques that look for some inherently progressive technical logic, and an external- According to a widespread assumption, tech- ist historiography of technology which ‘black- nology is defined by an ever-progressing and boxes’ technology and cares only for the so- evolving timeline of breakthroughs, success- ciety around it. They have been supplement- ful inventions that step aside the moment “un- ed by social constructionism, which argues doubtedly superior” ones appear. And if some for the co-construction of the technical and elements of “old” techniques persist, they are

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) just that: old stubborn techniques, out of date The book goes on to argue about the im- and place. In contrast to this view, Edgerton ar- portance of the maintenance and repair of gues that there is a false conception of when technology. They can be thought of as spe- and why a technology was widely used and cial kinds of “use”, which, unlike invention, do for how long it remained active. Horses and not occur only in a few places. They are glo- mules were far more extensively active in the bal and contribute considerably to the emer- twentieth than in the preceding century, both in gence of “Creole technologies”. The role of wartime and peacetime. Huge cities in the so- maintenance in cars, large-scale industries, called third world are being built and continu- airplanes and ships reveals its importance. ously expanded through the use of “old-fash- The author offers some thoughts on the dif- ioned” and/or second-hand materials: bicycles ferences (and the similarities) between engi- rather than cars are in motion in vast numbers neers and repairmen, suggesting that the old in large areas of the world. In other words, notion of the inferiority of the latter in com- techniques from the rich part of the world parison to the former can be disputed. Refer- seem to be transported to and remodelled in ring to a very interesting example, he men- its poor part. This is what Edgerton refers to tions a special kind of state engineer (such as as “Creole technologies” (43). Moreover, as in France, Greece and elsewhere) who ought Edgerton observes, even in the rich Western to be considered as the maintainers of soci- world, older techniques that were once consid- ety, concerned with the maintenance of the ered to be failures frequently reappear and are state (101), and responsible for the smooth celebrated as new and innovative. operation of their countries.

Edgerton also questions the conventional One of the most popular assumptions has way in which we view the history of produc- been that technology would help overcome tion, which assumes that there has been a all political and social boundaries, leading dramatic discontinuity during an alleged shift consequently to globalisation. What we ac- from agriculture to industry (industrial revo- tually observe when we follow Edgerton’s lution) and from that to services (postmod- line of thought is the existence of techno-na- ernism). The author points out that in doing tionalism, an idea that nations must be able so we have left the household out of the pic- to invent and innovate their own technology ture. He considers it important to acknowl- in order to gain power and respect (in deed edge the continuity in some of the exemplar as if in opposition to the already globalised tools and machines of household work, like world), to gain not only autarky but national the sewing machine and the spinning wheel. identity itself. These ‘old’, ’traditional’ artefacts have broadly remained in use over time. They offer prime In the case of technologies used in war, Edg- testimony against the innovation-centric per- erton’s case studies are, again, impressive. ception of the history of technology. Edgerton Second World War bombers were used in moves on to review a literature that shows recent years to launch ultrasonic jet planes the persistence of small firms in the age of (not so innovative after all) into the edges of mass production, an era considered to be de- space, First World War ships were used dur- fined only by large mass-producing compa- ing the Second World War, and Second World nies. In his view, the main shift has been to War ships were used during the Gulf Wars. efficiency and not to scale. Furthermore, the author contests the as-

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sumption that military technologies derive logical persistence. Women and their asso- from civilian ones and that the militarists ciation with technology come into the picture tend to resist innovation. In contrast, he ar- and thus the history of technology has much gues that some of the most important civil- to contribute (and gain from) gender stud- ian technologies were invented because of ies. Not only women, but also the non-white military research and/or military funding. In population, the poor and the “uneducated” are addition, the act of killing, be this of humans becoming technologically visible, thus filling or animals, was still being performed in the “gaps” in the past and present evaluation of twentieth century largely using “traditional” or not only technology. “simple” artefacts, such as the poleaxe or ma- chete. The techniques of killing did not seem By shifting the historiographical emphasis to help the world become more civilised, and from invention and innovation to technolo- the belief that technology and science will gy in its broad use, the history of technology make our society more peaceful and blissful can interact better with social history in order seems to have failed us once again. to provide us with a more complete view of the past, actively assisting in the move away In the penultimate chapter, Edgerton doubts from technological determinism and the sim- some of the common beliefs about inventing. plistic technological storytelling about a few He revises the ratio between academic and brilliant, successful entrepreneurs. “History”, non-academic originated innovations, be- writes Edgerton, “is changed when we put tween successful and failed ones, between into it the technology that counts, not only what changes (and where) and what remains the spectacular technologies but the low and the same and, once again, between techno- ubiquitous ones. The historical study of things logical invention-innovation and the impor- in use, and the uses of things, matters” (212). tance of technology use. Edgerton argues that What seems to be old is not always sur- development expenditure has been much passed, though it is often forgotten, unseen larger than research expenditure, contrary to and/or left out. “Technology,” he convincing- commonly accepted fact. “By the standards ly suggests, “has not generally been a rev- of the past”, he writes, “the present does not olutionary force; it has been responsible for seem radically innovative” (203), which dis- keeping things the same as much as chang- pels the claim that the rate of invention in the ing them” (212). world is ever-increasing.

Among the many virtues of the book is the ability of the author to raise aspects of the history of technology that have been more or less neglected, and thus to redefine what is technology and who deals with it in gener- al. The book is full of “things” and people that would never strike us as being technological- ly important. For Edgerton, home appliances gain a place as technology worth considering and their users gain the role as protagonists of both technological change and techno-

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acclaim, while the older ones have remained known only to a few specialists in the field of Ottoman and Balkan history? One possible ex- planation is that Mazower’s book appeared Mark Mazower about two or three generations following the three key events in the city’s twentieth-century Salonica, City of Ghosts: history: its incorporation into the Greek state in Christians, Muslims and 1912, the arrival of a very substantial number Jews, 1430–1950 of Greek Orthodox refugees from Asia Minor in 1922–23, and the extermination of its substan- London: HarperCollins, 2004. tial Jewish population by the Germans in 1943. 525 pp. Its older Muslim population was expelled and effectively eliminated more than 80 years ago. Jews now number a mere 800, a grain of sand in the ocean of the city’s 1.5 million inhabitants. by Antonis Molho Now that, following a series of events of un- speakable violence, Salonica has been Hellen- European University Institute ised and Christianised, the media can accept the city’s multi-cultured, multi-ethnic past as a col- ourful, if innocuous, moment of a remote his- tory. Amarcord . . .

Within months of its original publication, Mark In the midst of this hoopla, important scholars Mazower’s Salonica City of Ghosts had become also addressed the book’s virtues, Mazower’s a Greek bestseller, its author often celebrated contribution to Greek historiography, his subtle by reviewers as one of the major historians of and elegantly presented challenge to the hege- our times. Hardly had the dust settled when the monic discourse regarding Greece’s past and book’s Greek translation was published, an its relationship to the present, and his ability to event that transformed this British-born Colum- show by example that a compelling historical bia University professor into a Greek popular account can be written in beautiful, often grip- icon. Television programmes were now devot- ping, prose. Naturally, it would have been sur- ed to him; mass-circulation popular magazines prising if some dissonant notes had not broken printed glossy photographs of him. The author through this choral celebration. Interestingly, was invited to return to Greece to participate in professional historians were reticent in their a new round of celebratory presentations, and criticism. But some politicians were quick to his visits were punctuated by interviews he gen- note, and disassociate themselves from what, erously granted to representatives of the major not unreasonably, they took to be, the book’s press. An observer not quite familiar with con- sceptical stance towards the often stridently temporary Greece might well wonder how to nationalist and populist tone that often domi- account for this fuss. As we shall see below, nates current political discourse in Thessaloni- Mazower does not depart much from some ki (and more generally in Greece). “Unpresent- older views on Salonica’s history. Yet, these are able” was the current mayor’s characterisation all but unknown to the wider Greek public. Why of the book. Too much attention devoted to the has Mazower’s interpretation gained such wide city’s Jews, complained a reader in a letter to

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his newspaper. A distortion of the city’s links most importantly, partisans of a hegemonic with its Macedonian tradition, the book, there- Greek historiography which has insisted on fore, is worthless, blurted an angry propagan- the perennially Greek character of the city’s dist from an internet site in Holland. More se- history from the time of its foundation in an- riously, a young, Oxford-trained Greek-Cypriot tiquity through the centuries of Ottoman dom- historian challenged Mazower for his allegedly ination; secondarily, a much smaller, less “odious” treatment of the Holocaust. widely known and accepted historiographi- cal tradition, whose members have argued In addition to the discussion in Greece, the book that the city acquired a predominantly Jewish has attracted major attention in the internation- character from the arrival of the Iberian Jews al (mostly Anglophone) highbrow press. So in the late fifteenth century to the exchange of much has been written about it, one wonders if the Greek and Turkish populations following anything useful can be added to this discussion. the Greco–Turkish War in 1922–23. In what follows, unconcerned with a systematic coverage of the book’s numerous and varied Greek and Jewish accounts of the city’s his- themes, I raise a few points that have so far, tory have, over the years “passed each other perhaps, not been sufficiently discussed. by”, each insisting on only one dimension of the city’s history (9). Mazower’s vision of an Perhaps one should first say that in this big and urban history in fieri, in which the city’s story weighty book’s Introduction and Aftermath a would emerge as “a tale not only of smooth reader will find a timely and pointed disquisi- transitions and adaptations, but also of violent tion on the study of the past in Greece. These endings and new beginnings” (6) represents, two sections could usefully be reprinted as a it seems to me, a forthright challenge to the separate essay and brought to the attention of established canon of Greek (and, secondarily, participants in the recent and very angry, even of Jewish) historiography. So does Mazower’s violent, public discussion in Greece about the final reflection that what happened in Salonica merits and faults of the proposed new histo- suggests a different kind of story than those ry textbook intended for use by 11-year-old stories fashioned by historians wedded to the schoolchildren. What animated this discus- causes of one of the successive waves of ar- sion was a deep sense that long-accepted his- rivals to the city. It is a “saga of turbulence, up- toriographic canons are being attacked just as heaval, abandonment and recovery in which a certain vision of Greek culture seems threat- chance, not destiny, played a greater part” ened by the twin processes of Europeanisation (474). The “myth of eternal Hellenism” (469), and globalisation. A reading of these two rela- the “fundamentally instrumental conception tively short sections of Mazower’s book might of history” on which Greek and Jewish his- help to bring this discussion into focus. For torians have relied (curiously, Mazower tells Mazower, as fine a diplomat as he is a histo- us little about Muslim/Turkish conceptions of rian, concerned as he declares himself to be Thessaloniki’s history) render less useful the with the “city’s endless metamorphoses” (4), evocation of “national heroes and villains” (10). faces the challenge of seeing “the experienc- Instead, one searches for a history in which es of Christians, Jews and Muslims within the the roles of hero and villain are “blurred and terms of a single encompassing experience” confused”. If the city’s Greek-Byzantine char- (10). This approach runs the risk of alienat- acter was violently transformed in 1430, when ing simultaneously members of two camps: the Ottoman armies conquered it, it was sub-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) sequently transformed, again and again, with ally North America, while the seventeenth- the arrival of the Iberian Jews, the later arrival century Metropolitan Athanasios Patellari- of the Marranos, later still of the Italian Jews, os came to the city via Venetian Crete and and then, thrice in the twentieth century, it was Ottoman Sinai before he moved on to Jas- convulsed with the arrival of perhaps as many sy, Istanbul, Russia and the Ukraine, his fi- as 100,000 Greek Orthodox refugees from nal resting-place. Salonica lay in the centre Asia Minor in 1922–23, with the deportation of an Ottoman oikumeni, which was at the and murder of about 50,000 Jews in 1943, same time Muslim, Christian and Jewish. and, more recently since the early 1990s, with Perhaps only now, since the end of the Cold the settlement of another some 100,000 im- War and the re-opening of many of these migrants from eastern Europe and the Cauca- same routes, is it again possible to calcu- sus. Each of these groups (although it is much late the impact of such an extensive sacred too soon to know how the most recent immi- geography and to see how it underpinned grants will fare) transformed the city, looked the profusion of faiths which sustained the to the past for elements that would render the city’s inhabitants. (95) present more meaningful, and cobbled togeth- er a history that was turned into a shield of po- One has the sense that in this passage (and in litical and ideological designs. the many telling pages that illustrate this point) Mazower got it just right: that the very charac- Salonica and its society thus emerge from the ter of the city’s culture during the hundreds of pages of Mazower’s book – as they had sub- years of Ottoman rule was its opening to the stantially emerged from the pages of Nehama world, its capacity, at once, to host people of and Risal’s pioneering books – as a palimps- very different origin and to send out to the far est. Salonica itself, over its long history, has not corners of that Ottoman oikumenii ideas that simply had a Greek, or Jewish, or, even, a Turk- were worked out by the “city’s inhabitants”. ish character. In one of the book’s most sug- gestive chapters (“Messiahs, Martyrs and Mir- The city’s inhabitants thus emerge as Saloni- acles”), Mazower presents the characteristics ca’s real heroes: the individuals who, as mem- of the three major religious groups during the bers of well-defined communities, for some city’s little less than five centuries (1430–1912) years or several generations, settled, pros- of Ottoman domination, dwelling upon the ten- pered, or suffered there. The book is populat- sions that often emerged not so much between ed by dozens of attractive, and curious charac- Christian, Jews, and Muslims as within follow- ters – Christians, Muslims, and Jews – whom ers of each of the three major religions. It is Mazower presents with a mixture of sympa- worth quoting him here at some length: thetic, if on occasion ironic and condescend- ing, understanding. These were men (and an The city found itself at the intersection of occasional woman) who lived in that complex many different creeds. Through the Sufi or- world where religious and, secondarily, eth- ders it was linked to Iran, Anatolia, Thrace nic identities, theoretically at least, were de- and Egypt; the Marranos bridged the Ca- fined with a fair degree of precision, but who, tholicism of the Iberian peninsula, Antwerp because of circumstances and unpredictable and Papal Italy; the faith of the Sabbata- vagaries, were often inspired (or forced) to ians was carried by Jewish believers into smudge the boundaries of the official taxono- Poland, Bohemia, Germany and eventu- mies of their age. Mazower thus effectively and

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brilliantly undermines official historiographic erness and their acuity of observation. Whatev- narratives. How could a certain type of Greek er their success with their contemporary read- historiography that has, since the middle of the ers, they quite evidently impressed Mazower, nineteenth century, thrived on the notion of the who turned them into his principal informants Turks’s systematic destruction of Greek Or- for large periods of Salonica’s history (the peri- thodox institutions and beliefs accommodate od that spans the fifteenth to well into the nine- in its history of Turkish-dominated Salonica teenth centuries). Mazower, who it seems had the picture of the Muslim guardians of the rel- no access to documents written either in Otto- ic of Saint Demetrios? And how could much man Turkish or in Hebrew, relied on these out- traditional Jewish historiography, nurtured on sider accounts to reconstruct the histories of the notion of the Jews’ heroic resistance and the city’s inhabitants. So, for all its quality in pre- defence of their faith, come to terms with the senting to an international public the history of picture of Jews living in Salonica (often rhetori- a fascinatingly complex society such as that of cally referred to as “The Mother of Israel”) who Salonica, the book seems to me to suffer from often, and seemingly effortlessly, changed its author’s one-sided angle of vision, a sort of their faith, and identity, becoming Muslims, colonialist vision, drawing on the recollections even, on occasion, Christians? At one level, or reports of these visitors for an understand- Mazower is brilliantly successful in meeting ing of what happened there. It is an external an- his goal of writing a history in which the roles gle of vision, in the sense that this historian’s of hero and villain are “blurred and confused”. informers were themselves outside observers, Page after page one reads with admiration the often unable even to communicate with the na- rich mosaic of social relations constructed with tives in their own languages. Regardless of the the sure hand of a master narrator. current insistence that historians construct (and do not reveal) the past, it surely makes a Yet, at another level, one must wistfully note difference if the building blocks of one’s con- that this success has been achieved at a price. structions are themselves first hand and origi- Especially in the book’s first half or more, the nal, drawn from the experience of the people cost has been the muting of the voices of Sa- whose lives are presented in a book’s pages. lonica’s inhabitants themselves. What I mean is this: as one reads along, carried on by Ma- It may of course be churlish to set for Mazower zower’s fluent prose, one becomes aware of a standard that the vast majority of historians another set of protagonists who hover over his today, this reviewer included, would find it dif- Salonica. In a real sense, they are the ghosts ficult to meet. Yet, it strikes me that this is a se- invoked in the book’s subtitle. They are individ- rious limit, not simply in a general, theoretical uals, mostly hailing from regions of western sense, but in the very topics Mazower chose to Europe, who, at one time or another from the privilege or to deal with more summarily. Take mid-fifteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, one example: the treatment of the Marranos. travelled to the city and left written documen- There is no question but that the arrival of sub- tation of their visits. Priests, ministers and mis- stantial numbers of these (originally crypto-) sionaries, scholars, and archaeologists, diplo- Jews to Salonica represented a turning point mats and soldiers, merchants, sailors and ad- in the history of local Judaism. Complex is- venturers, they were mostly well travelled, and sues of identity and belonging had to be faced, widely read, curious about the world, and eager and Salonican rabbis acquired a European- to impress their own audiences with their clev- wide reputation because of their learned judg-

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development of a syndicalist movement origi- controversial issue, and very few historians in nally identified with some of the city’s Jews is Greece have broached the subject. To his credit, of course mentioned, but its consequences for Mazower does broach it, but there is a reticence the growth of a bitter anti-Semitic sentiment in his treatment, a hesitation to examine the is- not only among the newly arrived refugees but sue clearly and to draw the appropriate impli- also among the recently formed entrepreneur- cations. Throughout, his vision is clouded by a ial classes (and the markedly discriminatory reluctance to say something that might seem government policies with regard to the large offensive. It would be nice to be able to accept Jewish population) are tucked away in the his rumination that, at the end of the 1930s, “left margins of a narration whose explicit object is to themselves, Greeks and Jews might well to write a history without victors or victims. have sorted out their differences” (419). But one knows, from what happened from 1922/ There is, also, the question of Mazower’s treat- 23 to 1945, that this is merely wishful thinking, ment of Greek anti-Semitism. This is an issue an observation through rose-tinted glasses of that occasionally surfaces in Greek public dis- a sad and sordid situation. course and which, at last, has attracted the at- tention of some major historians. Among them, There is no desire here to whitewash the a small number, Yorgos Margaritis, Frang- record of many courageous Greek Christians iski Abatzopoulou, Rena Molho and Henriette who put their lives and their security on the Benveniste, have opened up new frontiers in line to help Jewish compatriots. A huge per- the discussion by putting very clearly in focus centage of those few Jews who lived through the extent to which an anti-Semitic discourse the war hidden somewhere in Greece owe was and remains a deeply structural feature of their survival to the benevolence and cour- Greek culture. The question assumes a great age of often very modest folk. But the num- importance in Salonica’s history. After all, in bers are small, not to say minuscule. An ex- a period of only a few months, from March to amination of the rest of the picture gives rise August 1943, the German occupiers success- to disturbing questions. Two examples: the fully deported to concentration camps more destruction of the Jewish cemetery, created than 50,000 Jews, the overwhelming major- in the late fifteenth century, one of the old- ity of whom were murdered there. To be sure, est and largest in Europe. It is customary direct responsibility for this barbarism is the to blame the Germans for its destruction in Germans’, alone. But what of the context in 1943. But responsibility for this act of barba- which the Germans carried out their murder- rism goes much beyond, encompassing large ous design? Were local Salonicans implicated segments of the city’s political leadership. On – directly or not – in the massive roundup and the site of the old cemetery stands today the deportation of their Jewish neighbours? If so, campus of the city’s huge university. Sixty- can one identify these local residents, can one three years following that destruction, there point to levels of collaboration between the oc- is no mention anywhere in that temple of cupiers and groups of locals? Can one raise learning of the fact that generations of Jews the question of who gained from the substan- had once been buried in that sacred ground. tial elimination of Salonica’s Jewish commu- A complicity of silence, born of a collective de- nity? Is there political responsibility to be as- sire to paper over an embarrassing memory signed to local, political, business, ecclesias- and the city’s responsibility for that destruc- tical elites? Collaborationism is a delicate and tion, needs to be shattered. Mazower raised

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Mazower seems to me to have missed an op- portunity. He wrote a very good book, bring- ing to the attention of a wide public a past – Salonica’s distant past – that, to many of his readers in Anglophone countries, and, certainly, in Greece, must seem like a differ- ent country; they did things differently there. But anyone vaguely familiar with some old- er works on Salonica (for example, Leon Sciaky’s magnificent memoir, and Risal’s Une ville convoitée) will not be surprised by the general lines of a picture Mazower drew with impressive and elegant skill. If Mazower wanted to add something new to the histori- ographic discussion, if he wanted to open up new topics and remove the veil from ques- tions that a conspiracy of silence have kept away from the centre of public discussion, he could have addressed, with greater openness and less concern with the geometric balances of a diplomatic approach, questions such as

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1860 to 1910 when it grew spectacularly from a small town of 6,000 inhabitants to become one of the major ports in the eastern Mediter- ranean. Opting for the study of a locall middle Yannis Yannitsiotis class, Yannitsiotis highlights the importance of space in historical analysis. The formation Η κοινωνική ιστορία του of the Piraeus middle class was a historical Πειραιά. Η συγκρότηση της phenomenon that occurred as much in a giv- αστικής τάξης 1860–1910 en space as in a given time.

[The Social History of Yannitsiotis draws freely from the findings of Piraeus. The Formation of what has become an extensive historiogra- the Middle Class phy on the European middle classes to pro- vide a compellingly balanced conceptualisa- 1860–1910] tion of class. Class formation is dependent Athens: Nefeli, 2006. 444 pp. upon the confluence of a complex set of eco- nomic, social, political and cultural changes. However, far from being an objective ‘real- ity’ and its unmediated ‘experience’, it is also by Paris Papamichos Chronakis a prominent, although not unique, system of signification. The middle-class subjects were University of Crete the historical outcome of both structural forc- es and of their own actions. Their inventive practices and representations imbued the changing social relations with novel mean- ings and, thus, led to the construction, per- The inappropriateness of class analysis has formance and challenging of class identities. been, for some time, a common methodo- Consequently, Yannitsiotis focuses as much logical dictum of all the major historical syn- on the structural transformations occurring theses on nineteenth-century Greece. Sev- in Piraeus as on the changes in the systems eral specialised works on philanthropy, first- of signification through which its middle- wave feminism, female education and sports class inhabitants experienced them. may have implicitly questioned this assump- tion; however, emanating as they did from Appositely entitled “In search of the mid- the hitherto marginalised field of women’s dle class”, Part One tackles the problem of history, they have so far done little to reso- how best to identify the middle class of Pi- lutely shake it. raeus. Relying upon historically specific cri- teria, Yannitsiotis reconstructs the actually Taking his cue from these pioneering at- existing social hierarchies and identifies the tempts, the work of Yannis Yannitsiotis con- middle-class men of Piraeus as that diverse stitutes the first systematic effort to use class stratum encompassing those with a certain as an analytical tool to explore social rela- amount of property, who retained at least one tions in nineteenth-century Greece. His book female domestic servant, resided in the cen- focuses on Piraeus during the period from tral parishes of the city and employed certain

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) cultural practices of publicity. By the late nine- how family ties strengthened the unity of the teenth century, changes in the field of labour enterprise and its position in a multitude of (such as commercial specialisation, the sep- networks. In turn, entrepreneurial growth or aration of manual work from management failure determined the public image of the and of the home from the workplace) meant family and structured the gender identity of its that this stratum was further distinguished by members. Despite multiple female contribu- a remarkable professional diversity and novel tions to the enterprise, only middle-class man- labour practices. liness was linked to independent work, thrift and progress as well as care for the (depend- Its profile is analysed in Part Two, where ent) family, whereas failure came to be re- Yannitsiotis focuses on its geographical ori- garded as the major source of its loss. gins, social mobility and professional life. He discerns four groups that correspond to an Part Three shifts the focus of analysis from equal number of distinct, generational-cum- structures to discourses and explores the migratory waves, each with its own particu- importance of a certain configuration of the lar professional orientation. Contrary to other ‘public interest’ in the construction of gen- Greek cities, the economic growth of Piraeus dered middle-class identities in Piraeus. and the diversity and dynamism of its middle Yannitsiotis focuses on three distinct, but class owed, therefore, much to the arrival of historically interrelated fields: the construc- and the coexistence and interaction between tion of urban otherness, the articulations of a these successive groups of migrant entre- local civic identity and the changing significa- preneurs, particularly after 1880. By recon- tions of leisure. structing their life stories, Yannitsiotis also shows that when they moved into Piraeus From the 1880s onwards, the figures of the they already bore the necessary economic, prostitute, the criminal, the poor and the social and cultural capital. Thus, he provides epidemic victim were incessantly produced the most systematic critique to date of the through the novel discourses of public mo- stereotype of the self-made Greek entrepre- rality, public safety and social hygiene. Pros- neur and convincingly demonstrates that so- titution, interpersonal violence, drunkenness cial mobility must be understood as the ever- and epidemic disease were criminalised and precarious outcome of a complex interplay attributed to the particular practices of lei- between family networks, marital and dis- sure and sociability characterising the pop- tribution strategies, economic structures and ular strata, which were now demonised and conjunctures, movement and locality. marginalised accordingly. This symbolic pro- duction of social distinctions fashioned a par- A meticulously researched account of middle- ticular set of core middle-class values under class professional life further demonstrates threat as well as novel middle-class subjec- the deep interdependence of family and enter- tivities exemplified in the figure of the philan- prise. Extending his analysis beyond the (neg- thropist. Yannitsiotis moves beyond the func- ligible) role of the dowry to include an exami- tionalist explanatory scheme of social control nation of marital alliances based on the local- and approaches philanthropy as an essential ity and commonality of profession as well as component of middle-class identity. Philan- of the gradual proliferation of general partner- thropy was associated with a new notion of ships between brothers, Yannitsiotis shows (liberal) civic duty, a reworked sense of re-

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ligiosity as public performance and a strong they abandoned localism in favour of nation- awareness of national responsibility. It pro- al, fully class-based forms of institutional or- moted the social status of its practitioner, en- ganisation. Even leisure, as the final chapter forced his political power and forged his pub- shows, had a role to play in this process. The lic image. Such an individualistic configura- passage from the early educational associa- tion resulted in the predominance of private tions to the various sports clubs not only sig- initiatives. Unlike Athens, subsidised charita- nalled the emergence of new fields of social ble institutions appeared in Piraeus only very distinction and new concepts of proper male late in the nineteenth century. and female middle-class youth; by the early twentieth century leisure, conceived as ‘civili- This production of difference was coupled sation’, became an irreplaceable component with the articulation of a particular local of middle-class life and contributed to the civic identity. Being a ‘Piraeuote’ (i.e., a citi- formulation of a new ideal of manliness. Yet, zen of Piraeus) gradually crystallised into a adopting leisure-as-civilisation challenged classed category which furnished the city’s the given identification of Piraeus with male middle class with the necessary coherence. work (which was perceived as ‘progress’) and This most innovative chapter follows the therefore undermined any sense of a particu- metamorphoses of this local identity from lar local identity. Hence, by 1910 the Piraeus its emergence in the late 1860s to its wan- middle class was by all accounts entering into ing in the early 1900s. Piraeus was initially a wholly different phase of its existence. represented as a ‘beehive’ of laborious, mu- nicipality-centred citizens. During the 1880s, This work is a model of meticulous archival re- urban growth, the discovery of the ‘danger- search, methodological innovation and sound, ous classes’, and the severe, but ultimately ethnographically rich historical reconstruction. overcome, economic crisis resulted in a less Conscious of their discursive character, Yan- homogenised reconfiguration. Local identity nitsiotis imaginatively approaches hitherto un- was now forged around the axes of opposi- tapped sources as a set of historically specific tion to the state, fierce competition with the cultural practices. His careful examination of other port cities of Greece, and the figure of the particular contexts that imbued them with the ‘heroic’ entrepreneur whose individual meaning turns their apparent blind spots into male values the city now bore. Finally, by the surprising vistas. Thus, the sources become end of the nineteenth century, Piraeus once an intrinsic part of the narrative itself with the again refashioned itself as the European face temporality of wills, the rationale behind the of Greece, the index of its economic develop- commercial directories, or the ‘spatial stories’ ment. Its entrepreneurs now expressed their the press employed, manifesting a particular growing self-confidence and sense of inde- middle-class worldview. pendence through the associational organi- sation of their business interests and suc- Being the first systematic exploration of the cessfully demanded a separate constituency much-maligned nineteenth-century Greek that would represent the city’s interests more middle classes, this work also provides some faithfully. Yet, by the early 1910s, having con- urgently needed correctives to a number of solidated their position as leaders in what long-standing historiographically received had finally become a unified national mar- wisdoms. The entrepreneurial strategies of ket and confronting rising labour militancy, the Piraeus middle class, such as real-es-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) tate investment and capital dispersion, are Further on, Yannitsiotis’ well-intentioned move re-evaluated as rational business moves and beyond the narrative of Greek exceptionalism not as proof of weak entrepreneurship. In as ‘failed modernisation’ means that his anal- the realm of politics, the examination of the ysis implicitly emphasises the commonali- many ways this middle class formulated and ties between the Piraeus and other Europe- promoted its interests renders obsolete the an middle classes. Consequently, the impor- dominant paradigm of patronage. The result tance of local cultural systems in shaping the is the portrait of a dynamic social class and a distinct outlook of this middle class is over- convincing demonstration of the importance looked. Thus, Yannitsiotis neglects the im- of class analysis for the study of late nine- pact of Greek Orthodoxy on the values of what teenth-century Greek society. he himself considers a “conservative” middle class, whereas the role of nationalism in le- Twenty years after the deconstruction of gitimising ‘modern’ middle-class practices class, this might sound like a methodological through their association with ‘Greekness’ is anachronism. Yet, Yannitsiotis’ work is also only marginally dealt with. So too, more gen- important for proposing a reworked concept erally, is the local appropriation of imported, of class as a valid category of historical anal- Western ‘bourgeois’ values. How such pur- ysis. Its sensitivity to both the structural and portedly universal values were read and re- the discursive, its approach to class as both a signified in situ is nevertheless of critical im- social relation and a rhetorical trope may not portance, particularly since Yannitsiotis rightly always result in a seamless analysis, as the insists that class gradually replaced locality as abrupt transition from Part Two to Part Three the chief site of identity formation in late nine- demonstrates; nevertheless, it does present teenth-century Piraeus. a commendable methodological proposition which comes very close to current historio- Likewise, although Yannitsiotis adheres to a graphical discussions on the possibilities of relational concept of class and provides ad- writing culturally informed and yet still so- mirable analyses of the ways ‘difference’ was cially grafted histories of society.1 symbolically constructed, he nonetheless pays scant attention to the role of the working class However, Yannitsiotis’ basic methodological in middle-class formation. The impact of the assumptions and historical conclusions also great strikes of 1903 and 1906 is dealt with raise some critical questions. To begin with, only schematically. However, greater atten- he rightly foregrounds the question of space tion to those early but pivotal moments of and the ways class is always spatialised. It is class conflict would no doubt have further therefore unusual that so little consideration strengthened one of the book’s most valid ar- is given to the fact that Piraeus was prima- guments, namely the importance of late nine- rily a port – all the more so since eleven out teenth-century (middle-) class politics in un- of the book’s 24 illustrations depict its har- derstanding the surprisingly fierce class con- bour and quay. A more thorough examina- flicts that dominated Greek politics throughout tion of the central role of the port in the lives the first half of the twentieth century. and minds of the Piraeus middle class would no doubt have resulted in a more historically This brings us to a final observation con- nuanced and spatially specific account of its cerning the question of change. Yannitsiotis formation. provides a detailed mapping of the multiple

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transformations that led to the formation of the Piraeus middle class, insisting on each one’s specific logic and temporality. Howev- er, their causes remain largely obscure. The analytical, expansive narrative strategy em- Eftyhia D. Liata ployed ultimately downplays the importance of one critical moment, namely the 1880s. Η Κέρκυρα και η Characterised by an acute, protracted eco- Ζάκυνθος στoν κυκλώνα nomic crisis and a lethal epidemic, this dec- του αντισηµιτισµού. Η ade seems to have ushered in a whole set of transformations, ranging from changes in the «συκοφαντία για το αίµα» professional hierarchies and entrepreneurial του 1891 strategies to new marriage patterns, refor- [Kerkyra and Zakynthos mulated gender roles and novel perceptions of urban space. Although the 1880s crisis is in the Cyclone of Anti- a recurrent motive of the analysis, it is never Semitism: The “Blood Libel” comprehensively addressed as a formative of 1891] moment in the history of the Piraeus middle class. Thus, while Yannitsiotis rightly rejects Athens: Institute for Neohellenic monocausal explanations, he misses the op- Research of the National portunity to reflect on the importance of the conjuncture in class formation and hence to Hellenic Research Foundation, formulate an even richer methodological pro- 2006. 255 pp. posal and an even more historically distinct portrayal of his subject. Yet, this omission is equally to his credit. This is a virtuosic work employing diverse methodologies and imagi- by Thomas W. Gallant natively examining a dauntingly wide array of University of California, San Diego different fields. Accordingly, it is also, by de- fault, an open work, and it should therefore be highly praised even for that, for ultimately succeeding in generating among its readers as many questions as it answers. In the spring of 1891 anti-Semitic riots erupt- ed on the islands of Kerkyra (Corfu) and Za- kynthos (Zante). Over a number of weeks, NOTE members of the Jewish communities on 1 See, in particular, Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, The each island were periodically subjected to co- Future of Class in History. What’s Left of the So- ordinated assaults against their persons and cial?? Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, property. The significance of these events, 2007 and William H. Sewell, Jr., Logics of His- moreover, transcended the narrow bounds tory. Social Theory and Social Transformation, of these insular communities. The pogroms Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. became a central issue in the local, munici- pal and the national parliamentary elections,

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) as well as sparking a debate in Greece and only did the police not stop the attacks, they among the Greeks of the Diaspora about stood by and watched as the pogrom pro- Hellenism and anti-Semitism. Across Eu- gressed. Eventually, troops and police were rope, editorials were published that castigat- deployed and the violence was brought to ed Greece for allowing such calamitous out- an end, but only after intense pressure had rages to occur. So important were the Ionian been brought to bear, including the dispatch- island anti-Semitic pogroms that even two ing of British warships with orders to inter- years later they were the subject of a panel vene in order to protect British subjects in at the Parliament of World Religions. In spite the Jewish community. Hundreds of peo- of their significance during the nineteenth ple were wounded and numerous proper- century fin de siècle, until the publication of ties destroyed. To this point, the episodes Eftyhia Liata’s tome, no book-length study on Kerkyra resemble similar blood libel riots of them had been undertaken, and they have that took place in Europe and the Near East, been almost completely absent from Greek but relying heavily on the report by the pub- historiography. On these grounds alone, its lic prosecutor, Theagenis Kefalas, Liata gives publication is to be welcomed. But in addi- the story a very local twist. It appears that the tion to presenting us with the most detailed attacks on the Jewish communities were in- and best discussion of the Ionian island anti- timately connected to Greek politics, and par- Semitic riots, she also reproduces a number ticularly to the upcoming (June 1891) mu- of the key primary sources on which her ac- nicipal elections, with the supporters of the count is based. Deligiannis party accusing the Trikoupists of masterminding the riots to drive off the pro- The book is divided into five substantive Deligiannis Jewish vote. As she shows, there chapters and an appendix containing a se- was more than just Greek anti-Semitism in- lection of primary sources. Chapter One, “The volved in the Kerkyra events. In Chapter Two, Kerkyra Events”, tells the story of the violence she recounts what happened on Zakynthos. on Kerkyra. On 1 April 1891, eight-year-old Incited by the reports of the Kerkyra pogroms, Rubina Vita Sarda left her parents’ house to a gang of Christian men launched attacks on play with her elder sister. She was never seen the city’s Jewish ghetto. But this time the au- alive again. When she failed to return home, thorities intervened more quickly. A cohort of her parents began a search and notified the 50 soldiers was deployed and stopped the vi- police. Later that night, three Jews found her olence. The respite, however, was fleeting. body in a bloody sack in the doorway of a Two days later on Easter Friday (14 April), house in the Jewish ghetto. Her murder was the procession of the Cross descended into never solved and never will be. In spite of the an orgy of violence against the Jews, result- fact the victim was herself a Jew, rumours ing in five fatalities and numerous causalities quickly spread among Orthodox Greeks that before order could be restored. Relying al- the Jews had in fact killed a Christian girl in most exclusively on an account by Frederick order to collect her blood to make the special Carrer, she shows that events on Zakynthos, bread Jews ate during Passover. The cry of while still having a political dimension, were “blood libel” was heard once more. Over the not carbon copies of the events on Kerkyra. following days and weeks, men, some acting One of the most important consequences of on their own and others in gangs, destroyed the attacks on the Jewish communities was Jewish properties and assaulted Jews. Not a mass exodus. Thousands of people chose

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to leave the islands, especially Kerkyra, to es- lection of letters, and the diary kept by Anto- cape further persecution and violence. nios Pofantis during the Zakynthos pogrom.

In Chapter Three, “The Social and Political The strength of this book is its presentation Dimension”, she turns to how these events and discussion of the primary sources on were reported and debated in the press. She the Ionian Island blood libel riots. All future divides her discussion into two sections, one scholarship on them will begin with this book, devoted to the press and the other to pam- and especially with the primary sources con- phlets and broadsheets. The blood libel vio- tained in it. The deficiencies of the book are on lence incited a wave of editorialising in local, the analytical side. In spite of the wealth and national and foreign newspapers. Laid out in richness of the primary sources, Liata never the papers were the full range of interpreta- provides us with a full narrative of what actu- tions and explanations. Some, like the piec- ally happened. We do not learn, for example, es by Iakovos Polylas in his Kerkyran paper, who was attacked, when, and by whom. What Rhigas o Feraios, adopted a very anti-Semitic were the chronological and spatial dimen- tone; while others, like the articles published sions of the attacks? As she notes, there ex- by Ioannis Gennadios in England, admitted ists complete lists of the victims and the prop- that anti-Semitism was at the root of the vio- erties destroyed during the violence, but she lence, but glossed it by arguing that among does nothing with them. We know that the Greeks only the Ionian islanders were anti- police and military intervened, but what hap- Semites. The overall impression one comes pened when they did? Was there Christian on away with from Liata’s discussion is that it Christian violence? How many casualties were was political orientation, pro-Trikoupis or sustained on each side? In short, the story of pro-Deligiannis, that largely shaped how the riots is not narrated in this book. Neither the press wrote about the blood libel events. does the author explain why they occurred nor Chapter Four examines how Jews were rep- how they relate to other episodes of anti-Se- resented in Greek literature. She focuses mitic violence at the time. The problem here is most of her attention on the writings of Grig- lack of context. The 1891 events were just the orios Xenopoulos and Alexandros Papdia- latest in the long history of tensions and occa- mantis. Xenopoulos, who had grown up on sional violence between Jews and Christians Zakynthos, was an early and vocal critic of on Kerkyra and Zakynthos . The rich source the anti-Jewish attacks, and the figure of the materials contained in the splendid Ιστορικό Jew was a prominent feature in many of his Αρχείο της Κέρκυραςς (Historical Archive of works. Liata presents an excellent analysis of Kerkyra) provide us with a massive amount Xenopoulos’s work. In Chapter Five, “The His- of information that could have been used to toriography of the ‘Jewish Event’ of 1891”, in place the 1891 episodes into their local, social addition to tracing how the events have been context. They must also be seen in a broader written about since 1891, she also discusses context as well. Virulent anti-Semitism swept the work that has been done on the Jewish across Europe and the Near East during the communities on the islands during the nine- nineteenth century and violence against Jew- teenth century. The book ends with a lengthy, ish communities on the pretext of blood libel 89-page appendix containing a selection of was becoming increasingly common; epi- documents, including the detailed report by sodes of blood libel riots occurred in, among Theagenis Kefalas (mentioned earlier), a se- others, Damascus (1840 and 1890), Alexan-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) dria (1880), Xanten, Germany (1891), and Pol- ná, Bohemia (1899). How did the events on the Ionian Islands resemble these? How did they differ? How do we explain the similarities and the differences? Why? Tonia Kiousopoulou

In conclusion, Eftyhia Liata is to be congratu- Bασιλεύς ή Oικονόµος: lated for making people aware of the large- Πολιτική εξουσία και ly forgotten blood libel riots on Kerkyra and ιδεολογία πριν την Άλωση Zakynthos in 1891. Her detailed analysis of how the events were represented and por- [Emperor or Manager: trayed in Greek press and in literature cap- Political Power and tures well the cross-currents of the social Ideology before the Fall of and political tensions that were tearing at the fabric of Greek society at the fin-de-siè- Constantinople] cle. She does, then, a masterful job of deal- Athens: Ed. Polis, 2007. 282 pp. ing with the sources. Where she falls down is in actually analysing the events themselves and explaining them in their historical con- text. So, while she has laid the foundation for by Paris Gounaridis detailed historical analysis of the 1891 blood libel riots on the Ionian Islands, we still await University of Thessaly such a study.

Tonia Kiousopoulou, a specialist in the final period of the Byzantine Empire, has produced a book about the society during the first half of the fifteenth century, before the fall of Con- stantinople (1453). Her working hypothesis is that Byzantium, in this period, had acquired certain new characteristics that do not cor- respond with the traditional perception of the empire, and that the holder of political power, the basileus, a member of the Palaiologan dy- nasty, was no longer the one ‘chosen by God’ (theoprobletos), but simply a manager. What remained of the once powerful empire was transformed into a city-state, similar to the Italian commercial cities (such as Venice and Genoa). Considering the city of Byzantium in its historical development, the author believes that Constantinople, just as the Italian com-

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mercial cities, from this point constitutes an el- the rich residents of city participated. While ement in the development of an economically the author attempts to frame the latter as unified Mediterranean. Thus, she examines the a decisive collective institution, a ‘municipal’ activities of the Byzantine state not as those of body, this is not supported by the sources, be- an imperial remnant or from the perspective of cause it was never established as such. The its subsequent collapse, but as an instrument politeia was constituted by civilian dignitaries, necessary for its survival. who held no rank or engaged in other political activity; they were acquainted with each other The study is structured in three parts. The through their enterprising activities or from first presents Constantinople not so much the hiring of the right to collect taxes. as an urban centre but more as an economic environment, with various centres, where the In the third part, the author examines the groups that constituted Byzantine society were principles of the new political system and active. The author clearly traces the changing the ideological components of political life. of the city into a centre of exchange. She investigates the constitution of collective identities, the attitudes towards and the per- The second part deals with the political life of ceptions of the social transformation, as well Byzantium, which was characterised by the as the content that concepts such as home- distinction between the secular officials, on land and nation acquired. As a result of the one hand, and the dignitaries of the patriar- turn to political order in the city-state, like the chate, on the other. Here, the author exam- Italian cities, the author considers that the at- ines the collective physiognomy of the political titude of the Palaiologos dynasty towards the personnel, the civilian dignitaries (archontes). question of the union of Churches (the Byz- The organisation of power, which, nominally, antine with the Roman Catholic) constituted, remained an imperial responsibility through apart from an expectation of help from the the granting of offices, is examined in connec- West in confronting the Turks, the expression tion with the management of public finances. of a new political perception of church–state Besieged or under the continuous threat of relations. The differentiation of the civilian conquest, the territory of the ‘empire’ had administration and the patriarchal clergy was been reduced to the city of Constantinople. In caused by the ecclesiastical dignitaries, who, this context, the Byzantine emperor, indebted in moving away from the traditional concep- to and dependent economically on the West tion of the emperor as being divinely chosen, and also obliged to pay a tribute in tax to the adopted the more critical perception of him sultan, could not but be a manager of public as an administrator of political power. Thus, finances. Byzantine society, in order to sur- they disputed his right to regulate ecclesiasti- vive, broke the bonds with the imperial past cal affairs, while the influence of the church and the holder of political power, the emperor, decreased in the higher levels of Constanti- in this new arrangement, was nothing more nopolitan society. While the clergy claimed than the first between equals. The bureau- greater autonomy, the differentiation allowed cratic mechanism of administration was no the emperors to promote the policy of Church longer needed. The emperor coordinated two unity, so as to safeguard their power in the collective bodies that took the decisions: the city-state. However, the fall of Constantinople court, which constituted himself and his high changed the political scene and influenced the dignitaries, and the politeia, a body in which choices that were developed.

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Kiousopoulou’s book is one of exceptional interest because it comes to reverse many of the commonplaces regarding the fall of Con- stantinople. The author, disputing the decline thesis, presents Constantinoplian society as Πρακτικά του Επιστηµονικού a living one that underwent mutation in or- Συµποσίου «Νεοελληνική der to survive. She underlines the dynamics and the political role of its merchants in the Επιστολογραφία» transformation of the ‘empire’ into a modern (16ος–19ος αι.) Mediterranean city-state. Finally, the study [Proceedings of the dismisses the Church unionist policy of the last Palaiologoi as an expectation of a miracle Scientific Symposium or help from the West, reinterpreting it as the on “Early Modern Greek expression of a conscious political choice. Letter Writing” (16th–19th Centuries)] (= Μεσαιωνικά και Νέα Ελληνικάά 8) Athens: Academy of Athens, 2006. 400 pp.

by Katerina Papakonstantinou Ionian University

This volume, containing the proceedings of the symposium held in March 2003 by the Research Centre for Medieval and Modern Hellenism of the Academy of Athens, has as its subject the practice of letter writing in Greek in the early modern period. Participat- ing in the symposium were Greek research- ers mainly occupied with the Greek Enlight- enment and the activity of Greek scholars of the early modern period. The articles are or- ganised along four themes, entitled “The let- ter-writing tradition and letter collections”,

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“From manuscripts to printed epistolaria”, ry scholarly monks, Evgenios Giannoulis and “Correspondence: practice and ideology”, Anastasios Gordios, who wrote letters to a “Commercial correspondence and letter dis- wide circle of addressees. They research the tribution”. The papers deal with letter writing reasons for the letters, the different forms since the Byzantine period and the tradition used in corresponding with various recipi- that was created in continuation of the ancient ents, as well as the vocabulary, the different period. The majority of the papers focus on grammatical forms, the form of the letters, as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the well as the quotations and the proverbs used period called the Greek Enlightenment. Al- in them. They examine the corpus of letters though letter writing was a common practice as texts and provide a general description of for all people who wished to communicate for their content. different reasons, the papers focus mainly on the correspondence of scholars, clerics and Dimitris G. Apostolopoulos investigates the merchants, even though other corpuses of way in which a corpus of letters of Nicolaos correspondence from the same period have Mavrogordatos has been ascribed to Alexan- not yet been researched in Greek historiog- dros Mavrogordatos, tracing a series of un- raphy. Under this restriction some of the pa- lucky coincidences that have led to that mis- pers focus on epistolaria, printed guides for take. Machi Paizi-Apostolopoulou follows the correct letter writing that circulated either as transformation of a private collection of cor- manuscripts since the Byzantine period or in respondence into an epistolarion in the eight- printed form, from the seventeenth to the late eenth century, seeking to establish who had eighteenth centuries. the initiative to create the handwritten guide. Pinelopi Stathi, in her contribution, browses In his paper, Dimitrios Z. Sofianos provides a the correspondence of the dependency of survey of letter writing since ancient times to the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople where, the late Byzantine period. He remarks that the during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- correspondence in the ancient period did not ries, the patriarchs of Jerusalem, who resid- share the character of that of the Byzantine ed there for long periods, engaged in corre- period, when a particular form of and strict spondence with a variety of people. A signifi- rules for letter writing were formulated. He cant part of the correspondence comprises of continues by saying that letter writing was letters received from the dragomans of the exercised by highly literate men, scholars and Supreme Porte and the rulers of Wallachia church officials; for the Byzantine period there and Moldavia, who maintained strong rela- are no examples of letters written by people tions with the patriarchs. who were simply literate, which is not the case for the early modern Ottoman period. From the late seventeenth to the eighteenth During the Byzantine period most scholars centuries, many printed guides on proper wrote many letters since it was part of their letter writing appeared. This reflected, on scientific work. Some letters served as ex- the one hand, the need and demand of the amples of letter writing and were copied for educated public for such guidelines and, on several centuries. The papers of Niki Papatri- the other, the need of scholars to contribute antaphyllou-Theodoridi and Chariton Karana- epistolaria to bibliographical traffic. Mihalis sios analyse the corpus of correspondence of Lassithiotakis investigates the relationship two late sixteenth-/early seventeenth-centu- between two works of Fragiskos Skoufos,

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) the Grammatoforos and Techni Ritorikis, in diaspora. New letter types reflecting different order to show that the letters contained in needs reflect the emergence of new social the Grammatoforos were written mostly as perceptions. The author remarks that during rhetorical exercises and their collection rep- that period the letter was something that ex- resents more a prolongation of his book on isted in the public and the private sphere. In rhetoric. This collection of letters does not many cases, letters were read by more than serve as an example for correct letter writing one person. At the same time, the language but for correct rhetorical texts. they were composed in changed; moving away from formal written style, letter writers The contributions dealing with the epistolar- now preferred a spontaneous spoken idiom. ia research the identity of their compilers, the reasons behind their composition and publi- The changes in nineteenth-century Greek so- cation as well as the reasons for their suc- ciety can be traced through the epistolarion of cess or failure as publications. From the per- Grigorios Palaiologos, presented by Yiannis spective of their complication, form and types Papatheodorou in his contribution. The Greek of letters they include, the authors investigate bourgeoisie had new needs, new social re- the changes brought about by the epistolaria alities and new moral standards, which are in society and especially in the reading pub- reflected in the letter types that Palaiologos’ lic since new editions of the epistoraria had epistolarion provided. This also explains the to meet these changes and requirements. publishing success of the epistolarion during Here, the authors investigate whether these the nineteenth century. Nassia Yakovaki re- alterations in the Greek editions followed the searches the origins of this new social real- changes in other European guides. In her arti- ity and, in particular, the creation of a public cle, Martha Karpozilou examines in detail the sphere through the edited edition of Korais epistolarion of Korydaleus, a seventeenth- and Vasileiou’s early nineteenth-century cor- century scholar, whose collection of letters, respondence. Yakovaki discusses the crea- although written in ancient Greek, served as tion of a public sphere by the Greek-speaking an example for letter writing and teaching for Ottoman and European diaspora reading au- teachers and scholars for many decades af- dience and the formation of new social reali- ter its publication. Triantaphyllos E. Sklaven- ties through eighteenth-century epistologra- itis looks at the printed eighteenth-centu- phy. Emmanuel Franghiskos continues with ry epistolaria of Venice, where a significant the focus on Korais’ correspondence with his number of them were published. He follows friends and acquaintances and tries to estab- the changes, evident in successive editions of lish to what degree the public and the individ- the epistolarion of Spyridon Milias and other ual are interwoven in letter writing and read- epistolaria printed in Venice, that reflect the ing. Even Korais took different attitudes to- change in readership from scholars to most- wards his letters; on the one hand, he knew ly merchants. The changes are evident in the and accepted the fact that more than one language used in the books and the letter ex- person read them and, on the other, strongly amples they provide. Maria A. Stassinopou- reacted to the publication of letters which he lou, in her article on the epistolarion of Dimi- had intended to be private. trios Darvaris, focuses on eighteenth-century epistolary printing activity in Vienna, identify- Constantin Lappas uses the corpus of the ing the changing needs of the Greek-speaking correspondence of Constantinos Oikono-

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mos to describe the social hierarchies that works. Anna Mandilara uses the letters of emerge from them. He compares his letter another nineteenth-century merchant, Dim- writing with that of previous and subsequent itrios Petrokokkinos, in order to investigate letter writers and tries to establish their dif- the mentality and the principles of a mer- ferences and their meaning. Demetrios I. Po- chant living in Smyrna and Marseille. Helen lemis mines the correspondence of Theophi- Angelomatis-Tsougarakis investigates the los Kairis for his religious beliefs and ideol- transmission of correspondence around the ogy; the letters in this case are combined eastern Mediterranean from the fourteenth to with other evidence such as Kairis’ apology the early nineteenth centuries as well as the in court. Within the same framework, Vassi- organisation of post offices in the Venetian lis Panayotopoulos seeks the cultural aspects and the Ottoman areas of administration. of the lives of rulers and the ruled as well as the communicative practices in the adminis- The contributions to this collective volume trative papers of the archive of Ali Paşa of Io- use, more or less, early modern Greek epis- annina. He investigates the private contained tolography as evidence for ideology and a in the public content of an administrative ar- changing social environment. The authors chive. He raises questions on the use of the have used the letters as remnants of a spe- Greek language in the official papers of the cific social and political environment that they Ottoman province and tries to explain the cul- wished to research. The language of the let- tural bilingualism of the letter writers and re- ters and the examples of letters contained in cipients. Spyros I. Asdrachas utilises, for the epistolaria can be used as evidence of a cer- same purpose, the letters sent to the Venetian tain political reality. As some of the authors authorities of Lefkada and Preveza at the end of the book admit, it is a process that has not of the eighteenth century by different people been yet been undertaken by Greek historiog- from central Greece. He remarks while the raphy. From that point of view, the volume is language is Greek, it is not ancient Greek or a first step in that direction. the language of educated people; rather, it is more the demotic of the different groups living in the area of western Epirus and Acarnania. Asdrachas uses the letters to examine the re- lationship of the letter writers to time, the is- sues they mention and the narrative methods used to express their opinion.

Eftyhia D. Liata and Vassilis Kremmydas, in their contributions, use a corpus of commer- cial correspondence to explore the use of let- ter writing by people who required it most, the merchants of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They investigate the ex- ternal characteristics of the letters, how they were dated and addressed, the use of letters to order goods, the frequency at which let- ters were sent and their use in building net-

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traditions, the Ottomanist and the Balkanist, but it also includes some papers that belong to a new and very promising kind of Ottoman- ist scholarship, one that challenges ‘ancient Antonis Anastasopoulos and wisdoms’, takes into consideration informal Elias Kolovos (eds) as well as formal discourses and is informed by Balkan scholarship. Ottoman Rule and the Balkans, 1760–1850: The 16 papers included in the volume have their origins in papers presented to a confer- Conflict, Transformation, ence organised by the Department of History Adaptation and Archaeology of the University of Crete in December 2003.1 They are arranged themat- Rethymno: Department of ically in four parts (“The Ottoman Balkans History and Archaeology, around 1800”, “The Case of the Peloponnese”, University of Crete, 2007. 263 pp. “The Greek Revolution”, “Epilogue”) and mostly explore three major issues: the extent and im- pact of decentralisation, which contributed, on the one hand, to the empowering of local elites by Eleni Gara and, on the other, to the delegitimisation of im- perial rule; the ‘Ottoman context’ of the Greek University of the Aegean Revolution, an event that has been studied mainly through the prism of national histori- ography; and the intricate relationship between sources, historical realities and historiographi- cal narratives. In what follows, I will try to sum- Research on the late eighteenth- and early marise, not necessarily in the order in which nineteenth-century Balkans has been rather their papers appear in the volume, the most neglected by Ottomanists, who until recently important points made by individual authors. have focused mainly on the era of Ottoman expansion and sultanic power. The opposite By the mid-eighteenth century, the involve- is true for Balkan historians, not least be- ment of local elites in provincial administra- cause the developments that were crucial to tion, taxation and military recruitment, the re- the emergence of nation-states can be traced sults of a long-term development that can be back to this very period. Although it has often traced back to the seventeenth century, had resulted in insightful and thought-provoking led to a thorough transformation of the re- studies that have furthered our understand- lationship between the imperial centre and ing of the Ottoman Balkans, much of Balkan- the provinces. As Gergana Georgieva shows, ist research, however, does not integrate the at times this resulted in the isolation of gov- imperial perspective but treats the Christian ernors sent from the centre, or even in open populations as separate societies. The vol- clashes between them and powerful nota- ume under review is, therefore, a welcome bles. According to Georgieva, the position of addition to the bibliography. Not only does it the governors was further destabilised by bring into dialogue the two historiographical widespread disorder due to fights between

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notables over the control of territories and to Provincial notables built extensive networks roving bands of defectors from the irregular that linked them to the imperial centre, and troops which operated in the Balkans. Even- their power struggles were partly fought tually the governor’s residence was moved out in Istanbul. As Demetrios Stamatopou- from Sofia to the more secure and centrally los shows, the Dragoman of the Morea, the placed Manastır (Bitola). In the eighteenth- governor’s Christian interpreter who was ap- century Morea, according to Anna Vlachopou- pointed by the central authorities and partici- lou, political instability and disorder resulted in pated in the provincial council alongside sen- the emergence of “mafia-like substructures” ior Ottoman administrative officials, played a among the military, which became engaged in key role in the outcome of such struggles. extortion, kidnapping, torture and murder. Thus, the rival factions of notables tried to control his appointment. On the eve of the The career of Tepedelenli Ali Paşa, son of an Greek Revolution, the fierce and bloody con- Albanian military leader, who became pasha flict between the Christian notables of the Mo- of Yanya (Ioannina), then governor of Rume- rea had led to the marginalisation of some lia, and ultimately a threat to the imperial powerful families, which enabled the latter’s power, is indicative of the changed relation- political reorientation towards disengage- ship between the imperial centre and its Bal- ment from Ottoman rule. kan provinces. Dimitris Dimitropoulos shows that, between 1788 and 1822, Ali Paşa man- In the northern borders of the Ottoman Em- aged to expand his rule and increase his rev- pire, on the other hand, military defeats at the enue not only through the use of force but hands of the Russians led to a renegotiation also by building up an extensive network of of the juridical and political status of Walla- patrons and clients and by cultivating per- chia and Moldavia. As Viorel Panaite shows, sonal relations with the local Christian nota- after the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774, bles. One of the results of Ali Paşa’s efforts in the two tributary principalities became “buff- furthering the interests of his household and er-protectorates” between the two empires, clients was to alienate Muslim timariots and while the invented tradition of ancient “capit- landowners and to enhance the position of ulations” accorded to local aristocracy by the Christian elites in his territories. Ottoman sultans was used to legitimise the aristocracy’s enhanced autonomous status. Christian notables also participated formally in the administration of the Morea, a province The 1790s witnessed the introduction of the that was to become the centre of the Greek reform programme of Nizam-ı Cedid and Revolution in 1821. According to Martha Pylia, the spread among Ottoman Christians of the during the 1808–12 governorship of Veli Paşa, ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Ali Paşa’s son, Christian notables, although Revolution, both of which, as Antonis Anas- they grew in power, were estranged by Veli’s tasopoulos argues, represented in a way a taxation policy, leading some of them eventu- “new Western-oriented spirit” that was vehe- ally to turn against him. The last year of Veli’s mently opposed by “traditionalists”. According tenure witnessed the division of notables into to Anastasopoulos, both developments have two factions, one supporting and the other unfortunately left very faint traces in the pro- opposing the governor, both of which forged vincial judicial registers, the most important alliances with Muslim notables. Ottoman source for regional history; in his

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) view, only a closer interaction between Otto- successful career in the Ottoman state serv- manist and national Balkan historiographies ice. As Philliou argues, the concept of “am- can further our understanding of the matter. bition” is particularly useful for the analysis of the political attitudes of Ottoman Christian Rebellion and secession in the late eight- elites both before and after 1821. eenth and early nineteenth centuries could be stirred by both ‘traditionalists’ and ‘revolu- Panagiotis Stathis also challenges the nation- tionaries’. In a paper discussing the elements al narrative as it concerns the Greek Revolu- of the potential ‘alliance’ present in – as well tion. Stathis argues that the armed Christian as absent from – Rhigas Velestinlis’ Thourios, groups of klephts and armatoloii did not take Rossitsa Gradeva argues that while Rhigas part in the Revolution because of any “nation- considered the rebel military leader Osman al sentiments”; their participation was the re- Pazvantoğlu a potential ally, the two had con- sult of a “dual crisis” induced, on the one hand, flicting agendas: Pazvantoğlu sought to legit- by their persecution by the central and local imise his rebellion against Ottoman rule by authorities in the preceding decades and, on pleading the necessity to overturn the Nizam- the other, by the political and financial crisis ı Cedid in order to restore the former glory of in their areas caused by the conflict between the empire, while Rhigas was inspired by the the imperial centre and Ali Paşa in 1820–21. French Revolution. It is not certain whether In the same vein, Christos Loukos is explic- the two rebels were in direct contact, which it in his plea for the integration of the impe- Gradeva doubts but does not rule out; in rial perspective into the study of the Greek any case, they were closely connected in Revolution. He argues that Greek historians the minds of their contemporaries, not only should concern themselves more with the within but also outside the Ottoman Empire. Muslim populations as well as with official As Rachida Tlili Sellaouti shows, France was and popular reactions to the revolution in Is- supportive of Pazvantoğlu’s rebellion, seeing tanbul and the provinces. it not only as a means to strengthen its po- sition in the eastern Mediterranean, but also The Greek Revolution had unforeseen rami- because it considered it an opportunity for the fications. In Crete, as shown by Vassilis Dimi- political integration of Ottoman Muslims into triadis, the local Muslims took over the prop- the sphere of republican values. erties confiscated from insurrectionists and effectively opposed any efforts of the cen- The Greek Revolution of 1821 was undoubt- tral government to register and dispose of edly affected by the spread of revolutionary them in a manner profitable to the imperial ideas. Nevertheless, according to Christine treasury. In Albania, on the contrary, argues Philliou, the extent to which it was “Greek” Hakan Erdem, the Greek Revolution eventu- or even a “Revolution” is debatable. Philliou ally resulted in tighter Ottoman control. In the questions the usefulness of these two terms, preceding decades Ottoman rule in the prov- because they ignore Ottoman social realities ince had been tenuous, and imperial admin- and do not help explain individual decisions istrators distrusted the Albanian military. The on whether or not to take part on the “Greek” refusal of Albanian leaders to fight when the side. Phanariots like Stephanos Vogoridis did contracted payment for their troops was not not participate in the Revolution; in the follow- forthcoming as well as reports that some of ing decades he even managed to embark on a them were in secret correspondence or col-

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laboration with the Greek revolutionaries, led the Sultan and his Grand Vizier to believe that they were on the verge of rebellion. The rela- tions between centrally appointed command- ers and Albanian leaders, whose troops made Méropi Anastassiadou-Dumont up the bulk of the imperial forces sent against and Paul Dumont the insurrectionists, remained strained and tainted by mutual distrust throughout the Οι Ρωµιοί της Πόλης, revolution, cementing imperial resolve to ex- τραύµατα και προσδοκίες ert tighter control over Albania. [The Greek Orthodox of the Lastly, two papers pertain to the period after City: Wounds and Prospects] the Serbian and Greek Revolutions. Čedomir Antić shows that the organisation and ideol- Athens: Hestia, 2007. 331 pp. ogy of the early Serbian state was heavily in- fluenced by Ottoman traditions and argues that, between 1838 and 1858, the Principality Dilek Güven of Serbia passed through a phase of re-Ot- tomanisation. Cengiz Kırlı explores spy re- Εθνικισµός, Κοινωνικές ports from the period 1840–45, which con- tain opinions and rumours about contem- Μεταβολές και Μειονότητες: porary events and social and political issues, τα επεισόδια εναντίον των µη and gives an account of the popular attitudes µουσουλµάνων της Τουρκίας to the Tanzimat Reforms, the Crete Rebellion of 1841 and the 1843 Coup in Greece. (6/7 Σεπτεµβρίου 1955) [Nationalism, Social In short, Ottoman Rule and the Balkans is Change and Minorities: a very interesting volume that furthers our understanding of late eighteenth- and ear- The Incidents against Non- ly nineteenth-century Ottoman political life, Muslims in Turkey, 6–7 secessionist and revolutionary movements. September 1955] Furthermore, the fruitful combination of Ot- tomanist and Balkanist historiographical per- Athens: Hestia, 2006. 387 pp. spectives paves the way for new interpreta- tions and appropriations of the past. by Vangelis Kechriotis Boğaziçi University

NOTE 1 “The Ottoman Empire and the Rise of Balkan Nationalisms, 1789–1832: Conflict, Transfor- It is a commonplace that over the last dec- mation, Adaptation”, Rethymno, 13–14 Decem- ade, Turkish society has undergone a signifi- ber 2003. cant transformation. Apart from the reforms

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) that have been implemented in a variety of so- thodox minority in Istanbul, have multiplied. The cial fields, this new era has paved the way for a books under review here have been published reconsideration of controversial aspects of the in Greek and bear many things in common. It is past. Thus, it has become largely acknowledged not a coincidence that the authors participated that in order to develop a more sensitive social at the summer 2005 conference entitled “Meet- and human consciousness, it is important for ing in Istanbul: Today and Tomorrow”, which Turkish society to reflect on a series of violent was organised by the alumni association of the incidents that have marked the nation-build- city’s Zografeion Gymnasium-Lyceum with the ing process during the last century. This has involvement of scholars and local journalists. become the mission of Turkish and also for- eign scholars and intellectuals who have tak- The authors of the first book, The Greek Ortho- en it upon themselves to challenge taboos and dox of the City, are Paul Dumont and Méropi bring into public debate issues that the state ap- Anastassiadou-Dumont, well-known Ottoman- paratus but also a large part of society consider ists who spent four years in Istanbul when the a threat to public order and national unity. All former was the director of the Institut Français these endeavours have been met with a fervent d’Études Anatoliennes. Initially, and as part of reaction by certain circles among the bureauc- their activity in the Institute, they published, in racy and the military as well as nationalist nebu- French, their observations and the preliminary lae that are intimately connected to these circles. results of their research. The Greek version is The infamous article 301 was inserted into the much larger and it is written in a language that penal code, presumably as part of the reform addresses a broader public. This is actually one process; in reality, however, it opened a Pando- of its merits. As the author of this review hap- ra’s box, allowing several hot-headed judges to pened to live in Istanbul during the same years sue authors, journalists and artists who have and became acquainted with its Greek Orthodox been accused of ‘insulting Turkishness’. The community through similar channels, it was not most prominent and tragic case was that of the difficult to realise that the great majority of the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who people in Greece had little idea either of the re- was convicted and subjected to threats and hu- cent past and the calamities that the latter had miliation for stressing the necessity for Turkish gone through or of the present, specific and very society to address one of the darkest chapters urgent issues that it faced. This was the case of its history, the Armenian Genocide. Dink’s despite the endless declarations of solidarity assassination, on 19 January 2007, delivered on the part of the Greek state and the general a huge blow to the reform efforts and people’s consensus regarding the importance of the Ec- hopes for a democratic society based on the umenical Patriarchate for Orthodoxy as well as respect for difference and individual freedoms. the emotional reactions against the violations of its rights. Istanbul, or Constantinople for the Not surprisingly, one of the most sensitive fields Greeks, constitutes a place of pilgrimage for to have attracted attention has been that of mi- those Greek tourists who participate in package norities and the way the state has treated them tours, the two major stops of which are the Pa- in the process of the homogenisation of Turk- triarchate and the Grand Bazaar (Kapalı Çarşı). ish society. Within this context, conferences, ar- As the authors argue, this pilgrimage is inspired ticles and publications that seek to reassess the by a series of historical and religious references: trajectory, including the hardships experienced the Constantinople of the Byzantine emperors but also the future prospects of the Greek Or- and the Istanbul of the sultans, the cradle of Or-

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thodoxy and Ottomanness. For those who have for the minority but has also brought to Turkey their roots here, it represents also a personal hundreds of Greeks from Greece, mainly busi- need to reconcile with their lost youth (228). All nessmen, but also journalists and academics. those pilgrims, though, hardly realise that there Last but not least, the prospect, however dis- are real people here who bear the burden of a tant, of Turkey’s accession to the European Un- precious, albeit controversial, heritage and a ion, has reinforced the legal framework cover- very complex identity. Therefore, the purpose ing the protection of minority rights as well as of the book is to introduce this audience with conditions of stability within Turkish society (18). this population of 2,000 or, according to a re- cent demographic report, probably double that This remains very abstract, however, and one number. The titles of the chapters are indicative: should not exaggerate the extent to which it can “Demographic Collapse”, “The Greek Orthodox be translated into a real change of attitudes to- Diaspora”, “Education”, “Under the Shadow of wards the Greek Orthodox at an individual level. the Patriarchate”, “Social Bonds and Commu- This is not the place to elaborate on the image nication”, “Life with the ‘Local’ Population”, “The of the Rum in Turkish society, an image bur- Heritage of Monuments”. dened with several negative stereotypes re- lated to war memories, social antagonism, but The major argument put forth by the authors is also to political manipulation. What has hap- that eventually the total elimination of the com- pened during the last decade is a clear shift in munity, which used to number 100,000 people these perceptions. At the level of high politics, only 50 years ago, seems inevitable unless cer- the shift is related to the certainty that proving tain external factors contribute to its regenera- that Greeks and Turks peacefully coexisted in tion. While describing the historical context as the plural framework of the Ottoman Empire it emerged in the 1990s, they remind us that can be a strong card in the effort to convince the the collapse of communism enabled several European public. At the level of scholars and in- national churches to come into closer contact tellectuals, it is related to a sense of shame for with the Patriarchate of Constantinople, as past crimes and the sincere realisation that the well as contributing to migration from Roma- consolidation of democracy must ensure rec- nia, Moldavia and Georgia of Orthodox people ognition and compensation for these crimes. seeking a better future. On the other hand, the At a more popular level, finally, the resurfacing demographic and cultural profile of the Greek of suppressed social memories has led either minority had already been affected by the Arab- to the disclosure of well-hidden secrets or the speaking population from Hatay Province, with manipulation of identities. There are people who its capital Antakya (ancient Antioch), a region are not afraid now to talk about their Rum (or, annexed by the Turkish Republic in 1939. This even more frequently, their Armenian grand- community is also of Greek Orthodox confes- mother), whereas there are others who have sion and had started to migrate in the 1960s to invented one in the hope of some benefit (214). Istanbul where its members could easily find jobs as caretakers of the churches and oth- It is only through the happy coincidence of all er public buildings abandoned by the Greek- these new factors that the community might speakers who were forced to leave. To all the survive, but then, the authors claim, there is a above, one should add the recent rapproche- difficult choice to be made. This choice is relat- ment between Greece and Turkey that, through ed to identity. “The Greek Orthodox can no long- certain reforms, has improved living conditions er base their strategy of survival on the glori-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) fication of their Hellenic identity” (18). In other ecumenical Hellenism. It has been argued that, words, only if the community decides to invest as opposed to the state-oriented and therefore and develop along the lines of a truly ecumenical parochial nationalism endorsed by Greek so- Orthodoxy, which can include both Arab speak- ciety, this all-inclusive Hellenism rests on the ers and Romanians on an equal basis. Instead noblest elements of Hellenic culture which is, of trying to forcibly Hellenise them, can it look of course, identified with Orthodoxy. Unavoida- to the future with optimism. The role of the Pa- bly, however, since at its core there is always a triarchate in this transformation is of immense claim to preserve and reproduce this particular importance. The authors, very accurately, point culture, it does not cease hegemonising other out that, despite the process of secularisation cultural expressions of the same confession. or laicisation during the final decades of the Ot- toman Empire, the Patriarchate, even though it One of the areas where this predicament is is not recognised as an institution with a distinct very visible is education. The authors claim that legal personality by the Turkish state, is at the the community schools have been serving the forefront of any claim made by the Greek Ortho- same purposes for the last 150 years, name- dox in Turkey and tends to represent the com- ly preserving the connecting bonds among the munity not only symbolically but also politically. community especially at the bottom of the so- The Patriarch is the first person to come to any- cial hierarchy. When the lay population pros- one’s mind, both in Greece and in Turkey, when pered, the schools flourished. Now that the de- there is a discussion on the minority (20). The mographic composition has been irrevocably minority itself has never ceased to consider the altered and the community is on the brink of Patriarchate as its historical and political cen- extinction, adaptation to the new circumstanc- tre. So much so that while lay leaders had tried es is unavoidable (134). To give only one exam- in the past to challenge its authority, in recent ple, more than half the pupils attending the few decades nobody has dared, out of fear that he remaining Greek Orthodox schools of Istanbul or she might be accused of spreading the seeds are Arab-speaking, which has created a great of disunity. The minority should stand united. It discrepancy between them and Greek-speak- cannot afford to disagree (182–184). After all, ing pupils. The problem cannot be resolved by this is typical minority behaviour. segregating the two, which would lead to a kind of apartheid. Instead, next to Greek and Turkish, On the other hand, this also being very typical, Arabic as an elective course could be introduced. within the framework of the Lausanne treaty Such a measure, though, may be described as a that keeps the minorities captive of both states, violation of the Hellenic character of education. the Greek Orthodox of Istanbul are accustomed to consider Greece their second motherland. Is Dilek Güven, on the other hand, has a different there a chance that the Patriarchate can take a starting point, the ‘September events’ of 1955 in more radical step and, since it can afford the Istanbul. Her book in Greek is actually a trans- necessary symbolic capital, move to open up to lation of her PhD dissertation submitted to the the world, promoting an Orthodox identity which Ruhr University Bochum, where she was a stu- is not necessarily related to Hellenism? This dent of the well-known German-Turkish Otto- seems a rhetorical question when one consid- manist Fikret Adanır. The first three chapters of ers the very tight identification of the Patriar- the study focus on the event itself and its after- chate, already since Ottoman times, with a ver- math, whereas the fourth chapter is an interest- sion of Hellenism which has been described as ing overview of the trajectory of Turkish nation-

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alism from before the foundation of the Republic unique moment, related only to the mounting until the outbreak of the Cyprus question, which tension around the Cyprus question. Cyprus presumably sparked the violence. Let us recall might have been the excuse, but actually these the events themselves. In a period of mount- events should be seen as another instance in ing tensions due to the violence on Cyprus the long-term process of Turkish nation-build- and while an important conference was taking ing that was initiated with the Young Turk Revo- place in London, the Istanbul Ekspres newspa- lution in 1908 and, I would add, has not yet been per published the information that a bomb had completed (153–162). A paramount aspect of exploded at the birthplace of Atatürk in Saloni- this process is the ethnic homogenisation of ca, a building which housed the Turkish consu- the population and, therefore, the elimination late there. The news offered the long-expected of ethnoreligious minorities. This is a very typi- excuse for the launching of a pogrom against cal example of the methods and practices used the Greek Orthodox minority of Istanbul. Within by the nation-state to implement its own legiti- a few hours, thousands of houses were looted, macy, with the important difference that in the hundreds of churches were destroyed, several Turkish case, the process is flavoured by the people were attacked and women raped, while hangover of the imperial hegemony that col- a number of people were killed (31–44). The ex- lapsed presumably due to the undermining ef- tent of the violence and the destruction shocked forts of these same minorities, thus attributing everyone, including the government, which bore them with the responsibility for all evils. part of the responsibility (45–48). Behind this argument, however, lies the as- This study has also been published in Turk- sumption that has been already sustained by ish under the title Cumhuriyet Dönemi Azınlık scholars such as Ayhan Aktar1 that national- Politikaları Bağlamında 6–7 Eylül Olayları (The ist fervour among particular social groups but Events of 6–7 September and Minority Poli- also the implementation of discrimination poli- tics in the Republican Era). The publication cies on the part of the state is actually related to coincided with the 50th anniversary of the the appropriation of property and the conviction events, when Turkey was full of hope for its that any profit made by non-Muslims, who in this EU prospects and the atmosphere of resent- respect are described as non-Turks, is not only ment for the suppressed dark pages of the achieved at the expense of the Turkish popula- past was quite prominent. The author and her tion, but is also a potential threat for national se- book, which was published by a very respect- curity and unity (163–174). This policy, whether able publication house (Tarih Vakfı), were at or not it was violently implemented, was always the core of the relevant debates. at the background to state policies. “From a le- gal point of view, all citizens of the state had the Güven has three main arguments. Firstly, the same rights and the same obligations, but in riots not only targeted the Greek Orthodox but everyday life, state politics regarding identity re- also the Armenians, the Jews and anyone lied on whether someone belonged to the Turk- whose name did not sound Turkish enough. ish nation or not” (162). At the same time, Turki- In other words, despite the fact that the bulk fication policies also included the suppression of of the properties that were destroyed belonged educational or cultural institutions, while it occa- to Greeks, the pogrom targeted all non-Mus- sionally took the form of demographic engineer- lims equally. Secondly, and more important- ing. What needs to be stressed here is the fact ly, the attacks should not be considered as a that the main criterion of discrimination was not

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) religion but rather ethnicity. The most telling ex- (227–253). This initial euphoria would not last ample is provided by the Kurds. A report written for long, though. The mounting tension over the by the Turkish Ministry of Interior Affairs in 1925 Cyprus question changed things rapidly. British, under the striking title “Kurdistan should be run German and American diplomatic correspond- by a general governor, like the colonies” depicts ence as well as the newspapers that the author very well the detestation of the Kemalist elites has used leave no doubt that the government for the unruly, troublesome, ethnically distinct was at least aware of the activities of nationalist population, and their determination to use every associations, not to say that it facilitated their ac- means to assimilate it, which has had very poor tivity, thus preparing the ground for the extreme results as we may now assess (178–188). Sev- violence that followed. Student organisations eral incidents like the pogrom against the Jew- that had been set up in support of the Turkish ish population in Edirne and other towns in Thra- Cypriots, the most prominent being Kıbrıs Türk- ce in 1934 (188–199), the forced migration of the tür Cemiyeti (Cyprus is Turkish Association), had remaining Armenian population from Anatolia been either founded by government supporters (199–204), the drafting of non-Muslims into the or were openly supported by the state. Güven army in 1941 (204–208), and the wealth tax (varlık gives a very detailed account of this connection vergisii) in 1942 (208–226) form a sequence in the with the state or with state-controlled trade un- process of homogenisation of Turkish society. ions before the events (113–121) and also the This last measure, in particular, was imposed measures taken, including persecution, impris- almost exclusively on non-Muslims, shaking onment and trials, after the events (122–137). their trust in the Turkish state and the hope that, The fact that the violence got out of control and after the introduction of democracy, non-Mus- eventually severely harmed the prestige of the lims would be accepted as citizens with equal country internationally led the government to rights faded away (226). Güven’s assumption crackdown on the perpetrators. The witch-hunt, that these principles are, in the long run, signifi- though, against the communists who presum- cantly more important as the real causes of eth- ably organised the events in order to destabilise nically oriented violence in Turkey can be sup- society did nothing but add the absurdity. Never- ported by a quick look at the parliamentary de- theless, alongside the communists, many of the bates regarding the “Bill on Pious Foundations”, actual instigators faced trial but were eventually in February 2008, a period less promising than acquitted. Very telling was the opinion of a public 2005, when the Turkish version of this study was prosecutor in one of the trials: “Cyprus, from a first published. Here, opposition parties openly historical point of view, is a Turkish island and is claimed that any facilitation of institutional activ- at a distance of only a few miles from the moth- ity of the minorities constituted a violation of the erland. The reason for the sad events was the Lausanne treaty and was therefore high treason. hostile propaganda in Greece and Cyprus” (137).

The third argument, which is, of course, a logi- An important aspect of this study lies in the effort cal outcome of the other two, focuses on the to solidly contextualise the events. The anti-com- spontaneous character of the events. Initially, munist hysteria in the atmosphere of the Cold the Democratic Party led by Adnan Menderes War and the attachment to the US chariot and followed a much more tolerant policy towards the economic stalemate that the grandiose lib- minorities. This was due partly to the electoral eral politics of the Democratic Party had instigat- support the latter had offered but also to the lib- ed help us better comprehend the social tension eralisation of society in the multi-party context that led to the violence (289–303). The govern-

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ment wished, on the one hand, to send a strong message to the international community, espe- cially the delegations convening in London, while on the other hand, it used the opportunity to ma- nipulate public opinion by shifting the focus away Nikos Theotokas from its failed policies and towards the commu- and Nikos Kotaridis nists. Overwhelmed by the disaster, it also ex- pressed its sympathy to the victims, promised Η οικονοµία της βίας. and paid compensation, although in no case did Παραδοσιακές και νεωτερικές this actually cover the cost of the real damage. Indicative of the mentality of minorities, howev- εξουσίες στην Ελλάδα του er, is the following narration of one of the Arme- 19ου αιώνα nian victims: “The real aim of these instalments [The Economy of Violence: was their international impact. They wished to claim: ‘See, we compensated for the injustice.’ Traditional and Modern But, still, we should be satisfied, because, even Authority in Nineteenth- though it did not really mean it, the state ex- Century Greece] pressed its sorrow. People tend to expect such things; they feel better. It is a typical minority re- Athens: Vivliorama, 2006. 409 pp. action. To this very day, there was no official apol- ogy, but all pains fade away after some time” (95).

The aftermath of the September events trig- by Stathis N. Kalyvas gered a wave of migration from Istanbul. De- Yale University spite measures by both Turkey and Greece to reverse this trend, the damage the events in- curred on the confidence of the non-Muslims to their state was irreparable (263–289). The expulsion of thousands of Greek passport holders from Istanbul in 1964 only to be fol- This book blends the history of political ide- lowed by many others in 1974 following the as with historical sociology to probe the na- Turkish invasion in Cyprus were the last acts ture of power and authority in Greece during of a long process thoroughly described by this the early nineteenth century. As a prelimi- Turkish scholar. Whatever the particularities of nary remark, it would be fair to say that its the Greek experience, in 2008, it is clear that all disjointed structure does not work to its ad- Turkish citizens, both Muslim and the remain- vantage. Out of the book’s five chapters, one ing non-Muslim, are on board the same boat. is co-authored while the rest are single-au- They will stand or fall together. thored by either Nikos Theotokas (two chap- ters) or Nikos Kotaridis (one chapter). At first sight, such a distribution may appear lop- NOTE sided, as Kotaridis ends up being the author 1 Ayhan Aktar, Türk milliyetçiliği, gayri müslim- of one chapter and Theotokas of three. As it ler ve ekonomik dönüşüm, İstanbul: İletişim turns out, however, the book is indeed lop- Yayınları, 2006. sided, but in the exact opposite direction: the

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) book’s core and bulk is made up of Kotaridis’ the Empire to act quasi-autonomously stood contribution, which focuses on the complex in stark contrast to the ambition of the new process of state-building in Greece after the state to establish direct and unequivocal cen- War of Independence, during the 1830s and tral control over its periphery. Put otherwise, 1840s. A one-page introduction does not the tradition of indirect rule clashed with nov- even attempt to tie the five chapters together el ambitions of direct rule. In this context, the while a conclusion is missing (along with an judicial practice of amnesty was used by the index). All in all, the general feel is that this Greek state as a way of managing these con- book was hastily put together, a pity given flicts. After all, Greece was an ambitious, mod- the high quality of some of its chapters. This ernising state which, while stronger vis-à-vis rather unusual structure calls for a chapter- its peripheral competitors, was still not strong by-chapter discussion. enough to be able to deal with these chal- lenges effectively and unequivocally. By 1850, The first chapter, by Theotokas, endeavours however, it had succeeded in building consid- to capture how the traditional society that erable capacity and was self-confident enough was pre-revolutionary Ottoman Greece re- to limit armed challenges by peripheral actors ceived and comprehended the political mes- whose legal status, as well as popular percep- sages of the revolutionaries. The central ar- tion, was now downgraded to that of outlaws gument is that the revolution was, in fact, a and bandits. Modernisation marched on. creative combination of traditional and mod- ern ideas, especially insofar as it simultane- The third chapter, by Kotaridis, could have ously fulfilled the eschatological desire of re- easily been a self-standing book – and should ligious liberation along with the modernist have. It is both the most substantial chapter goal of national independent statehood. At in terms of size and the most comprehensive the same time, however, these two strands and ambitious in terms of substance. As a did not melt into a single overarching ideol- historical sociology of the armed uprisings ogy. This chapter implies that the revolution that took place in the periphery of the new- meant different things to different constituen- ly independent Greek state, it is a masterful cies, though the method used is primarily one analysis of the complex ways in which vari- of intellectual interpretation rather than soci- ous political and social actors dealt with the ological analysis. opportunities and constraints of this new age so as to advance their interests in an institu- The second chapter, co-authored by The- tional setting characterised by considerable otokas and Kotaridis, is practically an intro- fluidity, but also by inexorably rising state ca- duction to what follows next: it examines the pacity. About 20 armed uprisings took place practice of amnesty provision during the first during that period, in two major waves: a first years of Greek independence (1833 to 1848). in the mid-1830s, during the so-called Bavar- The focus shifts from pre-revolutionary intel- ian rule, and a second in 1847–48, during the lectual history to the sociology of armed agi- constitutional monarchy. Kotaridis shows tation in the periphery – the topic that consti- how local armed actors gradually lost their tutes the core of the book (and the third chap- autonomy of action, even when they seemed ter). The traditionalist Ottoman practice of, im- to exercise it fully through their ability to cred- plicitly if not explicitly, recognising the right of ibly challenge the state: initially, they had to a variety of armed actors in the periphery of partake in the broader, national-level strat-

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egies of opposition political networks; in the scribe. The key theme here is the effort to end, those who did not compromise ended up historicise the post-revolutionary period and as marginalised bandits. to expose the simple dichotomies that have dominated scholarly historical research and, In my view, Kotaridis’ primary contribution through it, the popular understanding of the is methodological. To begin with, the micro- period: ‘state vs. rebels’, ‘traditionalists vs. sociological analysis of the revolutionary and modernists’, ‘local society vs. centralising post-revolutionary period (and more gener- state’. The key take-away lesson is the ne- ally, of armed conflict in Greece) has been cessity of abandoning a single-minded focus neglected. Kotaridis is at his best when he on the ‘central political scene’ as the main ref- manages to puncture big holes in the pre- erence point and information source, and to vailing historical interpretations of these up- probe deeper by taking local actors and con- risings that view them as either oppositional texts seriously. movements to the Bavarian regency or sim- ple aggregations of “primitive rebels”. He also Because this chapter is a stand-alone ef- debunks the romantic image of the “starving fort, the last two chapters come a bit as a let- and abandoned heroes of the Greek Revolu- down. Authored by Theotokas, they depart tion” that emerged after the revolution only to from the main theme of the book and focus be picked up by generations of more or less on the writings of Makriyannis. In fact, the last naïve historians. Kotaridis strives to unearth chapter has already been published as a book the discourse of the actors who participated review of the pathbreaking book of Giorgos in these uprisings through several original Giannoulopoulos on the same topic.1 Overall, I documents, such as petitions and letters, and felt that these rather extraneous chapters add shows how they themselves understood their little to the book; if anything, they rather dis- identity and actions, but also how they instru- tract from its central theme. mentally manipulated them to fit evolving political contexts. He provides an extensive To conclude, a reader who decides to con- sociological analysis of the local networks centrate on the second and third chapters of armed men that were active during this will encounter a major contribution to our period and relies on an in-depth focus on a understanding of not just post-revolutionary single individual, Thanasis Malisovas, to illus- Greece but also the complex ways in which trate how these actors operated in multiple the periphery interacted with the centre in a registers at once: peaceful and violent; legal crucial historical period. In their careful at- and illegal; in opposition to and on the side of tention to the sources, their creative decon- the central state; at the local and the central struction of conventional truths, their serious scene; in Greece and in the Ottoman Empire; engagement at the local level, and their im- in the past and the present. aginative elucidation of a complex historical reality, these chapters offer a nuanced and Throughout this expansive chapter, par- intriguing, as well as a revisionist, interpreta- ticular care is given to the interpretation of tion of a crucial period in modern Greek his- sources and narratives; the goal is to fig- tory. Readers more inclined towards compar- ure out whether they tell us more about the ative approaches will also find these chapters context in which they were originally drafted to be a major source of insight into the messy, and less about the events they purport to de- yet fascinating, processes of state-building in

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Despina I. Papadimitriou NOTE Από τον λαό των 1 Review of Giorgos Giannoulopoulos, ∆ιαβά- ζοντας τον Μακρυγιάννη: Η κατασκευή ενός νοµιµοφρόνων στο έθνος µύθου από τον Βλαχογιάννη, τον Θεοτοκά, τον των εθνικοφρόνων. Η Σεφέρη και τον Λορενζάτο, Athens: Polis, 2003. συντηρητική σκέψη στην Ελλάδα 1922–1967 [From Loyalists to Nationally Minded Citizens: Conservative Thought in Greece, 1922–19677] Athens: Savvalas, 2006. 328 pp.

by Stratos N. Dordanas Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The twentieth century was undoubtedly a pe- riod of great intensity; political conflict result- ing in the formation of different ideologies cli- maxed during the two world wars. As geo- graphical borders were being re-established during this period, radical changes occurred bringing about various political power allianc- es. After the juxtaposition of the parliamentary system and fascism, the West was then con- fronted with socialism and the communist to- talitarian regimes of the post-war years. How did the Greeks, in regards to their own situa- tion, perceive all of these particular changes as they were used to form a mass ideology and to legalise political power? In other words,

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what were the conditions that led to the tran- cal application difficult. In this particular case, sition of a people who were once loyalists to the author believes it is necessary to analyse become nationally minded and, as a result, and define the terms “populism” and “populist” determine the formation and development (λαϊκιστήςς) in order to understand their multi- of Greek conservative thought? Despina Pa- formity in both the time and the space which padimitriou, in her present work, observes the they are used. She explains that “populist” course taken by right-wing politics in relation does not necessarily determine the content to international socio-political changes. Her of the politics at the time, nor the form of gov- analysis begins with the period when Greek ernment. Thus the term “populism” in mod- politics disassociated itself from the Megali ern Greece refers to a specific political real- Idea (“Great Idea”), following the Asia Minor ity and is ascribed to a range of phenomena disaster, and ends in 1967, which marks the which took place during the period between beginning of the military dictatorship. the two world wars, where it mainly repre- sented the grassroots. In fact, the term pop- Papadimitriou’s main source is the Athenian ulism represented the working classes more (daily and periodical) press during this time. than the left actually did, taking into account She discusses the nation and its people during that the left was still in its infant stage, albe- the interwar period, the formation of the nation- it an up-and-coming power. In general, the alist state during the post-war years and inves- masses constituted a new reality in Greece at tigates the conditions under which this ideology the time and tried to manoeuvre themselves was founded. She discerns the later changes within the political system, which had been es- which took place concerning Greek conserv- tablished after 1922. It represented the people ative thought, basing it on the crucial turning who felt excluded from political power at the point of the 1940s. After the presentation of her time. The bridging of the lower classes with methodology, whereby the press is used as a the ruling class in the socio-political pyramid narrative-historical source in reconstructing was achieved through the support of certain the activity and thought of the time, the book is popular demands relating mainly to the com- then divided into two sections, looking at: first- mon people which had to do with the need to ly, the anti-Venizelist movement during the in- maintain the social order. During the interwar terwar period and, secondly, the anti-commu- period, it was the lower classes in Greece that nist movement comprised of nationally minded united to form an alliance in order to protect citizens who determined conservative ideology the inviolable values of the nation and con- and who shaped both the converging and di- servative thought. As regards the Greek ver- verging views within this ideology. sion of popular conservatism, and before it be- came middle class, we can observe that it was The author begins with the fact that all politi- those citizens intent on upholding the constitu- cal systems, with the exception of theocratic tion and traditions who laid the foundations for states, need the support of the people in order the subsequent right-wing movement. It was to legitimise their power. From the start, how- these same people who identified with the ever, she points out the difficulty encountered anti-Venizelist movement both as an ideology in defining the term “populism” (λαϊκισµόςς) and and as a political stance. assigning it to any specific form of government due to the fact that a variety of definitions have This popular anti-Venizelist movement, as been attached to it, thus rendering its analyti- coined by Papadimitriou, did not in fact dif-

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teristics of the anti-communist and anti-Ven- time there was a deep-rooted division in the izelist movements, namely that, during the political world. Papadimitriou attempts to an- interwar period, communism did not pose a alyse the power that this dialogue, which took major threat to Greek society but was associ- place within the political sphere of conserva- ated with the anti-Venizelist movement and, tive thinking, had on the people. This sphere as such, was perceived as being hostile, es- contained proponents of traditional conserv- pecially during times when national matters atism and what the author refers to as “neo- were at stake. Nevertheless, one can detect, conservatives”, who supported a reformed at this early stage, all those elements which conservatism, not to mention moderates and became the cornerstone of argumentation as ardent defenders of reconciliation. The author regards the events that took place during the states that the above situation cannot be fully Civil War and in the post-Civil War state, i.e., a comprehended outside of its historical con- contradistinction was made between a com- text and adds that we must take into consid- munist and a Greek; communism was pro- eration the beginnings of “action and reac- nounced unethical and its ideology rejected. tion” which took place in the political arena In addition, the conservative press empha- at the time. “Action and reaction” correspond sised the spread of socialist theories in the to two different worlds, one which looked to- workplace, attributing this infiltration to the wards the future and envisaged it through weakness of the middle-class parties to al- its “right-wing sensitivity”, while the other leviate economic and social hardship by fail- was obsessed with the polarised past. These ing to help those who had been hit hardest. two worlds reached their zenith in 1936 and Furthermore, the conservative press states disappeared with the establishment of the that the middle-class parties had to first iden- Metaxas dictatorship, after which followed a tify and then stop the bleeding wounds from radical realignment caused by the Occupation which the ‘germs’ of subversion and social and the Civil War. anarchy spread. It is indeed a fact that the transition from the It is at this point that the author presents the traumatic years of the National Schism to the first attempts that were made to eradicate the Fourth of August regime brought to the fore- schism between the anti- and pro-Venizelist front the concept of unity as simple historical movements for the sake of unifying the na- documentation, unlike in other periods where tion. Both those within the conservative politi- ‘unification’ still meant an open wound that had cal realm as well as those who were outside not yet healed. On the other hand, the conserv- it engaged in these attempts; these significant ative values of nation–religion–family took on factions being made up of loyalists and patri- a new meaning during the Metaxas regime ots whose supporters derived from the mid- which saw a need to protect the nation from its dle classes. The need for unification stemmed internal enemies. This was when the commu- from the fear of social upheaval and gave rise nists first embodied hostility; they were per- to national-mindedness in the interwar peri- ceived as a threat to anything that was Greek, od, which did not divide the community but as enemies of Greek tradition, the nation and went beyond party politics and strived to pro- its virtues. At this same period, the author tect the nation itself. This need for unification highlights the formation of a political ideology was even proposed before the crucial refer- upon which the concept of national-minded- endum of 1935 over the monarchy, at which ness was built as a form of political exclusion,

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The 1940s undoubtedly witnessed a turn- During the first post-war decade, the right’s ing point as the interwar concept of nation- identity was cohesive, but it also interchanged al-mindedness was now redefined as it was with the concept of national-mindedness, transferred into the national and international and it expressed itself primarily through the scenes. Papadimitriou, first, investigates this Greek Rally party (Ελληνικός Συναγερµός, ES). phenomenon in relation to the American re- In spite of different proposals being put for- ality during the Cold War, conveying the fac- ward and the political games being played tors of anti-communist sentiment, which out within the parties themselves, the right were fuelled by internal politics and based on came together as a whole to oppose their fear, insecurity and the feeling that commu- common enemy, communism. This union of nist totalitarian regimes represented a per- the right was encouraged further by the de- petual threat and growing danger for West- mocracy–monarchy dilemma. The right, as ern civilisation. If, on the one hand, America a consequence, used anti-communist rhet- now represented the protector of the values oric in order to obstruct the anticipated re- of the free world in opposition to totalitarian- turn of the communist forces, which would ism (as first declared in the Truman Doctrine), endanger the integrity of the nation. The Greece, where European civilisation had been United Democratic Left (Ενιαία ∆ηµοκρατική founded, was the first representative example Αριστερά, EDA) was one such target. Papa- of a conflict between these two ideologies in gos was a politician who went beyond party which the Communist Party of Greece sought politics, who sought the revival of political life a direct alliance with the Soviet Union. and who agreed to forget the past. He was a visionary who believed in a better future and, One of the author’s most interesting points in this respect, projected himself as a social- refers to the antinomy of nationalism and es- ist; but he was first and foremost a nationally pecially that of the double identity between minded right-winger, who advocated secu- the nationalist and the nationally minded, the rity and protection against those who were common denominator of both being the na- the enemies of the state and were directed tion. This antinomy was formed during the by foreign powers. The National Radical Un- Civil War and post-Civil War years. During ion (Εθνική Ριζοσπαστική Ένωσις, ERE), set the Civil War, the concept of an enemy who up by Constantine Karamanlis, also adopted was motivated by foreign powers and the the same characteristics, projecting a more concept of the “other” were bridged in part; grassroots image of the right and, as a con- the two versions (nationalism and national- sequence, its more popular origins. Another mindedness), especially during the war, re- common area where the right-wing parties ferred to the whole nation through the use drew their anti-communist slogans from dur- of racial-ethnic terms. After the end of the ing the 1950s and 1960s was the past, in par- war, nationalism was gradually incorporated ticular the period during the German Occupa- into national-mindedness, the latter being in- tion and the ‘Bandit War’ (συµµοριτοπόλεµο). scribed in the collective consciousness as a In this political climate, George Papandreou’s stable and secure system for the nation as a Centre Union (Ένωσις Κέντρου, EK) chose to

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keep its distance from both the right and the Centre Union, that formed a contrast within communists, choosing instead to interpret the nationalist camp, which Papadimitriou the past in its own way. believes enabled the right to reconcile itself with its past and to find its identity, an iden- The 1956 elections and the collaboration of tity that was based on the victories of the Civil George Papandreou’s party with the EDA, in War and the subsequent building of a nation- the Democratic Union (∆ηµοκρατική Ένωσιςς), ally minded state, not to mention the legacy of played a determining factor in the way the right interwar Greek conservatism. viewed him. The right-wing press perceived it as a rebuilding of the communist bloc within In an addendum, the author goes beyond the Greece and its invasion of Greece’s public life. book’s timeframe, going beyond 1967 so as In other words, there was a showdown, which to investigate the survival of right-wing ide- was based on the political experiences of the ology and national-mindedness in general, Civil War, where the nation as one had been as well as its breaking away from those in- confronted by ‘a gang of σλαβόδουλωνν [Slavic volved in the 21 April 1967 coup. She shows slaves] and insurgents’. that the two camps clashed, with the Colonels distancing themselves from the ethics of tra- Therefore, there was a revival of Civil War ditional politics by going beyond party politics. phraseology, and, as a consequence, the vot- The junta also distanced itself from the notion ers were in a quandary about who to sup- of ‘memory’, which had been an integral part port. On the one hand, the ERE represented of the political life of nationally minded sup- the only patriotic and moral party which re- porters. The Colonels justified the coup sim- mained firm in its beliefs while, on the oth- ply as being “a revolution which saved the na- er hand, there was the Democratic Union, a tion”, thus rendering it legal. political coalition whose leaders were will- ing to sacrifice the nation to the petty inter- In conclusion, Papadimitriou’s book is a work ests of party politics by breaking away from that one can refer to in order to understand the hitherto staunch nationally minded front. the boundaries within which Greek conserv- Later, the right-wing movement continued to atism was formed and developed during the criticise the Centre Union on two distinct ar- greater part of the twentieth century. In ad- eas: one was their tolerance of the EDA and dition, it represents a comprehensive study the other was its surreptitious involvement which conveys a more general interpretation in communist activity which stood in contrast of the dramatic events that marked modern to the professed national-mindedness they Greek history. claimed to support. The EDA, on the other hand, was seen by its opponents as moving steadily beyond the national framework while secretly preparing itself for a ‘fourth round’ in the fight between revolutionary commu- nism and the legitimate state. For the right, there were no shades of grey; there were only two ‘worlds’. One was the world of the patriotic forces and the other was that of trai- tors. It was thus another nationalist party, the

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equated the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, assumed that Soviet society (and the socie- ties in the socialist countries of Eastern Eu- rope) was in fact under the complete control Jerzy W. Borejsza and of the state and the party, maintained that the Klaus Ziemer (eds) system was based exclusively on terror and propaganda and neglected the tremendous Totalitarian and social changes that took place in them. In the Authoritarian Regimes 1990s the term was reintroduced, especially in political science, and the present volume in Europe. Legacies and gives us the chance to once again discuss its Lessons from the heuristic value. The volume is based on pa- Twentieth Century pers presented to a conference held in Sep- tember 2000 in Warsaw, organised by the In- New York and Oxford: Berghahn, stitute of History of the Polish Academy of 2006, 607 pp. Sciences and the German Historical Institute, Warsaw. The volume is indeed impressive because of its scope: scholars from several European countries examine the authoritar- by Polymeris Voglis ian and totalitarian regimes in a number of countries (such as, among others, Austria, University of Thessaly Croatia, Germany, Greece, Lithuania, Roma- nia, Poland and the Soviet Union), with a view to analysing their historiographies, state poli- cies, legal systems and politics of memory.

In 1956, Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezin- The very term “totalitarianism” originates ski published their influential study Totali- from the inter-war period when the Ital- tarian Dictatorship and Autocracy. It was an ian Fascist, Soviet and, later, Nazi regimes attempt to compare Nazi Germany and the captured the attention of many European Soviet Union as examples of totalitarian po- scholars. Marek Kornat, in his informative litical systems. Totalitarianism, according to chapter, examines the discussions among Friedrich and Brzezinski, was characterised Polish lawyers and sociologists regarding by an official ideology, the absence of parlia- what they called “totalism”. In the various mentarism, one-party rule, police terror, par- concepts they employed in order to describe ty control of the armed forces and the econo- the new forms of political power (such as the my, as well as a monopoly of the mass me- monopolistic state or the bureaucratic-plebi- dia. This study and others that appeared in the scitary state) the state played a prominent 1950s, such as Hanna Arendt’s The Origins of role. They saw an anti-liberal revolution in Totalitarianism (1951), provided a theoretical which the state takes control of all the are- framework for the use of the term “totalitari- as of human life, reducing society to an at- anism” as it was embedded in the ideologi- omised and amorphous mass. Although, as cal context of the Cold War. The term “totali- Klaus Ziemer reminds us in his chapter, the tarianism” was heavily criticised because it first to use the term was Giovanni Amendola

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in 1923 to criticise the Italian Fascist Party, it man sees the history of Croatia as a succes- is most commonly associated with Mussolini, sion of totalitarian and/or authoritarian re- who in 1925 referred to the stato totalitario in gimes. Eckhard Jesse maintains that both an often-quoted phrase: “Everything for the Nazi Germany and the German Democratic state, nothing external to the state, nothing Republic (GDR) committed crimes (!) and, against the state.” It is necessary to bear in therefore, “a comparison of the crimes of the mind that Mussolini described the totalitarian Third Reich and of those of the GDR needs to state as a goal, not as an accomplishment, of be legitimate” (456). Marc Lazar extends the the Fascists. On the other hand, Friedrich and definition of totalitarianism in order to include Brzezinski believed the totalitarian state was not just states but also movements. He uses a fact in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. as an example of a totalitarian movement So the question is whether there were totali- the French Communist Party because of the tarian states in twentieth-century Europe? problematic relations it had with liberal de- Jerzy Borejsza, in his introduction, outlines mocracy and its strong anti-capitalism. He some similarities between Italian Fascism, classifies French communism as a case of Nazism and Stalinism, such as terror, prop- “failed totalitarianism” which foundered due aganda, utopian ideology and mass support. to the reaction of anti-communism and the Borejsza’s approach is differentiated from resistance of the democratic system. older conceptualisations of totalitarianism in a number of ways. Following more recent The authors who avoid the term totalitari- attempts of comparison between Nazi Ger- anism or who use it critically provide more many and the Stalinist Soviet Union,1 he in- nuanced analyses. Marcello Flores points corporates in his analysis, among others, the out that “totalitarianism” as a paradigm (ac- historicisation of the Soviet regime, the differ- cording to Ernst Nolte) failed to move beyond ences between ideologies and regimes even the juxtaposition of historical aspects of Nazi when the similarities seem evident (as in the Germany and the Soviet Union and, thus, ren- case of terror) and the reactions of society. dered a genuine comparison difficult. More- This is not to say that a comparison cannot be over, in Nazi Germany state policies were fruitful, and Dietrich Beyrau’s chapter on the very coherent, whereas the Soviet Union was intellectual professions under Stalinism and marked by changes and developments. It is Nazism is a case in point. The question con- not a coincidence that the “totalitarian” char- cerns the term “totalitarianism” as a theoret- acter of the Soviet Union is generally dis- ical framework for comparison. While Bore- cussed with reference to Stalin’s rule and jsza finds that its “usefulness is limited” (5), less to that of Khrushchev or Brezhnev. The some authors of the present volume do not socialist countries were not “frozen” and the seem to agree with him. However, they do not developments or changes in them through share a common definition of what a totalitar- the decades are highlighted in the chapters by ian state is, at times using the terms totali- Christoph Boyer and Andrzej Friszke. Boyer tarianism and authoritarianism interchange- demonstrates the ability of socialist regimes ably. Jože Pirjevec, in his chapter, analyses to overcome the challenge of inherent insta- the pre-war dictatorship of King Alexander of bility through adjustments and control ar- Yugoslavia, the Ustaše regime of Ante Pavelić rangements. He focuses on the GDR in the and Tito’s regime as three experiments in to- 1960s and 1970s and argues that economic talitarianism. In a similar vein, Andrea Feld- reforms in combination with social policy and

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tionalism. The revival of nationalism in many clude memory because the political uses of former socialist countries is a widespread the past provide “frames” for the understand- phenomenon. Szymon Rudnicki’s essay con- ing of historical experience. While many es- cerns right-wing radicalism in contemporary says of the volume point in that direction, a Poland, where a number of extreme rightist lot more work needs to be done. organisations, mainstream political parties and Catholic Church circles have put forward an agenda that combines nationalism, Ca- tholicism, anti-communism, traditionalism and anti-Semitism. Perhaps the country with NOTES the most difficult past in present-day Europe 1 Such as Ian Kershaw and Moshe Levin (eds), is, after Germany, Russia. This is mirrored, Stalinism and Nazism. Dictatorships in Com- for instance, in the contradictory ways that parison, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. history schoolbooks have dealt with Stalin’s rule, examined by Arkady Tsfasman. Even more controversial is the way that contem- porary Russia deals with the legacy of the Soviet Union. As Alexei Miller writes in his chapter, those responsible for committing crimes under the communist regime in the Soviet Union were not punished: the commu- nist past was silenced, while Russian govern- ments have refused to take responsibility for the actions either against the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union or against other countries (Hungary, Poland and the former Czechoslovakia).

To return to the initial question, is it use- ful to use the term “totalitarianism” in order to analyse and compare a variety of political systems in twentieth-century Europe? Jens Petersen, in his contribution to the volume, argues that the anti-fascist ideology in post- war Italy prevented the spread of the concept of totalitarianism linked to an interpretation of communism. “Totalitarianism” was an ideological weapon, rather than a theoreti- cal framework, in the various battles fought during the Cold War. If the history of the con- cept of totalitarianism is an essential part of the cultural history of the Cold War, then per- haps we should start our discussion based on that history, a history that should also in-

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In comparison with the rest of Europe, collabo- ration has not been a favourite subject of Greek historians. For decades, the historical narra- tive about the Nazi occupation and the Civil Iakovos D. Michailidis, Elias War was politically biased. The victors of the Nicolakopoulos, Hagen Fleischer Civil War sought to silence, on the one hand, (eds) the memory of the Resistance, because it was associated with the Left and, on the other, the «Εχθρός» εντός των τειχών. fact that many right-wing groups and individu- als collaborated with the Axis. In this narrative, Όψεις του ∆ωσιλογισµού which was dominant until 1974, the fact that στην Ελλάδα της Κατοχής different people for entirely different reasons [“Enemy” within the Gates. ‘collaborated’ with the occupation authorities was repressed. When a reference was neces- Aspects of Collaboration in sary, collaboration was analysed mainly as an Greece during the German outcome of the violent methods of EAM/ELAS, Occupation] and the Security Battalions were presented as the forces that prevented the Greek commu- Athens: Ellinika Grammata, nists from seizing power. A scientific historical 2006. 387 pp. approach of the phenomenon of collaboration in wartime Greece was postponed for many years. As the editors of the “Enemy” within the Gates point out in their introduction, the idea of Stratos N. Dordanas a nationwide resistance, which was set forth in 1981, made matters even more complicated. Έλληνες εναντίον Ελλήνων. Both narratives restricted systematic histori- cal research and excluded one of the ‘darkest Ο κόσµος των Ταγµάτων sides’ of modern Greek history. Ασφαλείας στην κατοχική Θεσσαλονίκη 1941–1944 Even in the recent past, the efficient and thor- ough research of collaboration was a project [Greeks against Greeks. that very few historians decided to trail. John The Security Battalions in L. Hondros,1 Hagen Fleischer,2 and Mark Ma- Thessaloniki, 1941–1944] zower3 were some of the historians who, in a way, initiated the discussion. A younger gen- Thessaloniki: Epikentro, 2006. eration of historians and political scientists 529 pp. followed, trying to expand this in many ways repressed and thus unknown side of the 1940s. Both books examine certain aspects of ideological, political and military collabo- by Eleni Paschaloudi ration in Greece during the Axis occupation. The articles published in the volume “Enemy” University of Macedonia within the Gates were first presented to a con- ference organised in June 2004 on Samoth-

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raki, the fifth annual conference organised by ments, the local dimensions and collabora- the Civil War Study Group since 2000. tion in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, which was under Bulgarian rule. The second chap- The volume is composed of four chapters and ter consists of three contributions that shed twenty articles selected from the more than 30 light on the institutional and financial activities papers presented to the conference. The first of the wartime Greek governments. Nikos chapter, entitled “European Experience and Papanastasiou focuses on the way that the Methodological Considerations”, serves as a Tsolakoglou government tried to break away starting point for the study of collaboration in from the legacy of the Metaxas’ regime. Nazi-occupied Europe. First, it raises certain Nikos Zaikos examines the mechanisms methodological issues. Stathis Kalyvas, in his used by the Axis powers to control wartime contribution, suggests that the comparative governments, while Christos Nikas focuses approach is the most appropriate to examine on the financial policy of the latter. collaboration at both the micro and macro so- cial levels. Second, in this chapter collaboration Among the volume’s most intriguing pa- in Greece is examined in comparison with the pers are the ones attempting an interpreta- rest of Europe and the Balkans. Mark Mazower tion of the motives that led separate people provides an interpretation of the collaborators’ or groups to collaborate with the ‘enemy’. motives throughout Europe, showing that col- Katerina Tsekou’s study of the Armenian laboration was very often enhanced by strong community of Kavala and Eleftheria Man- feelings of anti-communism and nationalism. ta’s of the Chams in Western Greece show While Vemund Aarbake focuses on Norway, that for ethnic minorities collaboration with the rest of the articles of this chapter refer to the Axis was a way to protect their national the Balkans. Konstantinos Katsanos analyses identity (in the case of the former) or to pur- the case of Yugoslavia, arguing that political sue irredentist claims (in the case of the lat- life after the Second World War was marked ter). Tassos Hadjianastasiou describes how by the antagonism between former partici- certain communities of Slav Macedonians in pants in the resistance groups and erstwhile Thrace saw the Bulgarian occupation as a lib- collaborators. Georgia Kretsi, in a scrupulous erating process. On the other hand, collabora- analysis, reveals how collaboration was asso- tion sometimes had more personal motives, ciated with class differences in post-war Alba- such as represented by the case of the Greek nia in order to establish a new political system. communities in north Africa, which, accord- In this case, collaboration was used to empha- ing to Alexandros Dagkas, was motivated by sise the moral superiority of the communist financial considerations. Nevertheless, po- government as opposed to the corruption of litical motives also played a significant role. the bourgeoisie. Finally, Kostas Gemenis fo- Vaios Kalogrias, in his contribution, discuss- cuses on the motives of the collaborators in es the case of Athanasios Chrysochoou, In- Greece. The main point of his analysis is that spector-General of the Region of Macedonia, collaboration of ethnic groups with the Occu- who believed that establishing links with the pation authorities was a way of gaining power Axis would be the best way of preventing the over the Greek state. communists from seizing power after the war. In the same line of argumentation, Stra- The remaining three chapters of the volume tos Dordanas examines the case of Xeno- concern aspects of the wartime govern- fon Yosmas from Thessaloniki, who devoted

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) himself to the anti-communist cause. In 1944, fused to accept that ELAS had engaged in re- he followed the retreating German Army, tak- sistance activity, claiming rather that it did not ing refuge in Germany, where he remained aim at the liberation of Greece but the forma- until 1947 in order to avoid facing Greek jus- tion of a communist state. tice. Even though he was convicted and sen- tenced to death, he was never executed. He The collective memory of collaboration and continued his anti-communist activities, sup- resistance in Greece was the direct result porting right-wing paramilitary groups until of the Civil War that followed the liberation the 1960s, and was involved in the assassina- of the country. It was not only due to the fact tion, in 1963, of Gregoris Lambrakis, a Greek that the narrative of the victors prevailed after Member of Parliament. the end of the Civil War, but mainly because the divisions it produced were so intense that Other papers bring forward the question of they led to the emergence of very strong po- how post-war justice dealt with collabora- litical identities. These identities perpetuated, tion. Vassilis Ridjaleos and Kyriakos Lykouri- grew stronger and, thus, influenced any re- nos present the way collaborators were construction of the past. treated in the courts of Drama and Kavala respectively. Both cases allow us to draw the After 1949 the two sides that fought in the Civil conclusion that most of the people who had War sought to return to some kind of normal- collaborated with the Bulgarians were not put ity, more so the victors. Accordingly, their nar- on trial because of the Civil War that followed ratives on the 1940s were based on the unify- the Occupation. Rather, the majority ‘purified’ ing rather than on the divisive elements of the themselves by gradually joining the National otherwise controversial decade. Right-wing Army and assisting in the defeat of the com- parties and politicians found in former collab- munists in the Civil War. orators a very strong ally against the Left. In order to accomplish this alliance, they provid- Last but not least, some of the contribu- ed shelter for many collaborators but refused tions focus on memory issues, especially in to talk about collaboration in public. As Tassos the way that collaboration and collaborators Kostopoulos has shown, collaboration in the were ‘engraved’ in collective and individual past was incompatible with “national minded- memory. In their articles, Nikos Karagianna- ness”.4 In the official discourse of the 1950s and kidis presents his research on the collective 1960s, collaboration, even if it was triggered by memory of collaboration in Kavala while Mar- anti-communism, was not something of which ia Bontila shows how collaboration was rep- any political party could be proud. In the same resented in history and literature in post-war way, the Left chose to commemorate resist- Greece. Very interesting is the contribution of ance as its founding myth. Even though in pub- Vangelis Tzoukas, who focuses on the hostil- lic discourse the Left very often used collabo- ity between ELAS and EDES. He claims that ration with a view to undermining the “national the hostility and distrust between the mem- mindedness” of the Right, resistance remained bers of the two resistance groups continued the main reference in the 1940s. Resistance in after 1944 and was perpetuated for many the discourse of the Left was the struggle of decades. Actually, this hostility was a result the whole nation, excepting a handful of do- of the civil strife during the Occupation. For mestic traitors who collaborated with the Axis, many years, former EDES participants re- against foreign enemies.

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The book Greeks against Greeks is a welcome the Germans were aware. Under these cir- contribution to the flourishing discussion on cumstances, political association with the the 1940s which, during the last decade, has Germans became impossible. On the other challenged the established narratives that for hand, the Germans warmly welcomed of- many years haunted Greek historians. “Ene- fers of military collaboration. The product of my” within the Gates and other recently pub- this partnership was the establishment of the lished books5 have focused mainly on rural Security Battalions in Athens and Thessaloni- Greece, leaving the issue of collaboration in ki in 1943. Nevertheless, the northern Greek urban centres almost untouched. Dordanas, case, as Dordanas points out, contains a pe- in his study, shows that the situation was al- culiarity. There, the Battalions were formed together different in the cities. His material almost spontaneously, without an official de- derives from a very important but yet under- cree and before those in Athens, by people estimated archive: that of the Special Court who believed communism was more dan- for Collaborators established in Thessaloniki gerous than the Axis Occupation. Moreover, in 1945 to try individuals accused of collab- these paramilitary units did not have any con- oration with the Occupation authorities. The nection with the Greek authorities; they were various cases represent different aspects of directly controlled and armed by the German collaboration, pointing to the multiplicity of authorities in Thessaloniki. the reasons and the motives that drove peo- ple to assist the Germans. In other words, The people who joined these military units Greeks against Greeks enriches our knowl- were of different social, economic and edu- edge about the particular subject which, as cational backgrounds and comprised political mentioned above, was shrouded in silence groups located in the city as well as military for many years. groups coming from the rural areas. Others identified ideologically with the Germans or The book is divided into ten chapters that were anti-communists. Some were deter- present the ideological, political and mili- mined to prevent ELAS from taking over tary activities of the Thessalonikian collab- their villages while others took advantage orators. The part dealing with the ideologi- of the situation in order to survive, become cal background to collaboration shows that rich or take revenge on their personal en- Greek Nazi sympathisers made a consider- emies. Military collaboration mushroomed able effort to support the Nazi cause politi- in Macedonia especially from 1943. The Se- cally, as the cases of prominent collabora- curity Battalions were supported mainly by tors Georgios Poulos, Georgios Spyridis and refugees from Asia Minor, Bulgaria and Yu- Grigorios Pazionis and the EEE (National Un- goslavia. Ex-officers with a liberal political ion of Greece) clearly demonstrate. National- background, university professors, old politi- ist ideas were not new to Thessaloniki; they cians and crooks came together in the Secu- had already appeared in 1933 and the Axis rity Battalions. These individuals did not have Occupation gave them the opportunity to the same origins and certainly not the same thrive. Hatred and fear of communism mo- end. While different people in different plac- tivated the Nazi sympathisers into pursuing es chose for a variety of reasons to establish political links with the Germans. Their efforts, political or military links with the occupation however, failed because they had very little authorities in Greece, they were all certainly support among the populace, a fact which kept united under German orders. What is re-

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) ally astonishing about their military activities, NOTES described wonderfully in the book, is that they 1 John Louis Hondros, Occupation and Resist- very soon managed to marginalise the Greek ance. The Greek Agony 1941–44, New York: authorities in Thessaloniki. The chief of po- Pella, 1983. lice seemed unable to curtail their activity and was quite intimidated by their violent meth- 2 Hagen Fleischer, Στέµµα και Σβάστικα. Η Ελλά- ods. Reading the reports of their actions, one δα της Κατοχής και της Αντίστασης. 1941–1944, gets the impression that the Security Battal- 2 vols, Athens: Papazisis, 1995. ions reigned over the city in 1944. 3 Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece. The Ex- perience of Occupation 1941–44, New Haven: It is very obvious in both of the books that no Yale UP, 1993. single analysis on collaboration is possible. 4 Τassos Kostopoulos, Η αυτολογοκριµένη µνή- Until very recently this controversial aspect µη. Τα Τάγµατα Ασφαλείας και η µεταπολεµική of the 1940s had not been sufficiently studied. εθνικοφροσύνη, Athens: Filistor, 2005. It was mainly in the last decade that the dis- cussion about the 1940s became extremely 5 Nikos Marantzidis, Yasasin Millet, Ζήτω το vivid and fertile. As Henry Rousso points out, έθνος. Προσφυγιά, Κατοχή και Εµφύλιος: Εθνο- “when the time is right an era of the past may τική ταυτότητα και πολιτική συµπεριφορά στους serve as a screen on which new generations τουρκόφωνους ελληνορθόδοξους του δυτικού can project their contradictions, controversies, Πόντου, Heraklio: Crete UP, 2001; Tassos and conflicts in objectified form”.6 Occupation, Hadjianastasiou, Αντάρτες και καπετάνιοι. Η the Resistance and the Civil War in Greece Εθνική Αντίσταση κατά της βουλγαρικής κατο- were not subjects of historical research for χής της Ανατολικής Μακεδονίας και της Θράκης many decades. Because they were alive in 1942–1944, Thessaloniki: Kuriakidis, 2003; the collective and individual memory, they Nikos Marantzidis (ed.), Οι άλλοι καπετάνιοι. served as a basis for the construction of po- Αντικοµµουνιστές ένοπλοι στα χρόνια της Κατο- litical identities and thus, in a way, perpetuat- χής και του Εµφυλίου, Athens: Hestia, 2005. ed the passions, divisions and animosity that 6 Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome. His- they had initially caused. Collaboration was tory and Memory in France since 1944, transl. the most ‘suppressed’ aspect of the 1940s. Arthur Goldhamer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard These books, products of a new generation of UP, 1991. historians who have not hesitated to broach such a controversial and fragile subject, prove that Greek society and its academic commu- nity are now able to face some of these is- sues. The intense discussion that followed the publication of the two books confirms Rous- so’s words: the time is right and the 1940s reflect the controversies, contradictions and conflicts of a new generation, be it inside or outside academia, in an objectified form. The next step will be to break that screen . . .

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madness, loss of emotional control, or sim- ple-minded and short-sighted tacticall deci- sions. Kalyvas, rather, puts forth the theory that civil war violence is a well thought-out, Stathis Kalyvas planned, calculated and strategicc move that seeks to establish long-term military control The Logic of Violence in over populations and areas. Moreover, Kaly- Civil War vas claims that violence is not necessarily the result of ideological convictions, but rather an New York: Cambridge University opportunistic act that seeks to maximise the Press, 2006. 508 pp. putative results of the civil war. As he notes in the blurb, “Civil war offers irresistible op- portunities to those who are not naturally bloodthirsty and abhor direct involvement in by Neni Panourgia violence,” therefore setting forth from the be- Columbia University ginning the highly contentious and ultimately unconvincing argument, repeated throughout the book, that civil war and attendant violence are not the result of deep ideological cleav- ages between the warring parties, but rather opportunistic acts. This contention that there Stathis Kalyvas has plotted and undertaken is no real ideological component in civil war is a very ambitious project and The Logic of Vi- a running theme throughout Kalyvas’s work olence in Civil Warr is the latest but not last on this subject matter. word on it, as Kalyvas himself announces (290, n. 46). The book is divided into eleven The specific argument that insurgency is er- chapters, with an introduction and a very im- roneously attributed to communist ideology pressive bibliography, which will be a valua- was made primarily within military and pol- ble resource to anyone who engages with this icy circles in the 1970s, during the years of subject matter. The bibliography is broken up the Vietnam War, the African decolonisation into segments on primary and secondary movement, and the movements for democ- sources; general theory; Greek-only sources; ratisation in Latin America.1 It was a coun- unpublished memoirs; and student research terintuitive argument and against the grain papers (some of them by students at the Uni- not only of the position taken by academics versity of Athens, some at the University of at the time, but also by the revolutionaries Chicago, and some at New York University), themselves, by professional analysts, policy although it is not clear in the book how these makers, and the legacy of the Truman Doc- student papers have been utilised. trine. And it was an argument that sought to prove that the importance of communist ide- Kalyvas’s project concerns itself with civil war ology had been inflated by communists them- as a form of war, globally and across time, selves without having any real or objective and, as best as it can be summed up, argues impact on the ground. Kalyvas’s argument is against prevailing theories which explain vio- not much different from this, namely that civil lence in the context of civil war as the result of war is primarily carried out by individuals who

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) find opportunities (primarily for survival and political affiliation, etc.) and temporal dimen- personal advancement) in the context of the sions are given code names (such as t1, t2, civil war, but who do not necessarily share etc.): all in all, a language that quantifies (and the ideological positions of the leaders. thus perhaps disqualifies) an unquantifiable object of study. Furthermore, Kalyvas makes an argument for the specificity of violence in civil war, dis- Perhaps because this quantifying language cussing at length the various theories about and objectified method are indeed unyield- the particular barbarism of civil war but with- ing, Kalyvas feels compelled to turn to what out making it clear in the end whether he ac- he calls a “grass-roots” strategy (247), known tually agrees with the position that violence in in anthropology as ethnographic fieldwork, in civil war is exceptionally brutal or not. In or- order to be able to test the theory of violence der to bring out such specificities of violence and the importance of denunciation as a tool in the context of civil war, Kalyvas has sought in the process. Kalyvas spent the latter part to separate civil war qua war from its attend- of January 1997 and the summers of 1997, ant violence qua violence, attempting to show 1998, 1999 and 2000 doing research in 136 that there is indeed validity in the commonly villages in the Argolid plain in the Pelopon- made claim that the violence of civil wars is nese, and in the region of Almopia, in the greater than the violence deployed in inter- Prefecture of Pella in the northern Greek pe- state wars, so much so that one of the main riphery of Central Macedonia. It is not entire- points of the book is that what sets “civil wars ly clear how much time Kalyvas was able to apart from interstate ones with respect to vi- spend in each of the villages, since he never olence [is their] barbarism and intimacy” (11). actually discloses this information, but if we Of course, the legitimate question here is how assume that he spent the entirety of each can the violence allegedly intrinsic to civil war, summer doing fieldwork, it would mean that any civil war, be considered more barbaric he has spent twelve months in the 136 vil- than the violence unleashed upon Hiroshima lages, equalling roughly less than two days and Nagasaki, for instance, or the bombard- in each, figuring in time for travel and set- ment of Dresden, or the Holocaust, or the vio- ting-up, making acquaintances, explaining lence deployed by the British Empire in India, the project, etc. This would hardly constitute South Africa or Kenya, or French violence in enough time to engage in actual ethnographic Algeria, or American violence in My Lai? fieldwork but enough to show that the simi- larities between the two areas are not great Through all this, Kalyvas attempts to con- (despite his claim to the opposite [310]) and struct a theory of violence in civil war based that the terms of comparison are seriously on macro- and micro-perspectives and ap- compromised from the beginning: despite proaches. His macro-perspectives include their similarities in size and ecological range, the employment of extremely convoluted and the two areas are fundamentally different as dense mathematical models and graphs ac- sociological objects. companied by a language that is not very use- ful outside the restricted disciplinary bounda- The Argolid is an area with a very high rate ries of political science. Villages are catego- of right-wing politics (by Kalyvas’s own ac- rised into five zones according to a number count, but also according to the ethnographic of parameters (elevation, level of violence, and demographic record), ethnically largely

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homogeneous (the great majority of the in- on one simple principle: by spending long habitants are Arvanites, Albanian-speaking and intimate time in situ, the anthropologist Greeks who settled in the area in the late has the opportunity to come into very close fourteenth century), and a place that played a contact with the people who will help to give major role during the Greek War of Independ- texture to the concerns and questions s/he is ence of 1821–1829, serving as the seat of the researching, so that, over the course of time first government after the end of that war. In and in its depth, the inconsistencies and para- this respect, the Argolid is at the heart of the doxes of experience will become discernible. statist project of modern Greece. On the oth- In other words, by spending a lot of uninter- er hand, Almopia, incorporated into the Greek rupted time in the field, the anthropologist state in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars of is able to observe the ways in which initial 1912–1913, was, during the period under con- statements made by interlocutors develop sideration (1940–1949), largely inhabited by and morph over time. This does not suggest refugees from Asia Minor, as a result of the that people lie to ethnographers (necessar- Exchange of Populations between Greece and ily, although even that happens occasionally), Turkey after the Treaty of Lausanne, and had but rather that when given the opportunity a high degree of ethnic, linguistic and politi- to think about their initial responses people cal differentiation (the old inhabitants spoke will produce more nuanced and refined com- Slav-Macedonian, compared to the Greek, mentaries and accounts. And every anthro- Turkish and Pontic of the refugees) with a pologist worth his or her Boas knows that population that was politically mixed with material and information obtained post fac- cleavages that did not run predictably along tum, especially 40 or 50 years later, consti- linguistic lines (again, according to Kalyvas). tute a present-day commentary on the fact The Almopia example should probably be jet- (at best) or a rewriting of history (at worst) tisoned from this study, especially since Ka- if it is not contextualised with material syn- lyvas states that he was not able to “conduct chronic to the fact. a study of depth similar to that of the Argol- id” (although he claims that even through this Therefore, what Kalyvas has managed to limited encounter he “was able to trace the collect, almost 60 years later, are snippets of main patterns of control and violence” [310]), oral life histories, and he most certainly has and since the discussion on the Almopian ex- not managed to “reconstruct the process of ample exhausts itself in a few paragraphs. civil war in each village” as he claims, simply Kalyvas has tried to mitigate this by using because such a reconstruction is impossible archival work in the process of trying to ar- and, less simply, because claims to such re- ticulate what he refers to throughout as “the construction are suspect because they force theory”, a gesture that further compromises interpretation. Refracted through time and his claim that his theory is sound and valid the faltering of memory, invaluable though precisely because of his engagement with they are as testimonies of how their authors ethnographic fieldwork. feel the impact of the past, these are by no means collected “nuanced accounts” pro- Let me speak as an anthropologist for a mo- duced when “researchers . . . conduct lengthy ment: ethnographic fieldwork is a method de- fieldwork in war zones – as opposed to in- veloped within anthropology; it is indeed the terviewing victims and government officials” sine qua non of the discipline, and it is based (104) which are the parameters that Kalyvas

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http://epublishing.ekt.gr | e-Publisher: EKT | Downloaded at 06/10/2021 14:30:38 | HISTOREIN VOLUME 8 (2008) himself has set as necessary for the produc- have been any other than the Nazis. And this tion of “good theory” in his 2001 article “‘New’ creates problems, not necessarily (or sin- and ‘Old’ Civil Wars: A Valid Distinction?” gularly) ideological or political but primarily (118).2 His fieldwork was neither lengthy conceptual and epistemological in character. nor in a war zone, and his interviews were Kalyvas terms the Germans/collaborators most certainly conducted primarily with vic- as “incumbents” and the resistance as “in- tims and old officials. Certainly the conceptu- surgents” (occasionally, also, rebels). This alisation and definition of the victim is highly formulation, however, raises in unequivocal contentious in this context as it slips between terms the question of the legitimacy of sover- ideological camps and is dependent on the fi- eignty and authority. Can an occupying force nal outcome of the war. (the Nazis, in this case) be a legitimate au- thority? Or, maybe, Kalyvas means the Greek Early on in the book, Kalyvas defines his government of the time, a government that terms, especially the term “civil war” that has was collaborating with the Nazis. But could set the whole project in motion. “Civil war is such a government be a legitimate sovereign defined as armed combat within the bounda- authority, and are the concepts of authority ries of a recognised sovereign entity between and sovereignty not seriously compromised parties subject to a common authority at the in such a case? outset of the hostilities. Within civil war, my focus is on violence committed intentionally Kalyvas engages in the production of a the- against noncombatants” (5, emphasis in the ory of civil war by attempting to “decouple” original). This is exactly the point where the civil war violence from the war itself, a proc- problems with this study begin, not only in re- ess that is in turn based on a further breaking gards to Kalyvas’ empirical sample, but also, down of violence into selective and indiscrim- and equally, with the conceptual parameters inate. Indiscriminate violence is easily under- of this study. If civil war is defined as “armed stood both as a practice and as a tactic, and it combat within the boundaries of a recognised is deployed primarily during interstate wars. sovereign entity” (presumably Greece, in this Selective violence, Kalyvas argues, is not only case) “between parties subject to a common central to the project of civil war (because Ka- authority”, we need a definition of this “com- lyvas sees civil war as a project which is “at mon authority” to which the warring parties its core . . . a process of integration and na- are subjected. Kalyvas, following the domi- tion building” [14]) but, far more importantly, nant, official, statist and largely right-wing it defines civil war as such because it “pre- historiography from the 1950s onwards on supposes the ability to collect fine-grained the temporal contours of the Greek Civil War information” (173), something that can be (1946–1949), places the beginnings of the civil achieved only through intimate knowledge war in 1943, a time when Greece was under which can be utilised by the warring parties occupation by the Axis powers. However, in for the establishment of territorial control. Of southern Greece (to stay with his example), course, such intimate knowledge can only be the warring parties in 1943 were very spe- imparted through the act of denunciation, an cific and clear: the Germans and their Greek act that Kalyvas sees as “central to all civil collaborators, on one hand, and the Greek re- wars” (173, 179). Curiously, while Kalyvas sistance on the other. Therefore, the “com- sees denunciation as a practice with a moral mon authority” that Kalyvas invokes could not and ethical weight that has produced its own

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lexicon across languages and cultures (“rats, through a series of legislation in 1929 that snitches, touts, soplones, chivitos, sapos, ore- outlawed dissent into the future, and finally jas, ruffians, mouchards, and the like” (177)), structured during the Metaxas dictatorship of the Greek terms (hafiedes, prodotes, koukou- 1936–1941 (a dictatorship that not only estab- la) do not appear in this litany of terms, rais- lished denunciation as a patriotic act in 1937, ing a question about this absence, especially but also deemed it fitting to hand over leftist since Kalyvas’ empirical material all comes political prisoners to the Nazis in 1941). from the Greek example. Did he not encoun- ter any of these terms in his interviews? Were I point all this out knowing all too well that it is the denouncers in the Argolid not attributed a impossible to do justice either to the strengths term? Could it be that Kalyvas did not discern or to the weaknesses of this book within the a moral and ethical weight attributed to the confines of a review. What I have tried to do act of denunciation among his interviewees? here is to draw attention to some of the most The latter certainly cannot be true because troubling questions, primarily conceptual and Kalyvas mentions how he did not find anyone methodological, present in this project. Maybe among his interviewees who would admit to such troubles are inevitable in a project that having denounced anyone. seeks to create a theory that not only would be able to account for all civil wars across time This problem may be related to a more gen- and space, but, far more importantly and trou- eral question raised in the book: the question blingly, to be also of predictive value. This book of the ideological origins of civil war itself. (In indeed provokes and deserves (in longer form) contradistinction, see the exemplary manner a systematic and methodical engagement with in which such an approach has been taken its ultimately deeply unconvincing argument into consideration by Mahmood Mamdani in and methodologies. 2001 in the case of the genocide in Rwan- da,3 a book that Kalyvas curiously ignores.) Kalyvas knows full well that if the question of the ideology of the Greek civil war were NOTES to be brought up as a question, then a pic- 1 See, for instance, Charles A. Russell and Rob- ture very different than the one that he has ert E. Hildner, “The Role of Communist Ideol- painted in his book would emerge. This pic- ogy in Insurgency”, Air University Revieww 22:2 ture would show that the civil war emerged (1971), pp. 42–48. from ideological cleavages and a history of political persecution that ran very deeply in 2 Stathis N. Kalyvas, “‘New’ And ‘Old’ Civil Wars: Greece. The cleavages between the right and A Valid Distinction?”, World Politics 54:1 (2001), the left did not just appear overnight in 1946, pp. 99–118. neither were they based simply on the expe- 3 Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims become rience of the rupture between the resistance Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Geno- and collaboration of 1943–1944, or the tragic cide in Rwanda, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, Dekemvriana of 1944. Rather, that rupture it- 2001. self ought to be attributed to a history of Left- Centre/Right dichotomies produced in Greece with the advent of the socialist, agrarian and labour movement in the 1910s, solidified

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“the formation of a national-scientific history with an intense didactic character” (14). Scru- tinising the fabric with which national histo- ry is woven, the author takes a critical look Vangelis Karamanolakis at the horizons of history writing and history teaching in nineteenth-century Greece and Η Συγκρότηση της addresses the history-nationalism nexus. Ιστορικής Επιστήµης και η ∆ιδασκαλία της Ιστορίας The book is divided into five major parts. The first discusses the impact of the Enlighten- στο Πανεπιστήµιο Αθηνών ment on history teaching in the period fol- (1837–1932) lowing the foundation of the first Greek state [The Formation of Historical university, the University of Athens. Universal history was still dominant, along with the his- Science and History tory of antiquity. In this context, the author Teaching at the University of studies the central cultural and political role Athens, 1837–1932] of the University while revealing the interest in educating “proper citizens”. In the second Athens: Historical Archive of part, the focus is on Konstantinos Paparrig- Greek Youth, 2006. 546 pp. opoulos and his major synthesis of the history of the Greek nation. The author thoroughly ex- plores the various aspects of Paparrigopou- los’ work and teaching. It is important that by Effi Gazi Karamanolakis does not exhaust his analysis on this historian’s work but turns his atten- University of Thessaly tion to the variety of reactions his interpreta- tion of national history provoked as well as to the process that lead to its dominance within the institutional framework of the University. This part of the book also examines the criti- History writing and history teaching have cism of a group of liberal intellectuals, includ- been extensively researched and theorised ing Stephanos Koumanoudis, Nikolaos Sa- in the last 20 years or so. The repertoire and ripolos, and Pavlos Kalligas, highlighting an themes of history, its character and features, important aspect of the variety of process- its functions and uses have been included in es surrounding the formation of the official current research agendas. These themes still Greek national historical narrative (124–136). attract scholarly attention, particularly in their The third part of the study discusses the for- relation to power, ideology and politics. This mation of the historical discipline as it was ex- is a comprehensive study of history teaching pressed in curricular reforms, the introduction and the development of the historical disci- of new teaching material, a developing inter- pline in Greece from the foundation of the est in archival sources and research, and the University of Athens, in 1837, up to the edu- gradual establishment of historical seminars. cational reforms of the 1930s. Vangelis Kara- Karamanolakis rightly relates disciplinisation manolakis explores and succinctly illustrates to the professionalisation not only of history

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but of university studies in general; in this vein, sively the public activities of the professors, the author also explores changes in the stu- including their involvement in cultural socie- dent body and in the university curricula. He ties and relevant institutions. also places particular emphasis on the case of Spyridon Lambros, who contributed critically Through these varied and challenging per- to the disciplinisation of historical studies. In spectives, the blossoming of history writing the fourth part, the turn of history teaching at in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century the University towards the intellectual and po- Greece unravels. Individual contributions and litical “war” against communist ideas is dis- institutional developments are jointly studied cussed along with the turn to modern history in a study that reveals the various threads of and to the history of neighbouring peoples. its theme. The formative influence of histo- The last part of the book constitutes a general ry on the construction of the modern Greek overview of its main findings and arguments, nation and society becomes evident. In this where the author summarises crucial aspects sense, the work has definitely met its objec- of the topic. Moreover, history teaching is as- tives. The emphasis it places on great per- sessed on the basis of statistical data vis-à-vis sonalities and individual contributions is per- the overall development of the curriculum. haps one of its shortcomings. However, this tendency is successfully balanced by a clear Karamanolakis argues that his analysis fo- interest in institutional developments as well cuses on the University as a “laboratory for as in the ideological and political conditions the production of ideology” (87). As men- around which the body of historical knowl- tioned above, the study is particularly suc- edge was constructed. The author pays par- cessful at stressing the history–nationalism ticular attention to the way the production nexus. Through a variety of sources, includ- and dissemination of historical knowledge ing study guides, course syllabi, personal and became highly dependent on the function of institutional archives, academic proceedings, the University of Athens as a central nation- legal texts and an extended number of histor- al institution, which undertook the mission of ical works, the study interestingly combines contributing to the formation and consolida- individual intellectual and academic trajecto- tion of national culture. ries with institutional developments. It exam- ines the work of history professors in the lec- This is an elaborate and solid piece of work, ture hall, archive and staffroom, looks at their which provides an overall detailed picture of interaction with colleagues, students and gov- history writing and history teaching in mod- ernors, as well as addressing their multiple ern Greece. A useful appendix containing the roles as scholars, policy makers and public themes of history lectures and seminars at figures. It shows that they researched, wrote the University of Athens for the entire period and taught history, shaping and reshaping the is also included in the volume. past in the process. They also communicated, discussed, agreed and disagreed with each other. They co-operated with or turned against each other, becoming involved in joint projects or in bitter controversies. Acutely aware of the public relevance of history throughout the pe- riod in question, the author discusses exten-

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include the author’s own memories of liv- ing close to the Greek community of Helper, Utah. The account then continues, from chap- ter five to chapter ten, in Greece. The harsh Helen Papanikolas living conditions of Greek peasant families, retold through the eyes of George and Emi- Μια ελληνική Οδύσσεια στην ly, serve as the basis for justifying people’s Αµερικανική ∆ύση wish to migrate. The reader follows the two [A Greek Odyssey in the young people on their journey to the United States, their wandering around the continent American West] in search of labour, their marriage, family life Athens: Hestia, 2005. 391 pp. and, finally, their elderly years. Papanikolas’ Odyssey in the American West is not simply a linear recording of events and by Margarita Dounia memories. As Ioanna Laliotou states in the introduction to the Greek edition, Papaniko- University of Thessaly las’ work should be placed in the context of the formation of migrant culture and mem- ory, while its importance concentrates on the tone of disagreement over stereotypical presentations and concepts concerning both The trajectory of her immigrant parents from American history and the history of Greek mi- Greece to America is the central narrative of gration. George and Emily personify the pas- Helen Papanikolas’ A Greek Odyssey in the sage of millions of people from the Old to the American West.1 Her account is deployed New World. The reader encounters the com- through 23 chapters, transferring the ‘scene mon patterns of the migratory experience in of action’ from the Greek periphery to the the description of the long journey, the fear of vastness of the American West. rejection upon arrival, the thorough inspec- tions at Ellis Island, the continuous roaming Invoking the mechanisms of memory, Papani- around the continent, the assistance provid- kolas initiates her reader to the multiethnic ed by older immigrants in the context of chain community of Utah of her childhood world. migration and the fragmentary scenery of The protagonists are her parents, George and ethnic towns. But, at the same time, Papan- Emily, two people whose life-stories compel ikolas’ manages to challenge stereotypical the author to investigate the “unpredictable notions concerning the migrant experience. events that brought them together, him be- The concept of solidarity among Greeks is ing a smart, honest man from the stiff moun- heavily wounded by the recurrent exploita- tains of Greece and her, the only member of tion of new arrivals by older Greek immi- her family who dared to see further than her grants, who played the role of intermediar- village”. The different paths of Papanikolas’ ies and work brokers. The popularised con- narrative interweave the lived-experiences cept of fervent Greekness among migrants is of a vanishing world, that of first generation questionable when the negotiation of identity immigrants. The first chapters of the book at times requires the rejection of Greek ele-

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ments, such as names, clothing, food or reli- Greek coffee stores where politicised brawls gious doctrine. The cultural dialectic between may even end in murder among clientele. Greek communities in America and the me- Remittances from abroad secure enhanced tropolis is defied when preachers of Hellen- dowries for girls, comfortable living for elderly ism imperatively call for the maintenance of parents and better education for young broth- Greek identity without understanding the con- ers in Greece. Finally, the effort to acquire land dition of Greek migrants abroad. in America reflect the Greek ties to land and ownership, when Emily feels her mission ful- The story is recounted in multiple levels filled under the roof of her own home. of time and space. One space is America, present through the Mormon communities An appraisal of Papanikolas’ contribution of Utah, the liberal American women who would not be complete without mention- smoke and talk to strangers, the railways ing the emergence of engendered narrative that keep expanding to unite the country, the throughout her account. Again, the author economic recession that leads to the Crash challenges the common concept of female of 1929, the strikes and tumultuous political migrants as appendices to male pioneers. situation, the Ku Klux Klan who burn cross- Through the lives of Zafeiria, Emily and her es in the forests across from the Papaniko- grandmother, women are to an extent em- las home. The other space is Greece, as a powered in Greek society as well. This notion country tormented by poverty, political in- continues as Emily travels alone to the US, at stability and nepotism that affects the lives her own expense provides assistance to her of everyday people, infant mortality and oth- family in Greece, decides upon her marriage, er tragedies of death, murder and accidents brings her sister to America and convinc- that nourish the popular myth, innumerable es her husband to keep her in their house. wars, and the heavy pressure of dowry for Women at times transcend national barriers daughters and sisters. The desperation of and seem more culturally adaptive to their young people seems absolute when Emily new surroundings. Emily has a network of visits her village for the last time and, follow- assistance involving members of different ing the Greek tradition, throws a rock behind ethnic backgrounds. Mrs Reynolds convinc- her in order never to come back. es her to cut her hair and to cook American food while Mrs Bonnaci helps her with her These two spaces mingle in a new transna- children. Along with other women, she con- tional space with its continuities and ruptures. stitutes the Association of Wives of Railway The widows of dead Utah miners wear black Workers. Women, in Papanikolas’ view, form and mourn with tragic songs. The Asia Minor their own world, differentiated and some- expedition brings even more picture brides times distant from that of men, yet not mar- to the male-congested Greek communities ginal. The notion that there is a lack of inter- abroad. After the First World War, as Papan- action between the male and female worlds ikolas mentions, “through letters more and is restored in the last chapters when her strict more people claimed to be relatives from father refuses to live without his wife. Greece and asked for help”. Greek feta is pro- duced in the mountains of America by Cretan In conclusion, Papanikolas opens up new shepherds. The pictures of Woodrow Wilson, perspectives for the understanding of mi- Venizelos and the King decorate the walls of grant experience and identity formation. In

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Greek Odyssey to the American West, she manages to accentuate the centrality of life histories and the importance of recording such data before it is lost, as she had done throughout her life. Papanikolas redirects Efi Avdela historical exploration of migrant stories away from stereotypes, engendered narrative and Le genre entre class transnational practice. Her subjectivity, both et nation: essai engendered and transnational, is encapsu- d’historiographie grecque lated in her introductory phrase: “It was al- ways like that, I wanted to be somewhere and Paris: Syllepse, 2006. 200 pp. I didn’t want to be there.”

by Yannis Yannitsiotis University of the Aegean NOTE 1 Helen Papanikolas A Greek Odyssey in the American West, Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 2002. This study by Efi Avdela, one of Greece’s pi- oneers in the fields of women’s history and gender history, is a synthesis of independent, reworked studies published from the mid- 1990s to the early part of this decade.

The work’s point of departure is the use of the analytical category of gender to understand labour relations and the importance invested in citizenship from the nineteenth century to the 1950s. At the focus of this analysis is the interaction of gender with class and nation in intersecting spheres such as family, work, citizenship and national identity. According to the author, this study has two objectives. One is the attempt to incorporate the Greek case into the broader historiographical dialogue, because it remains largely unknown and can only be incorporated into comparative syn- theses with difficulty. The second objective is a systematic and programmatic dialogue with Greek historiography.

The book contains six chapters. In the first

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chapter, Avdela attempts to explain why the tryside and urban centres – in which labour Greek historiography of the past 30 years has was organised around the family, as well as afforded such a marginal place to women’s the temporary relationship of men and wom- history and gender history. She argues that en with wage labour; men were firmly orient- the ‘New History’ that supplanted traditional ed towards self-employment in the services nationalistic historiography after the fall of and artisan sectors, while women pursued the dictatorship in 1974 replaced the catholic marriage into and employment in the fam- notion of ‘nation’ with that of ‘class’. Focus- ily business. It is her assessment, however, ing on the examination of structures, the eco- that this particular Greek peculiarity was due nomic and social history of the post-dictator- less to successive state policies – such as ship years – the departure point of which was the agrarian reforms of 1871 and 1927–1932 Marxist – sought to explain the ‘flawed’ char- – and more to the influence of a cultural fac- acter of Greek society and economy in terms tor. It had to do with the family strategies and of the absence of a class structure, at the gender relations within the family-based pro- same time underscoring that the dominant ductive units, both in the countryside and the model was that of the family-based organisa- cities, which were related to a cultural model tion of labour. Moreover, identifying the ana- of household autonomy. The conveyor of this lytical category of gender with women, Greek model was the conjugal or nuclear family historians downplayed and dismissed wom- household that had been established among en’s history as having no bearing on what different social categories and regions and ex- was at stake for Greek historiography, which erted a formative influence upon gender iden- was the notion of class. tities. Based on the hierarchical organisation of domestic kinship and on the sexual division The author takes a critical stance on these of labour between its members, it led to the formulations of Greek historiography and development of the small- or semi-produc- proposes approaching labour relations tive unit. Household autonomy consisted, on through the interaction of gender and class. the one hand, of securing for the male head The frame of reference she chooses is the of the family a livelihood independent from discussion among historians of the condi- both waged work and state regulation and, tions under which the working class formed on the other, of equating womanhood with in Greece. An attempt is made to understand domesticity and motherhood. In the context the casual relationship of men and women of a fragmented and occasional labour mar- with wage labour through the gender rela- ket, this model formed family strategies that tions that had been shaped within the frame- organised the resettlement from country to work of the family. city. The segregation of sexes for work in the agrarian economy was transformed into a The proposal is made more specific in the new kind of segregation in the city. second chapter, where the author exam- ines the historical development of the rela- In the third chapter, the author analyses the tionship between family and labour from the process of adopting women’s protective la- nineteenth century to the 1950s. She takes as bour legislation, stresses its gendered nature her starting point the observations of Greek and attempts to explain its failed implemen- historiography regarding the predominance tation. Her central working hypothesis rests of small production units – in both the coun- on the following arguments:

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Firstly, the legislation in question was part shops and the frequency with which labour of a broader body of labour legislation that was done in the home. Thus, male workers marked the state’s intervention in the labour – in contrast to their European counterparts – market from 1910 to 1920; this intervention did not feel insecure by the presence of wom- aimed at winning over the labouring classes en. In fact, it appears that their position was and averting social clashes within the frame- not even called into question in the decade of work of carrying out the modernisation of the the wars (1912–1922). economy and the irredentist plans of Greek nationalism. This particular policy was not Fourthly, the educated middle-class women of the result of social demands given the ab- the nineteenth century underscored the need sence of a labour movement as well as lim- to protect women’s labour, invoking their ‘so- ited industrial development during the period cial destiny’ of marriage and motherhood. In in question. the 1920s, the clashes between the various feminist organisations over this issue cor- Secondly, the legislation reinforced the domi- responded to similar, concurrent clashes be- nant gendered perception of the social role of tween women socialists and feminists in other women. Thus, in addition to the physical dis- European countries. The conservative organi- advantage in relation to men, the legislation sations conceptualised the protection of wom- stressed women’s sensitivity due to mother- en’s labour in a manner similar to the prevail- hood and the need for them to fulfil their role ing liberal rhetoric, while the socialist organi- in managing the home and raising children. sations supported the legislation within the In this way, this particular legislation openly framework of the legislation for the labour- expressed its intention to function as a mech- ing class. In contrast, radical feminists under- anism for controlling the labour market for scored the domination in gender relations that the benefit of the male labouring population, was established by this particular legislation. in contrast to other cases in Europe where a similar philosophy was veiled with references In the fourth chapter, Avdela examines the re- to humanitarian ideals. ports of labour inspectors on the inadequate implementation of – or total failure to imple- Thirdly, trade unions appeared to be in favour ment – the labour legislation for the protection of the legislation and included it in their de- of women’s labour from 1913 to 1934. This is mands, but before the 1920s they exerted no attempted from a double perspective. On the serious pressure for its enactment and im- one hand, she looks at the ways in which the plementation. According to the author, this inspectors – men and women – perceived the attitude stemmed from the fact that the or- historical and cultural context of their role and ganisation of labour in the country’s indus- activities, while, on the other, she examines tries was based exclusively on gender seg- the extent to which their interpretations of the regation. Women not only carried out differ- hygiene and safety conditions of women’s and ent tasks on the production line but were also children’s labour – as well as of the conduct of employed in other manufacturing sectors, men and women workers in their daily lives with the exception of the tobacco industry. It and in the workplace – were in line with the was also due to the prevalence of the tradi- requirements for the implementation of the tional hierarchy in the division of labour within legislation they were called upon to oversee the framework of the family in small work- during these 20 years. The latter concerns the

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attempt to understand the extracontextual in- ethnic in principle, but essentially Jewish). In dicators of the many ways in which the collec- the early nineteenth century, the cultivation, tive subjects of the protection – women and processing and trading of tobacco was the men workers – perceived and silently resisted dominant economic activity in eastern Mac- the dominant meanings of the legislation. The edonia. Before the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), unjustified and inexplicable reaction of the men the growth of the tobacco market resulted in and women labourers themselves, according a significant increase in wages for labourers to the labour inspectors, to the adoption of the in this sector. But the negative consequences legislation’s protective measures can be seen (of the wars) were immediately observable as a consequence of a different cultural frame in the rapid increase in unemployment and of reference from that of the inspectors and the cost of living. The author recounts ear- the general philosophy behind the legislation. lier interpretations of the strike, according to Moreover, this may be understood if viewed which the stoppage of some 20 days by the through the prism of resistance to the impo- three major ethnocultural groups in the re- sition of power in the workplace. Thus, the re- gion – Jews, Muslims and Greeks – was the fusal of men to take the necessary protective consequence of brewing class consciousness measures is linked to the perception of the as opposed to ethnic feeling. The author, how- labour environment itself as an environment ever, attempts to demonstrate that no form wherein their ability, as gendered individu- of consciousness is exclusive by introducing als, to carry out difficult and complex tasks is the gendered dimension of the strike move- confirmed. We can approach the issue of the ment. On the one hand, she stresses that the refusal of women to wear the work uniform relationship between labour identity and gen- in a similar way. Resistance to the homoge- der identity is vital to understanding the is- neity of the uniform was linked to the fact sue: one of the three basic demands of the that women workers saw the workplace as union – in which only men participated – was a public place in which they endeavoured to for the maintenance of the gender-based hi- control time and their bodies. Finally, frequent erarchy in the division of labour. On the other changes of employment – which the inspec- hand, she points to the entwinement of gen- tors put down to a lack of professional con- der identity with ethnic and class identity; the science – were part of the constantly shifting public clashing of the Jewish women strikers family strategies for survival. and the Muslim women strikebreakers and specialised women workers seemed para- The fifth chapter examines the relationships doxical: the striking women had been mo- between class struggle, ethnic clashes and bilised by the union to defend the demands gender identity against the backdrop of the aimed at institutionalising their exclusion large, multiethnic tobacco workers’ strike of from specialised labour positions. In essence, 1914 in eastern Macedonia and the clash be- however, the Jewish women – with their pas- tween striking Jewish women tobacco work- sion and tenacity during their clashes with the ers and Muslim women strikebreakers in Muslim women and the police – defended the multicultural Thessaloniki, which had been cultural structures upon which the various annexed by the Greek state two years before. aspects of their identity were based. As wom- Coordination of the movement in the city was en, workers and Jews, they felt threatened by undertaken by the Federation (the first social- the actions of the non-local, refugee Muslim ist labour organisation in the Balkans – multi- women workers, who were in the city tempo-

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tion of gender as a symbol enables us to com- national and local contexts. Thus, the histori- prehend the manner in which women are ex- cal construction of citizenship as a Western, cluded from specialised jobs in industry. At the bourgeois and male model, coupled with the base of the author’s endeavour is the system- emergence of the ‘social’ as a space discrete atic dialogue with social anthropology and its from the ‘political’ in which women and the findings on the composition of the household. middle classes could unfold ‘womanly quali- Her focus on the interdisciplinary approach, ties and virtues’ is also evident in Greece. But however, is not a random choice; it is the ba- in the Greek case, nationalism as a unifying sic characteristic of her work as a whole. factor in the two fields (‘social’ and ‘political’) allows educated women to attribute political The individual chapters on labour relations are significance to their public actions. structured around the perception of a history ‘from below’ as she attempts in these to bring Let us now move to the sphere of labour. forth the voices of collective subjects (women The pattern in other European countries workers, men workers, feminists). Neverthe- where single women remained in the work- less, the author also hastens to stress the dif- force indefinitely was not the case with Greek ficulty of this endeavour, given that narratives women up until the interwar years. The prev- and testimonials of the workers themselves alence of the cultural model of the autono- are absent in the Greek case due to the excep- mous household left no other option. The ex- tionally high rate of illiteracy, which has forced ceptions prove the rule: public life essentially Greek historians to limit their research to the concerned a few eponymous teachers who official discourses on labour. devoted their lives to writing, philanthropy and running schools. In the interwar years, The manner in which the author is conver- public activity was an alternative strategy to sant with the European model indicates, on giving up professional activities due to mar- the one hand, her intention to acknowledge riage, particularly when there were no chil- the policies shaping the European historio- dren. If marriage was an unavoidable condi- graphical canon, which include exclusions, tion, motherhood was yet another obstacle suppressions and hierarchies, and, on the to public activity. Thus, marriage gave these other, her effort to shape, wherever possi- women the right to negotiate their identity, ble, the conditions for familiarising special- which motherhood precluded. Moreover, the ists and laypersons with the Greek case, autonomous home model indicates the com- pointing out its unique aspects as well as its plexity and variety of gendered individual and differences and similarities in comparison to familial strategies within the framework of other European countries. This specific nar- the family; strategies that instead of answer- rative choice functions at two levels simul- ing to the evolutionary logic of a prevalent taneously. As concerns Greek historiogra- model – as in the countries of Western Eu- phy, she replaces the European perception rope and in the US – are historically and cul- of modernity through dichotomising and ho- turally predetermined. However, in spite of the mogenising models such as ‘centre–periph- double subordination of women – within the ery’, stressing the multi-level nature of an home and in the labour market – they main- unequal relationship. Regarding European tained control of their dowry and the right to historiography, she stresses the various ex- manage their incomes, in contrast with the pressions of modernity depending on given case of English women: until the late nine-

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Despite the noteworthy studies that Greek Ioannis D. Stefanidis historiography has produced over the past two decades concerning women’s history Stirring the Greek and gender history, many gaps remain. One Nation: Political Culture, of these, as the author herself notes, con- Irredentism and Anti- cerns the examination of the construction of masculinities in their historical contexts. Americanism in Post-War In this specific work, Efi Avdela reasserts, Greece, 1945–1967 from the gender perspective, central issues of Greek historiography with class and na- Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. 300 pp. tion as frames of reference. More generally, she provides food for thought thanks to her methodological and theoretical choices, and she succeeds in conversing with the various by Alexis Heraclides versions of the European model. Most of all, Panteion University she convincingly proposes that the adoption of the analytical category of gender enables us to do better history.

One of the long-standing beliefs in Greece, shared by mainstream literature in the country, is that the irredentism of the Megali Ideaa (“Great Idea”) experienced a sudden death in 1922, as a result of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. From then on irredentist tendencies were limited to a few nationalist fringe groups. Hence the shibboleth that Greece emerged as a status quo power not only in the interwar period (which is indeed the case) but also in the first three post-war dec- ades. But what about the post-war striving to ‘unite’ Cyprus and southern Albania (‘North- ern Epirus’ according to Greek nationalism) with Greece, why were not they seen for what they were, namely textbook cases of irredent- ism? One reason for this short sightedness may be a result of acute ethnocentrism. Thus the claims for faraway Cyprus or southern Al- bania were not regarded as far-fetched, but as ‘ours anyway’, Greek since time immemorial. I suspect that another reason for this flagrant

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misperception is the need to counter the Turk- understood in the West. The author gleans one ish accusation that the Megali Ideaa was back on jingoist statement after another (with several track. Moreover, in the 1950s and 1960s most verging on the ludicrous) made by major fig- Greeks could not make sense of Turkey’s fixa- ures, portraying the air of unreality that per- tion with Cyprus (as if no Turkish-Cypriots lived vaded Greece for three decades. in Cyprus and as if the island was further from Turkey and nearer to Greece). Ankara’s stance The main manifestations of irredentism at was attributed to sheer bad faith due to antago- foreign policy level were the claims submit- nism towards Athens, with British and Ameri- ted to the Paris Peace Conference of 1946, the can collusion to boot. main emphasis being on Greece’s northern borders, with ‘Northern Epirus’ at the epicen- Recently the myth that the Megali Ideaa was safe- tre; the first Greek-Cypriot campaign for eno- ly dead and did not revive in the immediate post- sis in the 1950s; and the second enosis cam- war decades has been put to task.1 Yet this view, paign from 1964 to 1967. Arguably, the period however convincing, is not widely known and from 1967 to 1974 (the Colonels’ dictatorship) has made little inroads. At the level of scholarly represents a fourth, more opaque phase, but discourse this was probably due to the lack of this is not covered by this book.3 extended supporting evidence in the form of a monograph, showing conclusively that Greece As the Second World War ended, the minimum and the Greeks as whole were in the throws of that the Greeks could accept and regard as right- irredentism from 1945 to 1974, albeit the strat- fully ‘theirs’ (in view of the Greek sacrifices and egies differed between the ‘here-and-now’ ap- ‘epic struggle’ during the Second World War and proach and the gradualist line.2 as having been Greek since ‘time immemorial’) were the Dodecanese islands, Cyprus, ‘North- The book under review, Ioannis D. Stefanidis’ ern Epirus’ and a readjustment of the Greek– Stirring the Greek Nation, has come to fill this Bulgarian border (affecting parts of Eastern gap. The author has unearthed and synthesised Rumelia). But many clamoured for more: for a considerable amount of data, which proves, southern Yugoslavia (parts or the whole of Yu- beyond reasonable doubt, that the Megali Idea, goslav Macedonia), for Turkey’s Eastern Thrace albeit a shortened version by comparison to or even Libya’s Cyrenaica (!), on the grounds of the 1850–1922 one, was alive and kicking in ‘impeccable historical rights’ (predictably sum- the period from 1945 to 1967. This is a solid moning up the legacy of Alexander the Great to piece of scholarly work on irredentism. The boost their claim). In fact, Cyprus was not raised author places irredentism within the realm of officially at the Paris Peace Conference so as not Greek political culture, with its penchant for the to antagonise Britain, but it was the claim par grandiose (and, I would add, with bouts of follies excellencee in the background, to be left for a de grandeurr) coupled with victimisation and the more expedient moment. By 1950, however, underdog syndrome. The author painstakingly and in part because of the initial resistance of builds the awesome edifice of shrill nationalism the Greek government to internationalise the that seized the Greeks at all levels (politicians, Cyprus issue in the United Nations, an array of diplomats, journalists, academics, churchmen, pro-enosis NGOs sprung up, with the Church of youth). Greece’s irredentism was out of tune Greece and the youth at the forefront. Soon this with the modern post-war world and, indeed, became a torrent as the left also followed suit. with sheer common sense, at least as it was As Stefanidis points out, the Cyprus campaign

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On irredentism, in the main thrust of the book 1955 incidents in Istanbul against the Greek (1–158), one can detect few shortcomings, such minority; the stance of Washington in the 1964 as the sketchy coverage of the foremost ‘nega- Cyprus crisis; and its role in the ouster of the tive Other’, i.e., Turkey (barely two pages); the Papandreou government (July 1965). cursory coverage of the ‘Northern Epirus’ ques- tion; and the fact that the distinction between the This is a revealing monograph and a much- public mood for enosis and actual foreign policy needed contribution to the literature as far as is sometimes blurred. A clearer distinction be- irredentism and Greek behaviour regarding Cy- tween the two could have produced a revealing prus are concerned. It also provides insight into separate chapter indicating instances of con- Greek anti-Americanism, which, contrary to ir- fluence (1945–1946, 1953–1958, 1964–1967) redentism, remains very much alive in Greece. and instances of rift (1950–1952, 1959–1963). It would also have been very helpful if Stefanidis had made it abundantly clear who the writers NOTES (historians, political scientists, diplomats and others) are who have over the years peddled 1 Perhaps the first such attempt appears in a the conventional view that Greek irredentism paper by Theodore Couloumbis, in Dimitris K. was safely dead in 1922, never to resurface. Constas and Panagiotis I. Tsakonas (eds), Ελληνική εξωτερική πολιτική. Εσωτερικές και The author then devotes a third of his book διεθνείς παράµετροι, Athens: Odisseas, 1994, (169–251) to anti-Americanism, a distinct topic p. 89. See also Ioannis D. Stefanidis, “Pressure probably worthy of a separate monograph. Ap- Groups and Greek Foreign Policy, 1945–67”, parently Stefanidis detects a common thread Discussion Paper, No 6, The Hellenic Observa- running through both topics, the political cul- tory, The European Institute, LSE (December ture of Greece imbued as it is with a strong 2001). For the birth of a “small Megali Idea”, dose of nationalism. It is arguable whether see Alexis Heraclides, Το κυπριακό πρόβληµα anti-Americanism can be associated with – or 1947–2004. Από την ένωση στη διχοτόµηση;, is somehow related to – irredentism. Be this Athens: I. Sideris, 2006, pp. 167–172. as it may, this part of the book is also tightly- 2 For two strategies, see Evanthis Hatzivassil- knit. Worth stressing are the main grievances iou, Στρατηγικές του Κυπριακού. Η δεκαετία του that, according to the author, gave rise and re- 1950, Athens: Patakis, 2005; also Heraclides, inforced anti-Americanism not only among the Το κυπριακό πρόβληµα, pp. 172–176. left (whose staunch anti-Americanism was a given from 1945 onwards), but also in the cen- 3 Information for this period is sketchy, but it tre and right of the political spectrum. They in- is certain that the Greek Junta pressed for clude the following: securing only the Dodeca- enosis from April to November 1967 and in nese Islands in Paris (1946) due, in part, to 1973–1974. From late 1967 until 1970, with American opposition; the high-handed inter- Panayotes Pipinelis at the helm in the foreign ventions of the US Embassy in Greek politics ministry, enosis was not pursued. in the 1950s; the issue of ‘extraterritoriality’ of 4 This line is similar to that of Jewish funda- US citizens on Greek soil (that gained consid- mentalism. For Jewish fundamentalism, see, erable publicity from 1954 onwards); the lack for example, Ian Lustick, For the Land and the of US support for enosis in the UN; the luke- Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, New warm reaction to the despicable September York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1988.

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