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Notes
* The research for this article was funded by a British Academy Individual Research Grant. I would like to thank the British Academy for its support and the Polish Academy of Science, Institute of History (Warsaw), for hosting me in autumn 2006. I would also like to thank the staff at the New Documents Archive, Warsaw, for their assistance and the anonymous referees for their useful comments.
1. Mazower, After the War was Over.
2. Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis.
3. The standard accounts of the civil war include O'Ballance, The Greek Civil War, and Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece 1941–1949.
4. The record of the October 1944 Moscow conference can be found at the National Archives, Kew—FO800/414. Churchill's account of the meeting can be found in Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 6, 198.
5. Sebag-Montefiore, Stalin, 486.
6. Reynolds, In Command of History, 460.
7. Gerolymatos, Red Acropolis, 58.
8. Ibid., 154.
9. Sebag-Montefiore, Stalin.
10. The Greek civil war went through three rounds—from October 1943 to February 1944, December 1944–February 1945, and 30 March 1946–16 October 1949. The first round saw the two main resistance forces clash. It is worth noting that the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) sponsored left-wing and republican networks during the early period of Axis occupation and that British involvement in supporting resistance groups saw ambiguities develop between the military aims of SOE and the political objectives of the Foreign Office towards Greece. These objectives included the return of the monarch to Greece after the war—the monarchy being a polarizing issue in Greece itself. By October 1944, following the failure of talks between the main resistance organization EAM-ELAS, the Greek government in exile and the Greek general staff in Cairo, fighting broke out between ELAS and other guerilla outfits in Greece. The second round, initiated by the December events, saw the communist-backed National Liberation Front (EAM) and National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) pin down the Greek government and allied British forces in central Athens. Having lost the military initiative, the EAM, ELAS and Communist Party of Greece concluded the Varkiza agreement with the Greek government and the British on 12 February 1945. Mazower (After the War was Over, 6) argues that “the balance of power in Greece as a whole swung suddenly and decisively against the Left for the first time since 1942.” Purges of leftist and resistance fighters took place, paving the way for the third round of the civil war. The persecution of the left and the lack of moderation of the Greek government (e.g. the rigged plebiscite allowing the king to return in 1946) speeded the formation of the Democratic Army of Greece (the successor to ELAS), which was more tightly controlled by the Communist Party of Greece. From March 1946 to October 1949 the Democratic Army of Greece, backed by Tito, fought the reformed National Army backed by the US in a brutal war which saw both sides commit atrocities.
11. The Communist Party of Greece only found out about the “naughty document” in 1952. It is a theme of historical conjecture that if they had known of its existence would they have acted differently in late 1944. Gerolymatos (Red Acropolis, 127) points out that Stalin told Nikos Zachariades, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, “in 1949 that he could not advance the Red Army into Greece in 1944 because he did not want to clash with the British, [noting that] the Soviet Union did not have a navy for such an undertaking.”
12. Gerolymatos (Red Acropolis, 128) argues that after Nikos Zachariades became the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece in 1934, “the policies of [the party] were practically dictated by the Soviet Union via the Third Communist International” and the “senior leadership of the Communist Party identified exclusively with Moscow and any deviation resulted in purges.” So while Zachariades himself was imprisoned and subsequently transferred to Dachau during the occupation, and Comintern was wound up by the Soviet Union in May 1943, ideological loyalty to the USSR remained strong amongst the senior cadres.
13. By early 1947, Britain was experiencing financial difficulties due to the cost of fighting the Second World War. On 21 February 1947 the British Embassy in the US advised the US State Department that Britain could no longer bank-roll the Greek government and expressed the hope that the US would support the Greek government, pointing out that “unless Greece can obtain help from outside there is certain to be widespread starvation and consequent political disturbance in the present year” (Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, 33). The situation in Greece helped shape the Truman Doctrine which was announced in March 1947 (see United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, 98).
14. Defeat followed a change in tactics in 1949. In the summer of that year positional warfare replaced guerilla tactics and within two months the war was over as Greek government forces overwhelmed the Democratic Army with superior firepower, men and the use of American-sourced napalm.
15. Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993,” 134. Voglis (“Between Negation and Self Negation,” 81) cautions that “it is difficult to estimate the number of executions, since there are no official documents from the government side.” He notes that between 3,000 and 5,000 executions took place and that the lowest estimation is given by British official sources which claim that between 1946 and 1949, 3,033 people were executed under the authority of the extra-ordinary courts martial.
16. The issue of children evacuated from Greece continues to be highly sensitive, with each side accusing the other of taking children from their parents. Gerolymatos (Red Acropolis, 230) for example, contends that “almost 28,000 were abducted or forced to flee Greece with the communist forces … [and] … faced a dreary life in the orphanages of the Eastern Bloc countries,” whereas research conducted by van Boeschoten (“The Impossible Return,” 132) found that “most of the children wanted to leave for abroad and some even left in secret, against the will of their parents. The reasons given include hunger and fear of the war, the desire to be with other children, to escape a shepherd's life and to be educated.
17. Quoted in Wojecki, Uchodźcy Polityczni z Grecji w Polse 1948–1975, 22.
18. Ibid.
19. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 416, 53.
20. Wojecki, Uchodźcy Polityczni z Grecji w Polse 1948–1975, 22.
21. For accounts of Polish nationality policy during this period see Zaremba, Komunizm, legitymizacja, nacjonalizm; Mironowicz, Polityka narodowościowa PRL.
22. Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993.”
23. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 419, 9.
24. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 416, 32.
25. Ibid., 37.
26. Ibid., 38.
27. For overviews of the expulsion/transfer process see Eberhardt, Przemieszczenia ludności na terytorium Polski spowodowane II Wojną Światową; Ther and Siljak, Redrawing Nations.
28. For an overview of recent debates on theories of nationalism, see Ichijo and Uzelac, When is the Nation? In relation to the Mazurians, Minister Ochab at a voivodship conference on 13 June 1949 contended that the “Mazurian people, for long centuries remaining under German occupation, kept a Polish heart and soul, national customs in the specific ethnic Mazurian form” and recommended “repolinization” policies. See KC PZPR 237/VII/2619/108.
29. See Polonsky, A. (1980), 425.
30. See Fleming, “Seeking Labour's Aristocracy.”
31. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 421, 3.
32. Ibid., 51.
33. Ibid., 138.
34. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 418, 40.
35. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 421, 25.
36. Ibid., 35.
37. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 422, 126.
38. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 419, 51.
39. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 418, 111.
40. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 422, 126.
41. Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993.”
42. Ibid., 138.
43. KC PZPR 1354 237 XIV 151, 17.
44. Wojecki, Uchodźcy Polityczni z Grecji w Polse 1948–1975; Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993.”
45. Dziennik Ustawa 1965 nr 15 poz 77 art 13, ustaw 1 (art 14, ust 1).
46. Wojecki Citation1999 47.
47. Wojecki, Uchodźcy Polityczni z Grecji w Polse 1948–1975, 165.
48. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 416, 1–4. This note begins: “We state that the Athenian regime by murdering former partisans because they had fought against the Germans and collaborators is continuing the work of the Hitlerites.”
49. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 418, 89.
50. Ibid., 90.
51. Wojecki, Uchodźcy Polityczni z Grecji w Polse 1948–1975; 1989; Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993”; KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 425, 22.
52. At the third party conference in October 1950, Zachariades accused acting Communist Party leader George Siantos of being a traitor and class enemy. Siantos' opponents accused him of deliberately losing the Battle of Athens in December 1944 and acceding to the Caserta Agreement in September 1944 which sought to deal with security following liberation from the Nazis. This was a typical Stalinist purge to draw a line under previous “mistakes.” Siantos himself died in mysterious circumstances in 1947.
53. Pudło (“Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993”) found through his interviews that many of the refugees found it difficult to immediately adapt to factory work in the early 1950s and suffered from nervous tension as a result. This is not surprising since the bulk of the refugees were peasants unused to industrial work.
54. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 425, 14.
55. Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993,” 137.
56. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 416, 25.
57. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 421, 151.
58. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 416, 80; KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 421, 24. A lack of elementary textbooks also caused problems (KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 416, 42).
59. KC PZPR 1354 237 XXII 417. Alexander Papagos was commander in chief of the Greek army in 1940. Following the defeat of the army he was imprisoned in Germany for the duration of the Second World War. He was later reappointed as commander in chief in January 1949 to fight the communist-controlled forces. From 19 November 1952 to his death in October 1955 he was prime minister of Greece.
60. Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993,” 136.
61. Ibid.
62. See Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.
63. See Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations; idem, National Identity. Ethnosymbolic approaches to nationalism and national identity emphasize continuity between contemporary nation-building projects and earlier ethnies, highlighting the (re)use of symbols and cultural practices, for example.
64. Wojecki, Uchodźcy Polityczni z Grecji w Polse 1948–1975, 134.
65. KC PZPR 1354 237 XIV 151, 17.
66. Ibid., 7.
67. Ibid., 15.
68. Ibid., 17.
69. Beloyannis was a political commissar in the Greek Democratic Army and was arrested in December 1950. He was accused of treason, a charge which he refuted by pointing to his actions during the Nazi occupation. He was also accused of being a member of the Communist Party of Greece, which had been made illegal following the flawed 1946 election (which was boycotted by the left).
70. Pudło, “Grecy i Macedończycy w Polsce 1948–1993,” 140.
71. For a discussion of anti-Semitism in 1956 see Machcewicz, “Anti-Semitism in Poland in 1956.” For an analysis of the 1968 events see Stoła, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967–1968. For an overview of the nationality practice during the communist era see Mironowicz, Polityka narodowościowa PRL.
72. The conceptualization of each minority during the PRL varied. Belarusians and Ukrainians were seen as potential Poles and were subjected to assimilationary pressures. On the other hand, assimilated Jews remained suspect as the anti-Semitic campaigns of 1956 and 1968 indicated and were frequently seen as “simulating” Polishness. See Madajczyk, Mniejszości narodowe w Polsce.