New Threat in Greece

...aid and significant rises in agricultural and industrial production have not brought higher living standards or a reduction of chronic underemployment...

...Austria and Finland, this pro-Soviet propaganda might well have fallen on deaf ears...

...Instead, they led to the rise of a new class of parvenu businessmen who place the amassing of private fortunes and the exploitation of others above all other values...

...Meanwhile, because of the anger of the population over Cyprus, the events in Hungary last fall made no impression whatsoever on the Greek people...

...The result is that partisan politics in Greece now consists of a group of maneuvering cliques whose sole aim is the conquest of power for personal gain...

...Eschewing any visible expansion of the illegal Greek Communist party (KKE), the Soviets have concentrated their own efforts in the cultural and commercial fields while winning respectability for the EDA front party...

...Combining official Soviet Government activity with that of numerous front organizations led by the EDA party, the Communists are exploiting the unresolved tensions among all classes of the population and using every possible issue, including Cyprus, to promote Soviet influence...

...Into this situation Moscow has moved with considerable deftness since Stalin's death...

...of mass discontent is left wide open to the Communists...

...But given the permanent despair of much of the population, and the emotional frustration of the Cyprus issue, the manifold influence of Soviet Russia is steadily acquiring greater dimensions...

...Since memories are short, the "anti-Communism" of political leaders is overshadowed by their failure to improve living standards...

...Greek trade unionists also toured Czechoslovakia and China...

...Vienna Arbciter-Zeitung...

...An important milestone was the election of February 1956, in which the EDA participated in a united opposition "People's Front...

...Had the Greek governments of the last decade achieved for ordinary people what was achieved in...

...In the absence of a significant democratic labor movement, the field Manolis Korakas, an Athens University law graduate, is the correspondent of the...

...New Threat in Greece Continuing mass poverty eases task of Communist propagandists By Manolis Korakas Athens Ten years after the Truman Doctrine began to turn the tide in the Greek Civil War, the discontent of the masses of the Greek people is as great as ever, furnishing new openings for Soviet infiltration...

...Fundamentally, the current success of the Soviets is due to Greece's failure to produce, in the eight years since the Civil War ended, a political-social movement which would carry out positive social and economic reforms long overdue...

...In addition, the Communists are actively courting innocents through travel clubs and through theatrical repertory companies which stress nationalist, anti-foreign plays and musicals...

...Where venality is not involved, ignorance of Western technique often leads Greek visitors to the USSR to be over-impressed by Soviet machinery and industrial prowess...

...The Soviet Government is aiding the efforts of the local Communists by facilitating Greek editions of works by Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and others (some 15 such books have been issued since 1953) ; by inviting In Moscow delegations of newspapermen and statesmen (1953), members of Parliament (1956) and trade unionists (1957) ; by sending to Athens the Russian ballet and circus (1956) ; and by fostering ties with Greek exporters and importers...

...Though the conservative government of Con-stantine Karamanlis won the election and the "People's Front" thus dissolved, this event wiped out the clear dividing line which had previously separated the EDA and other Communist fronts from democratic opposition groups...

...In the year-and-a-half since the election, all sorts of joint actions have been undertaken by Communist and democratic political, social and youth organizations...

...The travelers to the Soviet Union, China and Czechoslovakia have filled the pages of the daily press with favorable accounts of Communist society—which are not only promoted by local Communists but often translated into the languages of the Communist bloc, thus providing hefty fees for their authors...

...Substantial U.S...

...Government policies have, to a large extent, aimed to please these aggressive bourgeois—and the opposition political parties also rely on their favor...

...Between the EDA party and the Soviet Government stand a host of national and international social groups which serve Communist purposes, among them the Greek Movement Against Nuclear Weapons, the Greek-Soviet Union, the Friends of New China and the Greek Committee for International Peace...