Greek Civil War Research Articles

A Certain Kind of Freedom

Άφρικα: A Certain Kind of Freedom is pivoting on artistic exploration and re-interpretation of a 'difficult' recent past. In part soundwalk, in part performance art, in part punk archaeology, in part getting lost in the dark; the work is a nocturnal rumination bringing together historical bewilderedness with first-person embodied experience of a place. The artist leads a night walk towards and inwards Agios Achillios island in Small Prespa Lake in Greece – near the borders of Albania, and North Macedonia – and back. En route, the walking audience is exposed to wildlife sounds and animal vocalisations, to orchestrated drama, and to historical records directly or indirectly concerning the broader geographical area and its significance during the Greek civil war.

A Greek American Cold Warrior: George E. Phillies and the Greek Civil War, 1946–1949

Abstract: George E. Phillies, a prominent Greek American and chairman of the Justice for Greece Committee, was an ardent anticommunist who took an interest in themes of growing importance in American public debates of the late 1940s: the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) and US intervention in Greece as inaugurated by the Truman Doctrine (1947). Phillies's social status, hybrid identity, and networking with American and Greek elites were decisive for his emergence as an influential cold warrior at a crucial period for both US-Greek relations and US strategy in the Cold War. His public role was important in the legitimization of the Truman administration policy toward Greece. He used his ties to Greece to construct a supposedly factual account of the Greek Civil War that undermined alternative narratives and criticism of US actions. Phillies represents a case of ethnic anticommunism. His discourse highlights the hybrid, transatlantic dimension of Greek American identity in the mid-twentieth century and the interaction between ideological and ethnic conceptions of identity. His case is revealing for the role of anticommunism in the identity formation process and integration practices among migrants in post-World War II American society.

The Opinio Juris and Opinio Moris in the Anglo-American Interventions During the Greek Civil War: An Archival Study of Legal Narratives

Abstract This article investigates the British and American interventions in Greece during the Greek Civil War, examining their legal and moral justifications. Using archival documents, the study uncovers two primary layers of discourse: the official diplomatic language of opinio juris (conviction of legality) and opinio moris (conviction of morality), alongside the covert political interests that drove these interventions. The research argues that British and American actions were primarily motivated by a ‘conviction of interest,’ with legal and moral narratives used tactically to justify their interventions. The archival materials reveal a notable lack of empathy and understanding from British and American officials regarding the trauma endured by the Greek populace due to the German occupation and collaborationist violence. Additionally, there was a significant neglect of the will of the Greek people. The study critically examines the Caserta and Civil Affairs Agreements, which provided a legal basis for British intervention, arguing that these agreements, when viewed in light of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, fail to justify the extent of foreign interference, thus questioning the authenticity of Greek consent. The article also explores the transition from British to American dominance in Greek affairs. As Britain faced economic constraints after the end of WWII, it ceded its role to the U.S., leading to the formulation of the Truman Doctrine and the implementation of the Marshall Plan. The U.S. intervention is analyzed through legal and geopolitical lenses, revealing a strategic focus on preventing communist expansion rather than providing purely legal or moral support for Greece’s recovery. Similar to British actions, American involvement often overlooked the political situation and the will of the Greek people, thereby contributing to prolonged instability.

The Greek Civil War 1946–1949

The Greek Civil War of 1946–1949 was the bloodiest conflict in the history of the modern Greek state and lefl a lasting impact on the political and social life of the country. This paper provides a brief overview of the events of the 40s and attempts to analyze the Civil War through an examination of how it was perceived in the postwar period. Specifically, it will discuss the perspectives that developed in the humanities (historiography, political science), but also the evolution of collective memory on the Civil War, in relation to the political shifls in the country throughout the second half of the 20th century (60s, Dictatorship, Metapolitefsi). The paper represents a multifaceted overview of Greek collective memory of the Civil War and its consequences from 1949 to the present day. Methodologically, it draws from the fields of the history of historiography, public history and memory studies.

Cecil Roth’s Torah scroll shoe soles: collecting Holocaust relics in Greece

ABSTRACT This essay examines two shoe soles cut from a Torah scroll which British historian and collector of Judaica Cecil Roth collected in Greece in 1946. As Holocaust relics, the Torah scroll shoe soles are, in turn, sacred and sacrilegious, texts and objects, Greek Jewish and non-Jewish Greek artifacts. Roth’s recovery of the shoe soles is compromised by occurring under the auspices of the British Army during the Greek Civil War and in the controversial climate of collecting Judaica displaced by the Holocaust. I discuss the ongoing story of the shoe soles: their separation, their use, and their best location.

The Role of Martyrdom and Victimhood in the Memory of the Greek Civil War Refugees in Czechoslovakia through the Prism of ‘Refugee’ Literature

This article focusses on the narratives of collective victimhood and martyrdom in the memories of refugees from the Greek Civil War (GCW, 1946–1949) to post-1948 communist Czechoslovakia (later, the Czech Republic). It analyses literary production by refugees, that is, ego-documents, popular history books and fiction, assessing refugees’ motivations in writing their own histories. It investigates the role of collective victimhood and its effect on the diaspora's identity, its aims and its functions. It determines that the narratives of martyrdom were an early representation by GCW refugees to portray themselves as heroic partisans and anti-fascist fighters and gain the high ground on the moral side of the conflict. Such perceptions, however, have in some cases persisted among communist-oriented authors to this day. This article distinguishes them from more personal expressions of collective victimhood, allowing for a plurality of interpretations of their refugee experience as well as a greater variety of motivations for capturing it in written form for a broader audience. This study aims to show how fluid and permeable these narratives of collective victimhood have been and how fundamentally they have affected the constitution of the GCW diaspora's identity.

“Like we would help brothers or sisters”? Practising Solidarity with Greek Civil War Refugees in Socialist Czechoslovakia and the GDR in the Shadow of World War II

AbstractThis article investigates the solidarity campaigns supporting refugees from the Greek Civil War (1946–1949) in post-war Czechoslovakia and the emerging German Democratic Republic. Framed as an important bridge between the interwar and later Cold War forms of socialist internationalism, this case sheds light on its transitory character, revealing the narrative shift from anti-fascist to anti-imperialist contexts and the increasingly institutionalized and ritualized solidarity. Thus, not only was practising solidarity already an integral part of post-war socialist regimes, but it also served a variety of functions, contributing to the legitimization and identity of the Eastern bloc. Based on archival documents and press, the article uncovers the deployment of analogical institutional structures employed by both states, thus opening up the sphere of interaction with their citizens, mobilized to become involved in various ways. The two countries, however, departed from different positions, dealing with opposing legacies of the wartime experience, which influenced the motivations employed in their campaigns. Entangled in discourses of guilt, heroism, and victimhood, yet aligned under the proclaimed values of socialist brotherhood and anti-fascism, building internationalist solidarity in both countries worked alongside and even boosted attempts to overcome the obstacle of the Nazi past, both internally and in their mutual relationship. This article thus contributes to a better understanding of how internationalist solidarity functioned as a platform to build bridges – not only towards the “South”, but also within the Eastern bloc.

Practising (for) revolution: street mobilizations in Athens as political performatives

ABSTRACT The controversial district of Exarcheia in Athens has a long and turbulent history shaped by dissidence, persecution and marginalization that can be traced back to the Greek Civil war of 1946–1949. In this paper I focus on one of Exarcheia's quintessential characteristic, its weekly riots – colloquially referred to as ‘báhala’. Political, media and vernacular discourses have seen the báhala gradually entering the realm of the criminal and the banal, often regarded as apolitical, senseless acts of vandalism. Contributing to the need for a more nuanced study of resistance, this paper takes a de-pathologizing orientation towards street mobilizations in Exarcheia by placing them under a historicizing lens. It argues that despite their loss of vigour or momentum, their frequent demonization or trivialization, their potency remains intact for it is located in their very repetition; a repetition that renders them political performatives that teach participants the partisan logic of the streets and preserve the historical and ethical legacy of the Struggles of the Greek Left.

Poverty, Wars, and Migrations: The Jonovski Family from the Village of Orovo

This article will cover the different types of migration in Macedonia and its Prespa region at the end of the 19th and 20th centuries through the Jonovski family from the village of Orovo. Poverty and wars caused many men to look for work and to earn money in distant places. Joshe, who was born around 1766, was first an economic migrant with his father, Marko, internally within the Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor (1880–1890). Later, he immigrated to the USA (1914–1918), before returning home to his family. However, after WWI, with the harsh attitude of the Greek government toward the Macedonian minority, this turned into permanent migration. His sons would be migrant workers in the USA, France, and Australia, while their wives and children stayed in Orovo. The village was destroyed and depopulated at the end of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949). Joshe and the remaining family reunited in Wroclaw, Poland, where in the 1950s Joshe died, and his daughters-in-law finally joined their husbands in the USA and Australia. His son Boris, with his family, moved to Skopje, Macedonia, Yugoslavia in 1968. We will look at the life and migrations of Joshe, his four children, and four grandchildren.

Book Review: <em>Children of the Greek Civil War: Refugees and the Politics of Memory</em>

The book ‘Children of the Greek Civil War’ makes several key steps forward in analyzing the politics and emotions surrounding the 47,000 child refugees of the Greek Civil War. Although the war was between the right-wing Greek Government and the left-wing Greek Communist Party, it drew in a large portion of the ethnic Macedonian population of northern Greece who had been promised greater freedom and ethnic recognition by the communists. Among the book’s key steps forward are its side-by-side and even-handed analysis of how the war affected both the Greek and Macedonian children, its discussion and comparison of the government-backed orphanages set up by Queen Frederica and the evacuation program to Eastern bloc countries and children’s homes by the Greek Communist Party, the reliability of its statistics about the children from both sides of the conflict, and the comparison of the education, training, and lifestyle of the children in both sets of institutions. There is also a ground breaking discussion of the claims of genocide by organizations representing both sides of the war. This review also highlights areas where more work is needed to investigate potential acts of genocide by the Greek Government against the Macedonian children.

Problems of the initial stage of the Greek Civil War (1946-1949) on the pages of the British press

The subject of the study is the reflection of the problems of the initial stage (1945-1947) of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1949 in the publications of the British media on the example of the central British publications: the Daily Herald (a newspaper that supported the Labour Party), The Times and The Daily Mirror (a supporter of the British Labour Party) and the Yorkshire Observer (a British publication of liberal views). The questions raised are considered in a problem-chronological plan. The article analyzes the topics of articles and problems on Greece raised by these publications, their attitude to the events in this country and the conflicting parties, the depth of coverage of the topic. The main conclusions of the research conducted for the first time in Russian science are that in the British press, in the face of selected publications, when covering issues of the Greek internal political conflict, objectivity and impartiality were not present in all cases. Sometimes the ascertaining side prevailed over the analytical one. In some cases, publications ignored the most important issues for Greece at that time. The reflection of the international aspects of the Greek war in the context of the "cold war" ("promotion" of anti-communist, anti-Soviet motives) was traced. The research materials can be used for further study of the Greek Civil War of 1946-1946, the propaganda aspect of the Cold War and regional conflicts of the postwar period.

Turks of Western Thrace During The Second World War And The Greek Civil War (1944-1949)

İkinci Dünya Savaşı Almanya’nın 1 Eylül 1939’da Polonya’ya saldırması ile başlamıştır. 1940’ta İtalya’nın, 1941’de Almanya’nın saldırısına uğrayan Yunanistan, kısa bir süre içerisinde işgal edilmiştir. Yunanistan’ın işgali ile birlikte ülke içerisinde direniş amaçlı örgütler kurulmuş ve işgalci kuvvetlere karşı mücadele başlamıştır. Ancak savaşın sonuna doğru örgütler arasında başlayan iktidar mücadelesi, örgütlerin birbirleriyle çatışmasına sebep olmuş ve ülke bir iç savaşa sürüklenmiştir. İç savaş boyunca Batı Trakya Türkleri bir yandan komünist çete mensuplarının saldırılarına maruz kalırken, diğer taraftan da hükümet kuvvetleri ve sağ görüşlü çete üyelerinin tazyikinden kendilerini kurtaramamışlardır. Mücadeleyi sürdüren taraflardan her biri Batı Trakya bölgesini ve burada yaşayan Türkleri, kendi hedeflerini gerçekleştirebilmek için bir vasıta olarak görmüşlerdir. Türklerin yaşadıkları şehir, kasaba ve köyler baskına uğramış ve Türkler büyük can ve mal kayıpları vermiştir. Bu çalışmada arşiv belgeleri ve dönemin basın-yayın organları kullanılarak, Yunan İç Savaşı boyunca çetelerin Batı Trakya Türklerine yönelik baskı ve yıldırma faaliyetleri ile Türklerin bu faaliyetleri karşı tutumu ele alınmıştır.

“Children don’t think about these things”: Qualitative research on the relationship views and experiences of former unaccompanied refugee children

Αlthough unaccompanied refugee minors have sadly been and still are a part of the movements observed worldwide of hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing persecution, violence and war, there seems to be limited research on their relationships from their viewpoint. The present study explored the relationship experiences of former unaccompanied refugee children (now older adults). During the Greek civil war (1944–1949) thousands of children between the ages of three to 14 were taken from their villages in Greece and settled as unaccompanied refugees in institutions in countries of the former Eastern Bloc. The research sought to gain a rich understanding of their views and experiences regarding personal relationships. Nine older adults (8 men and 1 woman), who were separated from their families when they were younger than 10 years of age, were interviewed. Their narratives were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The themes that emerged from the analysis demonstrated that attachment ties to their parents were severely affected by separation raising questions as regards the existence of attachment representations, the importance of relationships seemed generally undermined, while the role of peers was accentuated. The participants’ resilience and coping mechanisms are also discussed.

Special Courts-Martial during the Greek Civil War, 1946–1951: A Comprehensive Evaluation

During the Civil War in Greece (1946–1949), thousands of people were tried by Special Courts-Martial and sentenced to a range of very harsh penalties, including death. Systematic research into the complete archive of the Special Courts-Martial allows a determination of the exact number of people tried as well as the penalties imposed, filling the existing bibliographical gap. Quantitative analysis of the data highlights the primary objective of the Special Courts-Martial, which was to eliminate the Democratic Army and punish communists and their supporters rather than to deliver justice. It also lays bare the correlation between the intensity and scope of military operations and the tempo of Special Courts-Martial at the national and local levels.

The Greek Civil War and Genocide by Forcible Transfer of Children

ABSTRACT The article uncovers the connection between Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention and the Greek Civil War (1946–49). Through archival research and secondary sources, it reconstructs the Greek legal arguments that framed the transfer of children conducted by the communist guerrillas in Northern Greece as an act of genocide and led to the inclusion of this action in the legal definition of genocide. By analyzing the arguments of the Greek government, it presents a new interpretation of Article II(e) of the Convention. It is contended that the historical antecedent of the provision supports a biopolitical understanding of the genocidal act in question. The article concludes with a more general discussion of the continuing importance of Article II(e).

НАЧАЛО ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ВОЙНЫ В ГРЕЦИИ (1946-1949 ГГ.) ГЛАЗАМИ БРИТАНСКОЙ ГАЗЕТЫ "ДЕЙЛИ ГЕРАЛЬД"

The British Labour newspaper "Daily Herald" actively covered the events on the eve of the Greek Civil War (19461949). Correspondents described the role of Great Britain, the confrontation of the right and left Greek forces in the elections, plebiscite and battlefield. The country found itself at the junction of a bipolar system of international relations. No less significant events took place on the information front.

Greeks in Hungary : from the Orthodox Greek merchants to the refugees of the Greek Civil War

The current face of the Greek community in Hungary was undoubtedly shaped by the political refugees who arrived in Hungary due to the Greek Civil War and their descendants. However, this Greek community recognises the legacy of the Greek merchant diaspora of the 18th and 19th centuries, which played a decisive role in the modernisation of Hungary as its own heritage. Therefore, I will briefly describe what this heritage consists of and how contemporary Greeks relate to it. I will then review the history of the resettlement of Greek political refugees in Hungary, with a particular focus on Greek children who arrived in Hungary without parental care. I will present their forced departure from Greece, their arrival in Hungary, their settlement, and their integration, partly based on archival materials and mainly on life history interviews.

Heroes and Anti-Heroes of the 1940s: Pendulous Swings in Greek Historiography

In this article, the author examines the evolution of Greek historiography's approaches to the study of one of the most controversial periods of national history, namely the 1940s, covering World War II and the following Greek Civil War, 1946–1949. Firstly, she demonstrates how the development of historiography after the end of the Civil War was influenced by the social and political situation in the country and how subsequent political development of Greece influenced historical research. The Communists who were defeated in the Civil War were repressed and their contribution to the national resistance movement during the years of occupation was glossed over or negatively assessed. A softening of the official perspective on the issue came in the 1960s, and a comprehensive examination of the events of World War II took place in the 1980s, when the socialists came to power in Greece. However, a consensus perception of the controversial issues in Greek society did not emerge even after the rehabilitation of the Left in the 1980s. These factors set the stage for its revision, which was carried out by a historiographical movement calling itself “New Wave” or post-revisionism, which emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The article analyses the methodological positions of this movement and the most important works of its founders, the political scientist Stathis Kalyvas and the sociologist Nikos Marandzidis. But the debate on controversial issues is far from being over, as the views of the neo-conservatives are gradually making their way into Greek society.

Greek Civil War

Greek Civil War

Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? by Gonda Van Steen

Reviewed by: Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? by Gonda Van Steen Jack Neubauer Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? By Gonda Van Steen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. xx + 330 pp. Cloth $85.00, paper $39.95. Since the conclusion of World War II, hundreds of thousands of Asian children have been adopted by families in the United States and across the Global North. This story is well known. Successive waves of international adoptions from Korea, Vietnam, China, and elsewhere were celebrated in the media and popular culture at the time, and more recently they have been the subject of a growing body of critical scholarship by Catherine Ceniza Choy, Arissa Oh, Leslie Wang, and others. In contrast, the story of the approximately 3,200 Greek children adopted by American families during the Cold War remains largely unknown. As a result, readers of Gonda Van Steen's meticulously researched book, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece, may be surprised to learn that during the "early Cold War period" (1948–1962), adoptions of Greek children to the United States far outpaced even those of Korean children on a per capita basis. An accomplished scholar of ancient Greek theater, Van Steen was inspired to research the history of Cold War Greek adoptions when she received an email from a young man named Mike, whose mother and aunt were adopted by a Greek American family after their father, Greek Communist Elias Argyriadis, [End Page 158] was executed by the Greek state in 1952. The intergenerational story of the Argyriadis family provides a narrative anchor for Van Steen's analysis of Greek-to-American adoptions, which she argues were shaped by the interconnected histories of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), the global Cold War, and the broader international adoption movement. Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece is divided into three parts. Part I analyzes the combustible mixture of "push factors" driving the initial wave of Greek-to-American adoptions in the early 1950s. These include the dire social conditions of post–Civil War Greece (as of 1950, an estimated one in eight Greek children had lost one or both parents), violent persecution of left-wing families, and the Greek state's efforts, led by Queen Frederica, to cultivate American sympathy for "orphan Greece" while alleviating its social welfare burdens. In Part II, Van Steen demonstrates how early efforts to "find families" for Greek orphans transformed into a movement that was driven primarily by "the pull factor of the American demand for available white children" (125). The American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), the largest Greek American voluntary association, helped meet this demand for Greek children through "proxy" adoptions in which a third-party agent matched prospective parents and Greek children with little screening or oversight. The result, Van Steen argues, was "a full-blown black market for babies" that enriched greedy Greek and American middlemen, who resorted to bribery and coercion to reclassify the stigmatized children of Greek single mothers as "adoptable orphans" (124). Based on extensive interviews, Part III presents a montage of individual adoption stories that illuminate the diversity of adoptees' attitudes and experiences. First, Van Steen introduces us to Dionysios Dionou, who refers to himself as a "stolen child" and calls his adopters "purchasers" rather than parents (185–87). A few pages later, we meet Dean, whose adoptive family lovingly joke that the $500 in fees they paid to adopt him was "the deal of a lifetime." Dean even framed the check his American parents used to pay for his adoption as symbol of their special family history (189–90). If the many individual stories in this section eventually start to bleed together in the reader's mind, it only underscores Van Steen's argument that they are constitutive of an emerging "collective subjectivity among Greek adoptees" (239). Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece is intended for both academic specialists and Greek adoptees interested in understanding the complex history behind their own personal journeys. For readers interested in the broader histories of childhood and adoption, Van Steen's in-depth analysis of Cold War Greece provides a fascinating case study for...