How are historical myths constructed and imposed? By silencing and concealing facts, even by destroying documents and testimonies. Occasionally, even by pulping books. In 1973, the Army History Directorate (AHD) finally published the book “The Liberation of Greece and the Subsequent Events (July 1944–December 1945),” which had been in preparation since the 1960s. When I looked for it, 25 years ago, I learned that it had been withdrawn and pulped when center-left PASOK was in power, and the late Akis Tsochatzopoulos was minister of national defense. Did he himself give the order or was it an overzealous subordinate? Whatever the case, there was not a single copy in the AHD library, as I was told when I asked to read it. Not one.
Only in totalitarian regimes does the complete elimination of memory require that there be no traces left, even in the state archives from which the publication originated
That is why, apparently, Grigoris Farakos, the Greek communist activist and one-time secretary-general of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), did not have it in mind either when he did thorough research for his work “ELAS and Power.” (I finally acquired a photocopy of the AHD book thanks to my friendship with political science professor Nikos Marantzidis, who first discovered it.)
Only in totalitarian regimes does the complete elimination of memory require that there be no traces left, even in the state archives from which the publication originated. The AHD book is characterized, of course, by the wildly anti-communist spirit of its time, with terminology that is not only outdated but also inaccurate, since for example, the Communists are called “anarchists.” However, if the only problem had been the language and terminology, the book could have been withdrawn, subjected to the appropriate editing and made available again in a new, “sterile” edition.
But the information it contains was obviously disturbing for some as well. Its value and usefulness lie in the detail with which events, times, military units and numbers of forces are mentioned – as is customary in official military history. The pulping and disappearance of the book made it easier to consolidate the leftist narrative, which PASOK also promoted: that the “December events,” known as Dekemvriana (from December 1944 to January 1945), were a spontaneous, supposedly popular defense against the supposedly “premeditated attack” of the British.
A single example is enough to illustrate how the book’s pulping served leftist narratives, which projected the fictitious image that, apart from the British, the opponents of the KKE and Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) among the Greeks were exclusively “Nazi collaborators” and “members of the Security Battalions.” It therefore ignores the crucial role of Greek military forces, and especially the Greek infantry unit the Third Hellenic Mountain Brigade (Rimini), for which of course neither is true. It is precisely the role of this brigade that is documented and highlighted by the book by AHD.
Thus, its destruction did not serve national reconciliation, but a “rematch” by the defeated, about which I wrote in To Vima daily on October 17, 1999 in a special tribute, which was later published in a book by Hermes Publishers, titled “Fifty Years After the Civil War.” I emphasized at the time that the discriminatory regime that was established against the defeated of the Greek Civil War was characterized by such petty-mindedness, abuse and selfishness on the part of its administrators that it facilitated the romantic refutation of the past by the left from a very early stage. The dictatorship of 1967-1974 was the last attempt to save this regime, first by ridiculing it and then by dragging it along in its downfall. The doors were thus opened wide for the “rematch” in the field of collective memory, which was officially imposed after 1981. Despite the relevant sloganeering, this was not essentially a new perspective on national reconciliation, but an effort to rewrite history from the perspective of the vanquished.
A substantial process of national reconciliation had already begun during the dictatorship. On the ideological level, this took place with the degradation of the ideologies and values that were identified with the victors’ nationalism and excluded the defeated. But above all, it happened on a human and even existential level, as people from both sides – the victors and the defeated of the Civil War – found themselves fighting side by side against the junta. They found themselves in the same prisons and exiles, they were tortured in the same way by the men of the Military Police. One example is Lieutenant General Spyros Moustaklis, who suffered permanent damage as the result of torture by the very people for whom he should have logically been an idol, if they were truly “nationalists.” There is also the case of Center Union party leader George Mavros, who, despite being a bourgeois politician, was found imprisoned on Gyaros, along with the communists.
Therefore, the process of national reconciliation had begun under the junta. Under PASOK, however, it acquired a fabricated and contradictory character. Thus, they advertised with fanfare the meeting of Markos Vafeiadis, a Communist commander in the Civil War, with Lieutenant General Thrasyvoulos Tsakalotos, commander of the III Army Corps during the Dekemvriana, while at the same time they sought to eliminate the official memory of its achievements by destroying the publication that documented them.
George T. Mavrogordatos is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Athens.