Greece's Shaky Leadership
RADITSA, BOGDAN
Decline of old political parties and of intelligentsia benefits Communist minority GREECE'S SHAKY LEADERSHIP By Bogdan Raditsa ONE OF THE more reassuring impressions on returning to Athens after...
...A nationalist trend has lately given the Communists new opportunity to splinter even further an already divided political world...
...Lately, even Communist China is paying special attention to Greece, and has invited politicians and writers to visit...
...The opening of new and comfortable hotels has made Athens an attractive international tourist center...
...Like Italy and Spain, Greece too could improve her low economic standard by creating tourist facilities not only in Athens but in the hinterland...
...The little money Greece has is being spent by the present government on luxurious investments in beautifying Athens...
...Greece is surrounded by the Communist world that is slowly corroding its internal security...
...I felt a certain uneasiness, but I had the impression that the liberal forces could keep Communism under control...
...when I was last in Greece...
...For the first three decades of the century Greece was ruled by Venizelos with relative political freedom and stability...
...In 1953...
...In Greece the Monarchy is no longer popular and there is a nostalgia for the republic—nearly half of the population has always been republican...
...The industrial transformation of Yugoslavia is felt in the North in Greek Macedonia...
...The peasants and tobacco workers have a low standard of living, while the white-collar workers and the intelligentsia are not much better off...
...His liberal movement was responsible for making Greece one of the most modern Balkan countries...
...The only way to stop the rising extreme left would be to coordinate the activities of the quarrelsome prima donnas of the conservative and liberal parties...
...Thus, in destroying the government in power by relying on the opposition's passive resistance, the Communists could achieve their aim of starting a series of crises that would weaken Greece politically and aggravate the economic situation...
...Furthermore, Grivas opposes the Monarchy and advocates constitutional changes...
...Nevertheless...
...Thanks to postwar American aid, the Communist bid for power was stymied...
...No great personality has emerged from among the descendants of that generation of politicians...
...Greece's main troubles stem from an organic poverty which could be overcome only through the cooperative spirit of its few immensely rich citizens...
...It did so before the last war and during it when Greek Communists, backed by the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, made an aggressive drive for power...
...In Greece itself the cultural emissaries of the Communist countries are tireless...
...Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia...
...But even more important is the subtle propaganda that the Balkan and Central-European Communist states (together with the Soviet Union) exercise upon Greek intellectuals...
...The capital is indeed becoming an increasingly majestic metropolis, the most impressive in the southeast Mediterranean...
...Among them the Communists find attentive listeners, if not followers...
...Decline of old political parties and of intelligentsia benefits Communist minority GREECE'S SHAKY LEADERSHIP By Bogdan Raditsa ONE OF THE more reassuring impressions on returning to Athens after several years is that the city has attained the prosperity of the rest of Europe...
...Their political impact upon the country seems nil...
...But the wealthy Greeks, particularly the shipowners, keep their wealth abroad and very little of it is used at home...
...The only political issue dividing the country then was republicanism versus monarchism...
...The Greek islands, for instance, among the most picturesque in the Mediterranean, with attractive solitary beaches and coves, are still untouched...
...They know how to divide the clumsy non-Communist opposition and they are exploiting the growing economic crisis...
...None has any following among the masses or even among the urban middle class...
...have left the political scene or have died...
...everyone agreed that a certain amount of playing the parliamentary game was needed to keep the country free...
...The sooner the royal family and Premier Karamanlis appeal for union of all national forces prepared to back a dynamic and progressive economic program the better it will be for shaky and volatile Greece...
...Greek values were the basic values of the West: freedom and individual rights...
...Spyros Markezinis, undoubtedly the most sophisticated of the Greek politicians and a man of serious intellectual interests, would find it difficult to hold a large audience with his restless personality, nor does he have a broad popular program...
...Today one feels that these values are no longer essential and that the intellectual and political world of Greece might yield to any pressure coming from the nearby Communist world...
...Lack of leadership is evident at the top too...
...His personality has electrified Greek nationalists...
...And yet their Left-wing organization, EDA, has 70 deputies in the National Assembly, the second largest party after the Government majority of 170...
...But little or nothing has been done in the countryside, where many famous historical sites would attract tourists and help to improve the standard of living of the local inhabitants...
...In the last few years an impressive number of the most important Greek writers and politicians have been invited to visit not only the USSR but Czechoslovakia...
...The successors of the late liberal leader and great statesman, Elefterios Venizelos, the conservative monarchists now in power do not have their forerunner's quality of leadership...
...With the scenic effects of Malraux's "Sounds and Light Festival" added, even the Acropolis has lost its ancient charm for those who liked to visit it in peace without being forced to hear an imaginary Pericles' voice...
...leadership among the conservative and liberal forces is another important factor...
...Venizelos' own son, Sophocles, has in a few years wasted his father's heritage and today cannot rally even half the votes his father's party used to get...
...The lack of united BOGDAN RADITSA, Professor of Modern European History at Fairleigh Dickinson College, recently returned from an extended tour of Greece...
...But what depresses one most in Greece is the complete indifference or widespread nihilism of the intelligentsia...
...The Communists have not missed the opportunity to side with Grivas in trying to overthrow the Government of Constantine Kara-manlis...
...Yet Greece is politically most uneasy: It is a country in which a Communist minority has become a determining factor in internal politics, but with no real justification...
...What has happened to catapult the Communists once again into an important position in Greek politics...
...Is it because of their actual strength or does it result from the lack of unity in the center and on the right...
...Except for its frontiers with Turkey...
...Knowing Greek politics at first hand from having lived there for a long time in the '30s, I think the primary reason lies in the decline of the old political parties that ruled Greece before the war and in the immediate postwar period...
...Grivas has political ambitions, not only to annex Cyprus but even to change the present set-up manu militari...
...This travelling does not help the Greek intellectual to grow but merely makes him more cynical and blase...
...The greatest social impact comes from Communist Yugoslavia...
...The most impressive phenomenon, I was told by Greek politicians, has been the electrification of Yugoslav Macedonia, a fact easily understood by the Greek peasants who live along the borders...
...This has transformed the Greek intellectual world into a sort of free market of opportunities for each intellectual, who can choose to travel to the East or West, all expenses paid...
...Because of its dislike for the present administration, the non-Communist opposition would also like to see this happen...
...It is the only reasonable way to stop the intrigues of the Communists and rally the Greek people to the tasks of social and economic reform...
...is entering more and more into pettv political squabbles, favoring one political personality over another and thus enabling the Communists to fish in muddy waters...
...But the main opposition to the able Karamanlis' National Rally Government stems from the growing economic crisis...
...This, of course, is not the first time Communism has shown strength in Greece...
...The return of General George Grivas, hero of Cyprus, a typical condottiere of the kind Greece has often had, has produced a new and greater crisis...
...They were people with a sense of national responsibility...
...Though Grivas is not a Communist, he is playing the Communist game by giving his demagogy full rein...
...Republicanism was their ideal and they practiced it intelligently and efficiently...
...They show personal interest in Greek cultural life by often speaking Greek to impress their audiences...
...Neon lights everywhere in the center have destroyed forever the grace Athens possessed 30 years ago...
...where social and economic conditions have not advanced as they should...
...Even the monarchists of Venizelos' era were people of greater stature than those of today...
...The aged C. Papandreou can never again rally a popular movement...
...The intelligentsia has always been a vital force in the Greek nation and Greek intellectuals have always been considered the most cultivated in the Balkans...
...The Greek press has written abundantly and enthusiastically about the industrialization of these countries, their rising standard of living and, particularly, about the favorable economic conditions for intelligentsia in Communist states...
...All these trips are followed by increased economic relations...
...The Monarchy, which should play the role of a patient and tolerant moderator, aloof from the usual intrigues of the Greek political labyrinth...
...The Communists in Greece are small in number, only between 50,-000 and 75,000, controlled by less than 1,500 hard-core underground agents mostly from Rumania...
...The men whom Venizelos educated politically and who formed several smaller parties, Alexander Pap-anastassiou and George Kafandaris...
...But Queen Frederika, said to be the power behind the throne, loves to mix in Greek domestic affairs...
Vol. 43 • March 1960 • No. 12
