Nationalism and communism go global: the ideology of ‘nationally minded’ Greeks in the early Cold War, 1947–1955

ABSTRACT

This article re-examines the conceptual framework of the ideology of the ‘nationally minded’ Greeks that emerged from the Greek Civil War and the East–West divide. The basic components of this ideology, such as nationalism, anti-communism/anti-totalitarianism and the allegiance to the West -shared by the right and the centre-right- are explored through the transnational and transatlantic intercrossing of concepts and patterns of thought. Despite authoritarian policies restricting civil rights only to the ‘nationally minded’, the Greeks participated in the global ‘ideological war’ on behalf of ‘Greek Liberty’ and the ‘Free World’.

KEYWORDS:

• National identities
• anti-communism
• anti-totalitarianism
• transnational history
• intercrossing of concepts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For this notion used in the context of the analysis of populism, see Ory (2017). The word ‘ethnikofron’ was employed sporadically in the interwar period to designate law-abiding bourgeois (Papadimitriou, 2006).

2 There is a vast literature on the history of the civil war which falls outside the scope of this essay. For the better understanding of what follows let me add that the full-scale civil war for the control of Greece, fought between the Democratic Army (Communists) and the Greek National Army was the product of political polarisation and the reconstruction of the right-wing state after 1945. American military and economic aid in 1947-1949, as well as the assistance that the northern neighbouring countries provided to the Greek Communist forces, played a key role in the course of the war. Eventually, superior American aid and the manpower deficiencies of the Communists led to the defeat of the Democratic Army in August 1949.

3 Τhe lead article of the centrist daily Elefteria on July 2, 1950 was entitled ‘USA’. On the Dutch Atlanticism and the scepticism about shared Atlantic values, see Baudet (2011).

4 Between 1954 and 1958 the Greek government appealed to the to the UN General Assembly five times over Cyprus at that time a British colony.

5 On the strategy of the Communist party of Greece (KKE) during the civil war which ‘revolved around the competing concepts of war and peace,’ see Sfikas (2001).

6 On ideology as a defining element of the Cold War without disregarding the ‘importance of material interests’, see Kramer (1999).

7 For the home front as a crucial factor in shaping the popular political imagination, in the case of Italy, see Forlenza (2020, p. 97).

8 See the periodisation of the Communist Party of Italy's history presented in the communist magazine La Rinascita in 1952. Its focal points were great international events but mainly national history, the anti-fascist struggle and the democratic-constitutional strategic implemented since 1944.

9 Aron (1965/1965/1998, p. 76) advocates that ‘right-wing revolutions have been disqualified on the battlefields and even more so in the concentration camps’.

10 On an epistemological foundation for comparison based on historically specific forms of connectedness, see Moyn and Sartori (2015, p. 5). The ‘Cultural commonality’ was identified in the modern use of the term by Comte as a concept determining a supranational allegiance (Varouxakis, 2019).

11 The editorial note of Preuves (1953, March 25, pp.3–4) highlights Strausz-Hupé’s (1952) belief according to which the defense of Europe should have precedence over all other commitments of US foreign policy.

12 On Ambassador Henry Grady's speech, 25 March 1949, the day of Greece's national holiday, see Lialiouti (2020).

13 Half of the evacuated children were of Slavic-Macedonian origin.

14 On the inaugural Berlin conference, see Elefteria, 12 July 1950; Embros, 27 July 1950; Fos, 28 June 1950; Fos, 6 October 1950; Voice of America, 27 June 1950; Radio Free Europe; Grémion (1995, p. 23). Kanellopoulos, then leader of the small National Unionist Party, represented Greece at the conference. 

15 Constantinos Doxiadis, one of the leading architects in the urban restoration of Greece after the war, served as undersecretary and director-general of the Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction (1945–48), and Minister-Coordinator of the Greek Recovery Program and Undersecretary of the Ministry of Coordination (1948–51). He was head of the Greek Delegation to the UN International Conference on Housing, Planning and Reconstruction in 1947. He was also member of the American Economic Association.

16 The articles in Vradyni were entitled ‘The American woman’, ‘Education in the US’ and ‘American workers’ respectively.

17 The US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 was created for overseas information and cultural programmes. The US Information Agency (USIA) operated under the authority of this Act.

18 It should be indicated that the concept ‘dollar diplomacy’ is associated with the US president William Howard Taft (1909-1913) and was not Aron's original idea. I would like to thank Thanasis D.Sfikas for this piece of information.

19 On this see Vradyni, 15 July 1950. See also the series of articles by Louis Fischer (one of the six authors of the book) published in Kathimerini from August to November 1947. On the intellectual and political significance of the book, see Scott-Smith (2002, p. 88).

20 On the references to Russian authors that published their work in the West, such as Zamyatin, Ehrenburg, Pilnyak and Pasternak, see International Life on February 1, 1960 (p. 88).

21 On the notions of captive peoples (in the Soviet republics and satellite countries) and Russian imperialism, see Bailey (1969, p. 16). Regarding the Congress of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations in 1943, see Van Dongen et al. (2014, p. 116, 121, 247).

22 On the treatment of ideology as a dominant factor of Soviet aggressiveness, see Nuti and Zubok (2006, p. 97). On the religious character of totalitarianism, see Monnerot (1949, p. 22) and Baehr and Wells (2012).

23 The bimonthly journal that Spyros Melas launched under the title Elliniki Dimiourgia (1948–1954) was depicting itself as ‘national journal’.

24 The main concern of the weekly magazine Elliniki Dimiourgia was the vindication of the nationalist guerrilla bands and their heroisation of their leaders.

25 Α case study of a conservative intellectual's deradicalisation after the war is Freyer (Muller, 1987).

26 Regarding the contribution of the ‘Hellenic spirit to the World's spirit’ related to the perspective of intellectual and conservative political thinking in Greece, see Kazamias (2012, p. 61).

27 The clash between the Greek government, the British troops and National Liberation Front/Liberation Army (EAM/ELAS) was widely considered as an effort of the Greek Communists to seize power. In The Times, on 8 December 1944, its special correspondent claimed that the British troops were welcomed to Athens and that as the liberal politician George Papandreou had assumed power, the ‘extreme Left planned a coup d’état’ (p. 4).

28 See Ioannis Kakridis’ speech on Greek Liberty as opposed to the ‘totalitarian spirit’ in the Athenian newspaper To Vima, 4 January 1961 (article signed by the novelist Angelos Terzakis).

29 For the impact of Greek antiquity on western culture, namely, the interconnections between philosophy and science, as well as for the philosophical hermeneutics’ affiliation to ancient Greek philosophy, see Gadamer (1996, p. 9, 10, 93) and De Rougemont (1994, p. 26).

30 It can be described as a structure of ‘a long-term duration, stability and change’. On event and structure and the temporal aspects of their relations, see Koselleck (1985, pp. 106–8).

31 Aron published frequently in Preuves. This text was a version of the postface he wrote for the French translation of the book, L’Alternative: contenir ou libérer, in 1953. See also Romano (2003). On the Berlin issue, see the last of the three articles by Emmet Hughes, bureau chief in Berlin for Time-Life International (1948), published in Kathimerini on 24 July 1948.

32 On the US conception of the nation's mission, see Dobson and Marsh (2007, p. 2).

33 On Northern Greece as ‘one of the few borderlines of East and West, together with the infra-German border’, see Hatzivassiliou (2006, p. 5).

34 The term was coined by John O'Sullivan in 1845 to signify the US’ ‘civilising mission’.

35 Mouzelis and Pagoulatos (2005, pp. 88–89) characterise it as a ‘guided democracy’. The institutionalisation of the so-called ‘certificate of national probity’ was a formal prerequisite for access to all kinds of public resources including public employment.

36 See the ‘transmitting Memorandum with regard to repressive measures currently in effect in Greece’ (1949, December 30) in US National Archives. 

37 On the linkage of Makronisos with ancient Greece, see Hamilakis (2007).

38 On the affinities between the ideology of the nationally minded and what John Fousek has characterised as ‘American nationalist globalism,’ see Papadimitriou (2014, p. 79). On the interdependence of the local, the regional and the global, see Rajak et al. (2017, pp.xix–xxv).

39 Reporting the case of the displacement of a communist by the Public Security Committees, it is argued that these Committees were first set up by the decree-law of 21 April 1924. See ‘Triantafyllakos Papers’ (1961).

40 This notion is used by Rosales (2016, p. 229).

41 On the delineation of three simultaneous wars: a patriotic war, a civil war and a class war, in the Italian resistance against the Fascist Republican regime, see Pavone (2013, pp. x, 205, 269 and 377).

42 As Shils (1955) argued, westerners’ nationalism was an ‘unfortunate distraction, at worst a source of great troubles springing from the passions, at best a worthy actor in the 19th-century drama which was now over. For the Asians and Africans, it expressed their conception of freedom’. On the concern of westerners for what they called a nationalist revival in West and East Germany see The Times, 2 and 3 August 1949. On the intersection between decolonisation in Southeast Asia and the Cold War, see Goscha and Fostermann (2009). On the nationalism of communists and conservatives in France see Maulnier (1954).

43 Greece was perceived as belonging to the Near East and the Balkans. Southern Europe as a separate region in the conception of American and British policymakers is forged in the 1970s (Rizas, 2016, p. 1).

44 Media texts were considered as ‘mediated human perceptions’ (Aschheim, 1999). On the questioning in the 1970s of the excessively mechanical distinction between learned and popular cultures, see Mariot and Olivera (2010, pp. 186–187).

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Notes on contributors

Despina Papadimitriou

Despina Papadimitriou is Professor of History in the Department of Political Science and History at Panteion University in Athens, Greece. Her areas of expertise include the conceptual aspects of political ideologies with emphasis on political conservatism, nationalism, anti-communism, anti-totalitarianism and political extremism in the 20th century.