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Abstract
This paper examines the involvement of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in the politics of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949). The article’s specific focus is on the organisation’s international campaigns for the end of state-sanctioned persecution of leftists, especially women, and the re-instatement of democracy in Greece, utilising the expanding human-rights system at the United Nations. It draws on selected WIDF and United Nations (UN) documents, in addition to primary and secondary materials relating to the cold war and the Greek Civil War.
Notes
1. This literature is vast. Some important early work includes the essays in Iatrides, Greece in the 1940s; Baerentzen et al., Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War 1945–1949; Auty and Clogg, British Policy Toward Wartime Resistance in Greece and Yugoslavia; Baev, O Emfylios Polemos stin Ellada: Diethneis Diastaseis; Stavrakis, Moscow and Greek Communism 1944–1949; Sfikas, The British Labour Party during the Greek Civil War; Howard, A New Kind of War. Multidisciplinary approaches to the Greek Civil War have situated it in the broader context of civil conflict in the twentieth century and beyond. See for example, Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War.
2. Coufoudakis, “The United Nations, the United States, and the Greek Question;” Nachmani, International Intervention in the Greek Civil War; Mazower, Governing the World. Mazower’s volume is not focused on the case of Greece but rather offers a sober account of the ultimate failure of the UN and the very concept of global governance. The first study appeared in 1948 by Black, “Greece and the United Nations.”
3. See Nachmani, International Intervention, 43. The UNSCOB was a case in point. US concerns for Greek national sovereignty via border security (to prevent Balkan assistance to partisans) sat awkwardly against the fact that the US had taken control of the Greek military, finance and government by 1948.
4. From a speech by WIDF President Eugenie Cotton, “Report on the Activities of the Women’s Democratic Federation,” Proceedings of the Second Women’s International Congress, 30.
5. This expression has been taken from T.G. Otte’s review of Mazower’s Governing the World (see note 2). See T.G. Otte, “Yesterday’s Dream,” Times Literary Supplement, 7 December (2012).
6. While anti-Fascist resistance is a term associated with and used by the French Communist Party during this period, it is important to note that Eugenie Cotton never became a Party member. Vaillant-Courtourier joined the Communist Youth Movement of France in 1934; in 1945 she sat successively at the Provisional Consultative Assembly and at the two Constituent Assemblies and was elected French Communist Party Member of Parliament for the Seine (1946–1958; 1962–1967), then for Val de Marne until 1973. She twice (1956–1958; 1967–1968) held the function of vice-president for the French National Assembly, for which she later became honorary vice-president. See Cotton’s statement on party affiliation in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 242, and for Vaillant-Courtourier, see Benoit Cazenave, “Marie Claude Vaillant Couturier,” 64.
7. I have taken on Ellen DuBois’ definition of left-feminist as utilised by de Haan: "A perspective which fuses recognition of the systematic oppression of women with an appreciation of other structures of power underlying society” and “a sense of women's systematic oppression with a larger understanding of social inequality”. DuBois, “Eleanor Flexner and the History of American Feminism,” 81–90, and F. de Haan, “Rethinking Transnational Feminism and International Politics,” 175.
8. The organisation’s mission statement and objectives are outlined in the report of the founding congress: Congrès International des Femmes; Compte Rendu des Travaux du Congrès Qui S'est Tenu à Paris du 26 Novembre au 1er Décembre 1945 (Paris, Ile-de-France: Fédération Démocratique Internationale des Femmes, 1946). Available online: http://wasi.alexanderstreet.com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/view/1683696
9. The direct quotation: “The establishment of the Women’s International Democratic Federation is shrouded in mystery to which only the subterranean ramifications of the international communist movement can supply the clue.” US House of Representatives, House Un-American Activities (HUAC), Report on the American Congress of American Women, 9.
10. Individuals who belonged to any “international organisations” were systematically depicted in Western historiography as pawns of Soviet manipulation or instruments of Soviet foreign policy. See Richard Aldrich, “Putting Culture into the Cold War,” 109–33.
11. HUAC, Report on the Congress of American Women, 3.
12. The term “state private networks” is used in Aldrich but drawn from W.S. Lucas, Freedom’s War, 19. See Aldrich, “Putting Culture into the Cold War,” 112. This concept has also been applied to women’s organisations by Helen Laville, “The Committee of Correspondence,” 104–21.
13. I would like to thank one of the reviewers of this article – whom I quote here – for alerting me to the importance of making this point. The “robustness” of the national chapters evokes the words of founder and President, Eugenie Cotton, who remarked at the Second Congress of the WIDF in Budapest, 1948 that the Federation “is not an abstract entity, but a grouping of National Sections full of life and force”. Women’s International Democratic Federation, Proceedings of the Second Women's International Congress, 22.
14. After the House Un-American Activities Committee declared the WIDF to be a Communist front organisation, the Congress of American Women disaffiliated with the WIDF in December 1949, and voted to disband in 1950.
15. Notable examples include de Haan, “Continuing Cold War Paradigms,” 547–73, and Ilic, “Soviet Women,” 165–80. The activities of the Greek chapter (PDEG) have been examined in Poulos, Arms and the Woman, 186–250. Most recently, Celia Donert has synthesised this scholarship in “Women’s Rights in Cold War Europe,” 178–202.
16. The idea of sexual equality in this context derives from Marxist-Leninist doctrines which locate the locus of women’s oppression in their economic dependence on men. The solution called for the full participation of women in society to end this economic (and social and emotional) dependence.
17. The post-war international Communist peace campaign held that the “source of war” stemmed from the post-war foreign policy of the US administration, as outlined in the Truman Doctrine and realised through the Marshall Plan. A great deal of effort was invested by the WIDF and other participants and sympathisers, such as the American Council for a Democratic Greece, in promoting the injustice and malignant effects of US intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states, such as Greece. The HUAC report on the Communist “peace offensive” offers an invaluable insight into the Communist peace movement from a Washington perspective. See US House of Representatives, House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Report on the Communist Peace Offensive (1951).
18. Ilic, “Soviet Women,” 170.
19. See De Haan, “The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).”
20. The Congress is recounted in a newspaper interview conducted with Sotiriou shortly before her death. Dido Sotiriou, interviewed by Ios: “H Dido Sotiriou kai to Gynaikeio Kinima,” Eleftherotipia, 13 September 2004. http://iospress.gr/ios20041003a.htm. In the absence of solid evidence the general attendance record of this conference and the scale of WIDF membership remains disputed. Various WIDF/ PDEG documents claim a membership of 80 million women in 1945. De Haan (2012) quotes the figure of 41 member states in 1945 (and 134 in 1985). See De Haan, “The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).”
21. Kaklamanaki, I Thesi tis Ellinidas stin Oikogeneia, 52. For the political diversity of POG see also Hart, New Voices in the Nation, 245–6.
22. Theodoropoulou was the founder and President of the League for the Rights of Women, and Rosa Imvrioti was a former leading member of the League who resigned before joining the Greek Communist Party in the 1930s.
23. From a newspaper article by Maria Svolou, “Greek Women Request: Political Economic and Social Parity (to Proceed Peacefully, Hand in Hand with Men, on the Post War Road of the Nation,” Eleftheri Ellada, 1947. ASKI image archive, from Maria Svolou papers GR.ASKI-0153b.
24. United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, Communications Received from Non-Governmental Organizations, Containing Protests and Requests for Action (1947), 14–15. http://wasi.alexanderstreet.com.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/View/146102
25. The project of “cleansing” the political social and symbolic landscape of the last remnants of Communist culture and the so-called return to normality after the war ended were synonymous with the restoration of traditional mechanisms of social control, including the traditional control of women by men, the reinstatement of restrictive behavioural norms, limited avenues for women's political expression, limited life choices for the poor disenfranchised majority, a generalised idealisation of motherhood which cut across class, and the resumption of a legal and political status equivalent to that of children. The introduction of the country's first Civil Code in 1946, which enshrined women's subordinate social, political and cultural status in law, was a legal subjugation which had been a feature of the constitution. See Moschou-Sakoraffou, I Istoria tou Ellinikou Feministikou Kinimatos, 102; Poulos, Arms and the Woman.
26. A defining feature of the EAM resistance was its radical social agenda, which saw the mobilisation of unprecedented numbers of marginalised women (and men) into political life for the first time; the principle of gender equality was enshrined in law by the Provisional Government in 1944. The gender politics of the EAM Resistance movement underscored its dual purpose of national liberation and the modernisation of national political culture. See Hart, New Voices in the Nation, 132.
27. This accusation was published in the October/November 1946 issue of the WIDF Bulletin and raised again at the Second International Congress in Budapest, 1948. This paper has drawn on the latter, and Theodoropoulou’s reproduction of the 1946 article in an undated letter: ‘H Diethnous Omospondia Dimokratikon Gynaikon’ (The Women’s International Democratic Federation), A. Theodoropoulou papers, held by Hellenic Literary Association (Etaireia Ellinon Logotechnon), Athens. For the Congresses in question see Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom, Report of the Tenth Congress of the WILPF, Luxembourg, 4–9 August 1946; International Alliance of Women, Report of the Fourteenth Congress of the International Alliance of Women, 11–16 August 1946. http://alexanderstreet.com/products/women-and-social-movements-international
28. From a speech by Theodoropoulou in Yearbook of the League for Women’s Rights 1948/49 cited in Boutzouvi, “Gia tin ierarchisi ton politon,” 66–82. Thereafter Theodoropoulou became an outspoken anti-Communist, condemning the women of the GDA and the WIDF, renouncing her work in the POG and emphasising the importance of the League’s independence from political parties and its categorical rejection of violence. A. Theodoropoulou papers, Hellenic Literary Association, Athens.
29. “Larissa, Second Army Corps Broadcasting Station, in Greek to Greece,” 7 March 1949, 1.55pm (radio broadcast) in HUAC, Report on the Congress of American Women, 91.
30. The extension of national citizenship rights to women was a defining feature of the communist-led Resistance movement under EAM (National Liberation Front/Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo) EAM’s radical modernisation/social-reform agenda fused the project of national liberation with the transformation of national political culture; in this spirit the Provisional government was the first in Greece to enshrine the equality of men and women before the law. Thus women’s rights became inextricably intertwined with Communism and the Left and were thus shunned by post war anti-Communist conservative governments for whom the “return to normality” was synonymous with the return of women to the home. It was on the basis of the Resistance contribution to the lot of Greek women that the WIDF contingent in POG claimed to be the legitimate representative of Greek women’s political rights at the UN, disregarding the much longer history of the fight for Greek women’s rights led by the “bourgeois” IAW and the ICW. See for example, Hart, New Voices in the Nation; Vervenioti, H Gynaika tis Andistasis; Poulos, “From Heroines to Hyenas.”
31. The intensity of the passions generated by the role of women in Greek society on both sides is easily discerned from a curt citation of literature from the period (not including EAM/KKE literature). Mouroulis, To dikaioma tis gynaikeias psifou (The right of women to vote); Saratis, Tora Pou Megaloses (Now that you’ve grown up) – offers a Girl Guide’s version of a woman’s work in domestic matters, health, family, medicine and the care of children); Siatopoulos, I Yinaika kai ta Koinonika Tis Zitimata – concerned with the protection of mothers and children, illegitimacy, the sexual life of the unmarried, marriage and prostitution, predicts that women will soon be liberated from the restraints that now hinder her social role; Vogopoulos, Gyro apo to Provlima tis Ergazomenis Gynaikas (On the problem of the working woman) – argues that women who are biologically inferior to men should not try to compete fully with men and that working married women should return to the home; Rigopoulou, Oi Gynaikes Ypodoules eis to Genos ton Andron (Women, slaves to the male sex); Roussopoulou, H Gynaikeia Ergasia: Isi Pliromi gia isi Douleia (Women’s work: equal pay for equal work) discusses pay inequalities; Dimopoulos, H Thesis tis Gynaikos en ti Koinonia katho’olin tin Diadromin ton Aionon kai oi Diakrithisai Ellinides apo tis Arhaiotitos mechri Simeron (The position of women in society through the centuries and distinguished Greek women from Antiquity to the present) – argues that women’s place is in the home.
32. Namely Resolution 3 of 1946 and Emergency Law 509 of 1947.
33. Nikis Ploumpides was the last Communist prisoner to be executed in Greece.
34. For more on the Hague Congress and the theoretical success of Greek diplomatic efforts to join the Western European project see Patrikiou, “The Greek Delegation at the Hague Congress,” 36.
35. See also Duranti, “Conservatism and the European Human Rights Project,” 224–7.
36. Ibid., 225.
37. Ibid., 226.
38. The International Coordinating Committee of the Movements for European Unity, which organised the Hague congress of 7–10 May 1948, adopted the title of European Movement on 25 October of that year. See Lipgen and Loth, Documents on the History of European Integration, 226.
39. “Letter from Leo Amery to Lord Layton,” dated October 1946, in Lipgen and Loth, Documents on the History of European Integration, 669.
40. For example, Dimokratikos Stratos (Journal of the Democratic Army). Vol. A (January–December 1948); Vol. B (January–September 1949). Athens: Rizospastis Press, 1996.
41. Quoted in de Haan, “UN Chronicle: A Brief History of Women’s Rights” http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/chronicle/home/archive/issues2010/empoweringwomen/briefsurveywomensright
42. For feminist activism at the League of Nations see, for example, Rupp, Worlds of Women; Offen, European Feminisms 1700–1950; Caglar et al., Feminist Strategies in International Governance.
43. United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, A Short History of the Commission on the Status of Women http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/CSW60YRS/CSWbriefhistory.pdf
44. The term “non-governmental organisation” (NGO) came into popular use with the establishment of the United Nations Organization in 1945 with provisions in Article 71 of Chapter 10 of the United Nations Charter http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/chapt10.htm. For a historical account of international NGOs see Davies, A New History of Transnational Civil Society.
45. The organisation aimed for Consultative Status A in the same year “to strengthen the role of the WIDF in the solutions of the serious social economic and political situation of women … but also to better the activities of the commission for the rights of women at the UNO,” in Proceedings of the Second Women's International Congress, 61.
46. The target populations were Greek leftists, Communists, sympathisers and their families who had not fled into exile after the defeat of 1949. This group could be referred to as Communists, democrats, patriots or bandits and traitors depending on one’s perspective. In line with international Communist discourse of the period, the WIDF referred to the persecuted Greeks as democrats or patriots.
47. Dorothy Kenyon, “Greek Democracy,” New York Times, 28 August 1949. Cited in Tsaldari, National, Social, Political Efforts, 164.
48. HUAC, Testimony of Walter S. Steele regarding Communist Activities in the United States, 88.
49. Cited in Coons, “Gabrielle Duchene,” 121–47.
50. Cotton, Proceedings of the Second Women's International Congress, 31.
51. Draper was also the organisation’s Chairman of the Committee of Action for Peace and Democracy, an organisation which was very active in the “Greek question.”
52. Panhellenic Democratic Union of Women (PDEG), Gia na thriamvefsei I zoi, 89. The episode is also mentioned in the Greek organisation’s Report of the WIDF Council, Moscow, November 1949 (Athens, 1950) [in Greek], both sources held at the Contemporary Social History Archives, Athens (ASKI G 10/3 K, 17).
53. See for example Ales Bebler (Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Acting Chief of the Delegation of the FPR of Yugoslavia to the Third Session of the General Assembly of the UN), “Peace and Greece,” 27 October 1948, originally published by the Permanent Delegation of the FPR of Yugoslavia to the UN (New York, 1949). https://www.marxists.org/archive/bebler/1948/peace-greece/index.htm
54. Gromyko, Yearbook of the United Nations, 376.
55. UN Memorandum Reference (A/C.1/-516).
56. Gromyko, Yearbook of the United Nations, 1950 Part 1. Section 3. Political and Security Questions. Chapter H. Threats to the Political Independence and Territorial Integrity of Greece, 376.
57. Kyrou, Yearbook of the United Nations, 376. Alexis Kyrou served as Permanent Representative of Greece to the UN from 1947 to 1953. His tenure at the UN coincided with a bitter period in Greek history, when Greek policy agonizingly sought the guidance of the US on every single issue. For some historians in foreign and security policy Kyrou, along with Kanellopoulos and Papagos, represented a transition to a new era and a determined attempt at adjustment after the shocks of the Civil War. The main guiding lines of their security policy included loyalty to NATO (Greece joined in 1952), a deepening of US/Greek relations while at the same time attempting to create some independence from Washington), and a regional policy aimed at achieving security from a historically defined and therefore permanent threat from Bulgaria. See Hatzivasiliou, Greece and the Cold War; Giorgios Polydorakis, “Greece at the San Francisco Conference,” in 8 Conference Internationale des editeurs de documents diplomatique, ed. Gabriel Robin (Paris, 2008). View online: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/IMG/pdf/ONU_georgios_polydorakis.pdf. See also Kyrou, H Nea Epithesis Kata Tis Ellados.
58. Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 151. NOF (Narodno Osloboditelna Front/National Liberation Front) formed in 1945 to promote Slav Macedonian irredentist aspirations in Greek Macedonia. For an examination of the Ghini case see Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties.
59. See Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 151.
60. According to Voglis, 109 political prisoners were executed between 1 May and 11 May, 1948: Voglis, Becoming a Subject, 152.
61. Ibid., 152.
62. United Nations ECOSOC, “Communications from Consultative NGOs,” United Nations Reference Library E/ C.2/46 to E/C.2/ 125.
63. The theme of foreign interference in Greece predates the American intervention. The EAM in collaboration with the Coalition of Left Liberals in Greece sent a memorandum to the UN General Assembly as early as February 1946 requesting the immediate and complete withdrawal of British troops in the country’s internal affairs, in the name of national independence. The memo was signed by N. Grigoriadis (Left Liberal Party), C. Gavrilidis (Agrarian Party), S. Kriticas (Republican Union), A. Loulis (Radical Republican Party), G. Georgalas (Socialist Party) and D. Partsalidis (Greek Communist Party). Cited in the Bulletin of the American Council for a Democratic Greece, 4, no. 1 (New York, 1947) –an organisation listed as subversive by the US government. Available online at catalog.hathitrust.org
64. At least 75 references, including several speeches and extended comments, were made on the Greek question. Speakers included the President Eugenie Cotton (France), and delegates from Greece, Spain, Albania, Romania, Italy, South Africa, the United States, Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, Norway and Chile.
65. Hatzivasiliou, Proceedings of the Second Women's International Congress, 137.
66. Ibid., 138.
67. Phillips (US) Executive member of the WIDF, “Report on the Defence of Economic and Political Rights of Women,” Proceedings of the Second Women's International Congress, 284.
68. Konstandinos Tsaldaris won in the controversial 1946 elections as the leader of the right-wing United Patriotic Party coalition and became Prime Minister of Greece from April 1946 through January 1947, and again from August 1947 until September of the same year. During 1947–1949 he acted as the head of the Greek representation in the UN General Assembly.
69. Vervenioti, “Charity and Nationalism,” 323.
70. Cotton, “Report on the Activities of the Women’s International Democratic Federation.” Proceedings of the Second International Congress of the WIDF, 49–50.
71. Vervenioti, Charity and Nationalism, 126.
72. Tsaldari, National, Social, Political Efforts, 165.
73. The reason cited for this delay is the fact that Greek women were still unregistered voters in 1952.
74. See de Haan, “Continuing Cold War Paradigms,” 573.
75. Moyn, The Last Utopia, 23.
76. Ibid., 46–7.
77. Jean H. Quataert, review of The Last Utopia, by Samuel Moyn, English Historical Review 521 (August 2011), 1028–29. Human-rights scholars may overestimate the extent to which human rights today take precedence over the sovereignty of states. As Belinda Cooper notes, international treaties designed to protect individuals are still directed to national governments, which remain the first line of defence, even in the modern world of globalised thinking. See Belinda Cooper, review of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn, New York Times Book Review, 26 September 2010. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/books/review/Cooper.
78. A term borrowed from Moyn, The Last Utopia, 43.