Country failure and social grievances in the Greek Civil War 1946–1949: An economic approach

Abstract

The Civil War that took place in Greece between the Communist Party and the Centre-Right Government during 1946–1949 is examined from a political economy perspective. The cost of the conflict is measured as output forgone relative to what it would have prevailed had Greece followed a post-war recovery similar to that of other nations in Western Europe. A two-stage approach compares Nazi-occupied countries with neutral ones to assess the cost inflicted by Second World War, and then compares Greece with the former to estimate the impact of the civil conflict. A regional analysis finds that the political discontent was mainly shaped by pre-war socio-economic grievances, rather than being affected by contemporaneous deprivation or driven by class structure as hardliners of both sides preferred to present in pushing for an all-out confrontation. The failure to settle political rivalries and thus prevent the conflict is also discussed.

Keywords:

• Civil war
• Greece

JEL Codes:

• C620
• E23
• N440
• O520

Acknowledgements

The author is thankful to E. Nikolakopoulos for the provision of election data in 1946, to seminar participants in the Bank of Greece, LSE, Yale University, and Social Archive Institute ASKI (Athens) for comments on an earlier version. Suggestions by an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

¹ This risk applies in conflicts where the opponents truly seek for a face-saving compromise. In cases where an aggressive ideology is dominant, compromising signals are likely to be ignored deliberately.

² An analysis of the 1932 crisis in Greece and its dire consequences on the economy is given by Christodoulakis (2013). An interesting juxtaposition with the current crisis is given by Chouliarakis and Lazaretou (2014).

³ For an account of police persecutions of republicans and left-wing sympathizers, see Close (1986) and Pelt (2014).

⁴ For an account of the clashes, see Woodhouse (1976). On the strategy of KKE and its consequences, see Iatrides (1972).

⁵ An analysis of battle dynamics in the GCW is described in Christodoulakis (2015).

⁶ KKE (1964, 524) – adopting a wording soon to be abandoned – emphasized the importance of ‘ensuring order and calm so as to rebuild the country’.

⁷ Eastern European countries would be chosen as ‘synthetic controls’ for Greece in case that the Civil War was won by the Communist Party.

⁸ Spain and Finland are excluded from both groups because they were allied with Germany for a substantial period of WW2. UK is left out of the second group because it was not occupied.

⁹ Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands were liberated in May 1945. Most of Belgium was freed by the end of 1944, and the remainder in early 1945. Mainland Greece was liberated in October 1944, but Crete remained under German control until June 1945.

¹⁰ Norway entered the then European Community in 1969 and exited in 1973.

¹¹ From Figure 1, it is apparent that the rebound in the GDP of each economy was roughly symmetric to its suppression during the war.

¹² For a detailed account on the Marshall Plan, see Price (1955), Wexler (1983), Gardner (2001) and Bossuat (2008) among many others.

¹³ As noted by Price (1955).

¹⁴ If scaled by per capita GDP at the beginning of the estimation period, these constants denote convergence effects towards the control group of neutral countries.

¹⁵ In practice, though, the choice may be seriously compromised. Even with many compatible regions available, Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) finally choose only two of them as the control group.

¹⁶ Results and comparisons are available by the author.

¹⁷ For this reason, the thirty years from 1945 to 1975 are popularly called in France Les Trente Glorieuses.

¹⁸ Vetsopoulos (2007, Table 1) reports that during 1947–1952, the Economic Cooperation Administration disbursed $949 million to Greece. This amount corresponds to $126 per head and would have led to a synthetic GDP path much higher than the one previously considered. One should note, however, that the extra aid to Greece was precisely in order to face the effects of the Civil War, and most likely it would have not been disbursed in its absence.

¹⁹ The republican ticket was supported not only by the communists but also by the various factions of Liberals, thus political discontent does not fully correspond to the influence of KKE.

²⁰ Even staunch supporters of the King admitted that the process was far from transparent; e.g. Averof-Tositsas (2010, 203) notes that ‘of course in certain areas the process was far from ideal’.

²¹ The region of Thrace was annexed to Greece by the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, and afterwards Venizelos implemented an extensive land distribution programme.

²² Often the spreading of diseases is strongly correlated with low per capita income and impoverishment. For the case of malaria, see the study of Datta and Reimer (2013). Similarly, Spence et al. (1993) establish that tuberculosis is strongly associated with poverty.

²³ The explanation might be that hospitals were concentrated in larger cities where discontent was stronger or perhaps less suppressed.

²⁴ The decisions were adopted by the seventh Party Congress, organized in October 1945; see the documents in KKE (1964, 534).

²⁵ In his analysis of proletarianization, Karl Marx first asserts that ‘the amount of capital which is bound to be in the hands of each capitalist must keep increasing’, and then concludes that the ‘[a]ccumulation of capital is, therefore, increase of the proletariat’; Marx (1954, Capital, Chap. XIV and XXV, 340 and 576 respectively).

²⁶ One such example was malaria, ravaging rural populations until aid from the UN Relief Agency finally managed to contain it.

²⁷ For a description of the alarming situation by the US mission to Greece, see the Report by Porter (2006, 80, 162).

²⁸ A massive assimilation of this type was also happening in China’s civil war at around the same time, and Mao Zedong was fearing that bandits gave the Red Army a ‘mentality of roving insurgents’; see Hobsbawm (2000, 116).