Greek Mccarthyism: a Comparative Assessment of Greek Post-Civil War Repressive Anticommunism and the U.S
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
VOL. XIII, Nos. 3 & 4 FALL-WINTER 1986 Publisher: LEANDROS PAPATHANASIOU Editorial Board: ALEXANDROS KITROEFF PETER PAPPAS YIANNIS P. ROUBATIS Managing Editor: SUSAN ANASTASAKOS Advisory Board: MARGARET ALEXIOU KOSTIS MOSKOFF University of Birmingham Thessaloniki, Greece SPYROS I. ASDRACHAS NICOS MOUZELIS University of Paris I London School of Economics LOUKAS AXELOS JAMES PETRAS Athens, Greece S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton HAGEN FLEISCHER OLE L. SMITH University of Crete University of Copenhagen ANGELIKI E. LAIOU STAVROS B. THOMADAKIS Harvard University Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. CONSTANTINE TSOUCALAS University of Athens The Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora is a quarterly review published by Pella Publishing Company, Inc., 337 West 36th Street, New York, NY 10018-6401, U.S.A., in March, June, September, and December. Copyright © 1986 by Pella Publishing Company. ISSN 0364-2976 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS LARS BAERENTZEN teaches modern Greek history at the University of Copenhagen . RIK" VAN BOESCHOTEN is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam whose doctoral dis- sertation "From Armatolik to People's Rule: Investigation into the collective memory of Rural Greece 1750-1949" will be pub- lished next year by Adolf M. Hakkert . RENA HOLHO is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Aris- toteleian University of Thessaloniki MINAS SAMATAS earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research after completing a dissertation entitled: "Greek Bureaucratism: A System of Sociopolitical Control." The editors welcome the freelance sub- Articles appearing in this Journal are mission of articles, essays and hook re- abstracted and/or indexed in Historical views. All submitted material should be Abstracts and America: History and typewritten and double-spaced. Trans- Life; or in Sociological Abstracts; or in lations should be accompanied by the Psychological Abstracts; or in the Mod- original text. Book reviews should be approximately 600 to 1,200 words in ern Language Association Abstracts (in- length. Manuscripts will not be re- cludes Language Bibliography); or turned unless they are accompanied by in International Political Science Ab- a stamped, self-addressed envelope. stracts; or in American Bibliography of Slavic & East European Studies, in ac- Subscription rates: Individual—$15.00 cordance with the relevance of content for one year, $27.00 for two years; to the abstracting agency. Foreign—$20.00 for one year by surface mail; Institutional—$25.00 for one year, $45.00 for two years. Single issues All articles and reviews published in cost $4.50; back issues cost $6.00. the Journal represent only the opinions of the individual authors; they do not Advertising rates can he had on request necessarily reflect the views of the by writing to the Publisher. editors or the publisher. TABLE OF CONTENTS Greek McCarthyism: A Comparative Assessment of Greek Post-Civil War Repressive Anticommunism and the U.S. Truman-McCarthy Era by Minas Samatas 5 The Arrival of the Soviet Military Mission in July 1944 and KKE Policy: A Study of Chronology by Lars Baerentzen 77 Venizelos and the Jewish Community of Salonika, 1912-1919 by Rena Molho 113 Myth and History in Greek Folk Songs Related to the War of Independence by Riki van Boeschoten 125 Index to Volume XIII 142 3 Greek McCarthyism: A Comparative Assessment of Greek Post-Civil War Repressive Anticommunism and the U.S. Truman-McCarthy Era by MINAS SAMATAS* The study of politico-ideological repression in formal demo- cratic states is very useful for understanding the mechanisms of sociopolitical control, the limits of tolerance, and the fragility of civil liberties under governments presumed dedicated to freedom and democracy. Such a study is frequently avoided by those who wish to forget the actual history of capitalist democracies and to present instead an ideal picture of the "free world" as opposed to the "evil" communist states. This article attempts a brief comparative study of post-war political repression in Greece and in the United States of America. It focuses on both the similarities and differences between the Truman-McCarthyite anticommunist crusade in the U.S. and its Greek post-Civil War counterpart. Both Greece (the "cradle of democracy") and the U.S. (the "land of the free") have experi- enced politico-ideological repression too frequently for this re- pression to be considered accidental. In this century alone, Greece has had mostly authoritarian regimes, including two major dic- tatorships. Currently, although Greece is enjoying one of the most liberal periods in its modern history, and although anticommu- nism has been officially abolished by the socialist government, remnants of the authoritarian past and its repressive proclivities are still embedded in the state apparatus. Similarly, in this century the U.S. has also experienced "two Red Scares, concentration * Many thanks to Dr. A. Pollis, Evangeline Newton, and M. J. Scott for their editorial contributions. 5 6 JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA camps, guilt by association, preventive detentions, (and) political espionage."' The U.S. nevertheless remains one of the most per- missive states in the modern world. Today, however, when Amer- ica celebrates the bicentennial of its liberal Constitution, McCar- thyism is remembered. This memory is especially appropriate in view of the current administration's conservative policies (includ- ing mandatory security screenings of all federal employees and proposed mandatory AIDS and drug testing) and of the recent Supreme Court limitations on Miranda warnings (i.e., defendants' rights and restoration of preventive detentions). The major objectives of this article are: 1. to substantiate the major similarities and differences between the Greek post-Civil War anticommunist opera- tion and the Truman-McCarthy crusade, and so to justify the term "McCarthyism" for the Greek case; 2. to indicate the American contribution to the Greek anti- communist campaign; 3. to illustrate the heavy social cost of the McCarthyite- style repressive policy on Greek society; and 4. to demonstrate the legacy of this authoritarian past and the dangers it presents to painfully restored Greek civil liberties. The issue is not whether Greek McCarthyism was more repressive than American McCarthyism, but rather to examine the relation- ship between their goals and techniques, causes and effects, remnants and repercussions. Before proceeding, it is necessary to discuss some definitions used in this paper. "McCarthyism" is understood here not just as the personalistic, political tactics of Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his Congressional "red-hunters," but as the conservative political movement and the massive anticommunist crusade of the fifties with its ensuing political repression in accord- ance with U.S. Cold War politics. 2 In particular, "McCarthyism" 1A. Wolfe, The Seamy Side of Democracy: Repression in America (New York: David McKay Co., 1973) 4. 2A. Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of .McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971) 13. Greek McCarthyism 7 is used to indicate the entire Truman-McCarthy period (1947- 1954) of obsessive anticommunism, and its high level of political repression in the United States which sought to ensure both abso- lute security and the status quo. By "Greek McCarthyism" I mean the Greek anticommunist crusade which followed the Greek Civil War. It sought to eradi- cate any leftist influence of the Ethniko Apeleutherotiko Metopo, (EAM) the communist-led National Liberation Front, 3 and to guarantee mass loyalty for the anticommunist regime. "Anticommunism" is here considered not a mere ideological campaign but "a policy of political repression, reflected in specific laws and actions undertaken by political authorities.' "Political repression," is not, however, viewed as an aberration or as an exceptional or "pathological" phenomenon, but as a "mechanism designed to prevent people from exercising control over the in- stitutions that affect their lives.' Anticommunism is a defensive state overreaction based on the perception of a threat from below. It justifies gross discrimination against any person or any organ- ization which, because of its politico-ideological beliefs, is per- ceived as presenting a fundamental challenge to existing power relationships or to key governmental policies.° Hence, although McCarthyism is identified popularly as a mass anticommunist cam- paign, it may also designate any repressive politico-ideological policy in which a state deliberately exercises political discrimina- tion, thought control, invasion into private lives, and mass curtail- ment of civil liberties in order to enforce mass loyalty. The following comparative analysis emphasizes four basic 3This goal of eliminating any ideological power of the militarily defeated EAM, which had gained 1.5 million members during its fight against the Nazis and their Greek collaborators [see L. Stavrianos, "The Greek National Liberation Front: A Study in Resistance Organization," J. .Modern History, Vol. 24 (Mar. 1952)) is called "de-EAMization" by C. Tsoucalas in "The Ideological Impact of the Civil War," Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis, ed. J. Iatrides (Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press of New England, 1981) 327. 4R. J. Goldstein, Political Repression in. Modern America from 1870 to the Present (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1978) xvii. Also J. V. Compton, Anti-Com- munism in American Life Since the Second World War (St. Charles,