In March 1917, thirty two months after the declaration of war, the most prodigious revolution of our century broke out in Petrograd, and then spread like lightening across the immense country. Like all true great popular uprisings, no party, no individual, nobody had decided it, provoked it, proclaimed it or led it. Completely spontaneous, it was the fruit of the maturation of history and caught all the “chiefs”, of every political nuance, completely unawares. The Tsarist edifice crumbled to dust. The republican and socialist bourgeois parties formed a provisional government with the principal objective of convoking a constituent assembly. But it did not possess any real power. The real power could be found in the hands of the soviets, those councils elected by the workers, the soldiers, the sailors, the peasants, in the regiments, on the ships, in the factories, the mines, the ports, the neighbourhoods, the villages, true democratic organs of the revolutionary people. Their members, elected and revocable at any moment, had to be accountable to their electors, were responsible to them and depended on them directly.
This social organisation, which subjected representatives to the permanent control of their constituents, realised for the first time in contemporary history true democracy on the scale of the whole of society. Neither bosses, nor theoreticians, nor parties, nor any authority had imagined or foreseen it. It was the work of the masses, inspired by their class instinct.
In the country in revolution there were meetings, assemblies and councils every day. The masses enthusiastically debated every question. Their critical spirit, their intellectual and organisational capacities flabbergasted the “wise men”, politicians, “specialists” and “professional revolutionaries”.
On 7 November the Second All Russian Congress of the Soviets abolished the provisional government and seized power. The Bolsheviks formed the first Soviet government, then called the Council of People’s Commissars, with Lenin and Trotsky at its head.
After a brief interval, a powerful revolutionary jolt responded in echo to the first proletarian revolution. The world war was transformed into a war of peoples against their governments. In Germany and in Austria-Hungary centuries old thrones collapsed like a house of cards. Everywhere, in Europe as in America, there were revolutionary uprisings, massive economic and political strikes, factory and land occupations. The masses occupied centre stage and turned the world upside down.
The white armies, organised, armed, financed and thrown against revolutionary Russia by the French and British imperialists, and the associates of Denikin, Yudenich, Kolchak, Wrangel and the others, were torn to pieces in the first battles with the insurgent people. The direct military intervention of the imperialists met the same fate. All these armies, no matter how well equipped, were defeated, not only by the heroic resistance of the Russian workers and peasants, but also thanks to the echo which revolutionary slogans found amongst their own soldiers. The mutiny of the French Black Sea fleet and the fraternisation of its crew with the workers of Odessa is well known.
As for the Greek soldiers, those sons of the people that Venizelos had sent to the Ukraine to be killed for the interests of the Tsar and the Russian, French and British imperialists, they broke ranks during the first confrontation with the partisans of Grigoriev, who had called on them to fraternise beforehand, and they seized the first opportunity to hastily cover, in record time, the distance between Nikolayev and Rumania.
The soldiers who had taken part in this expedition told us about the arguments exchanged on this occasion and the appeals of the partisans before the attack:
“Why have you come here?”
Then the Greek officers responded:
“Our country has sent us”.
“To do what? To defend what? The interests of the Tsar, the capitalists and the Russian landlords? The interests of the British and French imperialists? Your duty is to make war against those who have sent you here. Join us!”
“Our duty is what is fixed by our country. And we speak the language of Leonidas[1].”
“And we speak that of the oppressed and exploited of the whole world, that of the Greek soldiers, workers and peasants.”
The impetuous partisan attack dispersed the army. In the flight and the disorder, the officers removed their braid. They knew that officers would not so easily slip through the hands of the partisans. In contrast, the soldiers were welcomed with open arms. And these soldiers told us of all the enthusiasm and passion of that people in revolution.
Another episode, recounted by the soldiers of Görlitz[2], made us quiver with emotion. There, soldiers and male and female workers fraternally mixed together took over the streets. Red flags flew everywhere. It was joyful. Spartacist soldiers, sailors and workers came to find them in their barracks, spoke to them of revolution, of socialism, of the fraternisation of peoples, of workers’ power. Finally, they called on them to go against the orders of their officers and elect their own representatives.
Everything, at that time, gave the impression that the days of the old world were numbered. Labouring humanity lived the greatest moments of its history.
In March 1919 the Founding Congress of the Communist International was held in Moscow. It was the third international union of workers’ political organisations. The decision for the foundation was taken during the war, at Zimmerwald and Kienthal. Few parties took part in this congress. Most of the congress participants represented minorities of parties or secessionist groups. But, in the revolutionary tempest which swept Europe, in the ferment, the general boiling over and under the pressure of their worker members, many among the old socialist parties adhered to the Communist International and were therefore represented at its Second Congress one year later.
The founding congress of the Confederation[3] took place on 21 October 1918, and that of the Communist Party (under the name Socialist Workers’ Party[4]) on 4 November, in a time ruled by terror and martial law. Venizelos not only authorised them but granted them every possible facility. Obviously this was not out of an interest in the political and union organisation of the workers in the country, but because he hoped to use them for his own ends.
The promises made to the peoples by the three “Big Powers” during the Second World War had already been made by governments during the First. We knew the “14 Points” of Wilson: freedom, democracy, self-determination, protection of minorities, etc. But whereas at the end of the Second World War the masses waited passively for the realisation of these promises made so freely by their governments and parties, they rose up at the end of the First, occupying the whole political terrain and threatening to overturn the established order. Every day Moscow hurled its thunderbolts and provoked explosions and conflagrations. To save itself the established order had to make concessions to the masses, and promise them serious and substantial social reforms.
The socialist parties, which a large fraction of the masses in revolt still had faith in, made guarantees of the realisation of the these reforms. Everywhere the capitalists themselves pushed them to the front of the stage. Their representatives had strength and authority at the “peace” conferences. All this explains why Venizelos had authorised and facilitated the foundation of the Communist Party and the Confederation. He thought that he could assure the sympathy and support of the big European socialist parties for his territorial demands on Macedonia and other regions by presenting them through the mediation of the party and under the cover of a “socialist line of argument”. He had already obtained an initial relative success with the mission of Sideris, Curiel and P. Dimitratos at the allied socialist conference of February 1918[5].
No serious debate preceded the founding congresses of the two organisations. The only obstacles which had to be surmounted were the personal differences between leaders. This was a task tailor-made for Benaroya.
Around two hundred delegates took part in the foundation of the GSEE, representing between seventy and eighty thousand workers. Without any serious objection the congress recognised the principle of class struggle, that is to say, the idea that the workers formed a class distinct from that of the capitalists, and opposed to it, and that they would defend their interests in fighting them and not in collaborating with them. The principle that the unions must guard themselves against any bourgeois influence was also accepted by the great majority. This idea implied that the workers had to create their own political party. The recognition of these principles went without saying. It also went without saying what the colour of the flag would be. The first articles of the statutes affirmed that the flag of the union was the red flag of the international working class and that the international red First of May was its official festival.
A little anarcho-syndicalist group around Speras, Koukhtsoglou and Fanourakis strongly opposed themselves to the principle according to which it was necessary “to guard against all bourgeois influence”. They insisted that the union movement must preserve itself not only from bourgeois influence but more generally from all political influence, implying the Socialist and Communist parties as well.
The first Executive Committee of the Confederation comprised eleven members. Amongst them, three, G. Papanikolaou, E. Evangelou and A. Benaroya, belonged to the CPG; two, A. Hatzimikhalis and I. Delazanos, were attached to the Socialist Centre of N. Yannios[6], and the others, including E. Machairas, who was elected secretary, to the liberal movement.
Inevitably the Executive Committee very quickly split into two tendencies, which each convened their own Second Congress: the majority, around Machairas, in Piraeus, the three from the CPG, in Athens. The great majority of unions took part in the Athens Congress, recognised as the only legitimate one. Very quickly the organisation maintained around Makhairas, the agent of the Venizelists, dissolved.
The Second Congress took place in Athens in September 1920. Only two tendencies confronted each other: the great majority, members and partisans of the CPG, and the little anarcho-syndicalist group of Speras. This Congress recognised the Communist Party as the sole political representative of the working class, and decided on reciprocal representation, that is to say that one representative of each organisation would participate in instances of the other at all levels, central and local. That is, participation of one representative of the Central Committee of the Party in meetings of the Executive Committee of the Confederation, and the other way round, and the same operation in the provinces, this time at the level of the union offices and the regional organisations of the Party.
This created many problems for Evanguelou, Secretary of the GSEE for many years. He was seen as very malicious for turning against the ministers and the bosses. While Rizospastis remained the organ of just the CPG, its attacks against the ministers did not prevent him from discussing with them. From then on, with the newspaper being also that of the GSEE, it would be difficult for him to pretend that the Confederation had nothing to do with its content. One day, Spyridis, Minister for the National Economy, agreed to the demands which he had put to him. But the next day Rizospastis caricatured Spyridis on the front page and violently attacked him. Furious, the Minister asked Evanguelou: “What does this say, is this your way of thanking me?” But, Evanguelou succeeded in convincing him that the Confederation had no responsibility for… that page of the newspaper.
Speras expressed himself in a vehement and opinionated way against reciprocal representation, defending the autonomy of the union movement and insisting on the risks that this real domination exercised by the CPG imposed on the working class. I witnessed this Congress, and the passion with which Speras defended his opinions, his astonishing eloquence and his convincing arguments impressed me more than anything else.
I met him again in prison in 1938, in the transfer section of Piraeus. He was there for a breach of common law. We spoke with emotion of the heroic epoch of the movement. He mentioned his past and spoke, full of enthusiasm and passion, of the action of the anarchists in Spain.
His name can be found on a list of worker cadres murdered by the OPLA[7]. They killed him because he had had differences with the CPG twenty five years before.
The organisations and socialist youth of Athens, Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Volos, the organisations of Corfu and Halkis and the journals Workers’ Struggle and Avanti took part in the founding congress of the Communist Party. Yannios represented his group there, but he was in disagreement from the start and withdrew.
Three principal tendencies defined themselves clearly enough: the right (A. Sideris, P. Dimitratos), the centre (N. Dimitratos, A. Benaroya and the delegation from Thessaloniki) and the left (D. Ligdopoulos, F. Tzoulatti, M. Ikonomou, S. Komiotis).
The Congress recognised and proclaimed the general principles of socialism and sent a message of support to the Russian Revolution, but on the decisive questions of the moment, those on which revolutionaries and reformists across the whole world opposed each other, it was the points of view of the right and the centre which won and were voted for. Thus they recognised “national defence”, the “League of Nations” and “popular democracy”.
N. Dimitratos, D. Ligdopoulos, M. Sideris, Arvanitis and Kokkinos were elected to the first Central Committee. The CC put Ligdopoulos in charge of Workers’ Struggle, the official press organ of the party.
The Second Congress was convened in April 1920. Its most significant decision was to join the Communist International, including certainly the unreserved acceptance of its principles and the resolutions of its Congresses.
Georgiadis wrote the reports there. The word “communist” was added between brackets to the initial title “Workers’ Socialist Party”.
N. and P. Dimitratos, Y. Kordatos, G. Doumas and M. Sideris were elected to the new CC.
These very serious decisions would be quickly forgotten by the same people who had presented and voted on them.
Of all the work and debates of the Congress, only the declaration of Spyros Rallis, representing the Corfu organisation, remained in the memos for a long time. The order of the day was the tactics of the party. Specifically the immediate action to be taken. A pamphlet by Lossovsky on immediate action and organisation by enterprise had been distributed. The president invited the Corfu representative to give his opinion and to vote. And Rallis, who had had a bit to drink, got up and declared, pronouncing every word: “In conformity with the mandate received by the Corfu section, I vote for immediate action and civil war”. Speaking immediately, Sideris (also from Corfu) asked him: “Tell me, comrade Rallis, since when have you become so thirsty for blood in Corfu ? There hasn’t been a murder there for a century.”
The last great deed of the “glorious” epoch of Venizelism was the transportation of the army, and the war, to Asia Minor. The Greek troops set out for Izmir in May 1919. So began the most tragic adventure of the country and its people, and the most costly.
In the beginning the war was limited to clashes with irregular formations of partisans. But Kemal, from the far end of Anatolia, denounced the capitulation of the sultan, galvanised and enthused the Turkish people and called for resistance against the invaders by every means. Very quickly groups of partisans formed themselves into a powerful well-equipped regular army. The ineluctable character of the defeat and collapse of the Greek army took on the appearance of a physical law.
On the Greek side, according to the criteria habitually and generally admitted, this war was reactionary, the invasion of a foreign territory, an invasion whose main reason was to safeguard British interests in the oil fields of the Middle East. The Greek army gave its blood, playing the servile and degrading role of gendarme of the colonial interests of British imperialism.
The Russian government and the Communist International had characterised the war led by Kemal as a war of national liberation and had “in consequence” judged it as progressive, and for that reason supported it politically and diplomatically and sent him advisors, arms and money. If we consider that Kemal was fighting a foreign invasion to liberate the Turkish soil, his struggle had a character of national liberation. But was there anything progressive about it? We believed this and supported it then. But how can we defend the same thesis today? For something to be progressive in our era and to be considered as progressive it must contribute to the raising of the class consciousness of the worker masses, to developing their capacity to struggle for their own emancipation. What has the creation of the modern Turkish state contributed to this? Kemal didn’t just aim to expel the foreign invaders from Turkish territory, but also to create a purely Turkish state by the liquidation of national minorities, millions of Greeks, Armenians, Kurds, Cherkess etc. He achieved this objective after his victory, threw the Turkish Communists into the jails where he hanged them, and then finally turned his back on Russia, establishing cordial relations with the imperialists and giving himself the job of protecting their interests. The correct policy, in line with the interests of the proletarian revolution, would have been to call on the Greek and Turkish soldiers to fraternise, and the popular masses to struggle together, without letting themselves be stopped by national, racial and religious differences, for the republic of workers’ and peasants’ councils in Asia Minor. Independently of the policy of Russia and the objectives of Kemal, the duty of Greek Communists was definitely one of intransigent struggle against the war.
The Kemalist movement was a real headache for the theoreticians of the Communist International. It didn’t fit into any of the historical categories determined by Marxist theory. To speak only of national liberation meant nothing. Because this is not a social definition. What is the class nature, the social content of the movement? Is it a bourgeois-democratic revolution? But all the businesses in Turkey were Greek, Armenian and Jewish. That was the bourgeoisie. And this bourgeoisie, Kemal dealt with by fire and iron. After his victory, it wasn’t possible for a single vestige of them to remain on the whole of the Turkish territory. In addition, the big companies, the banks, railway companies etc. were French and German, and Turkish only in name. That is to say, a Turkish bourgeoisie did not exist. So, how to define the movement? “A historical anomaly”? “A bad turn of the dialectic”? (It is Trotsky who introduced these curious definitions into Marxist literature). In the end, as the movement was decidedly resistant to any classification, it entered into the archives under the label “Kemalist movement”.
When Venizelos returned to Athens, the Treaty of Sèvres[8] in his pocket and crowned with the glory of a martyr after his attempted assassination in Lyon[9], he was praised to the skies. Meeting in the Athens stadium, the mayors and presidents of the localities proclaimed that he had earned the recognition of his countrymen. How could there be any doubt that he would gather under his name the great majority of the people at the elections? Despite the advice of some of his friends, he called the elections for 1 November 1920. The United Opposition[10] came away from the voting with absolute power.
The explanation for the crushing defeat of the “creator of Greater Greece” is not difficult to find. The popular masses had, by voting against Venizelos himself and his party, rejected the war and the terror. In France and Britain the Prime Ministers Clemenceau and Lloyd George, victorious in the war, had met the same unfortunate fate.
At this time I found myself in Thessaloniki. As the results were announced, massive demonstrations formed spontaneously, there was huge participation by soldiers and the peasants from the surrounding villages came into town, holding candles and shouting “Christ is risen”. The gyparaioi, the Cretan gendarmes, all the truncheon wielders… were nowhere to be seen.
A certain number of party members allowed themselves to be carried away by the current and participated in these solemn processions. We convened a whole series of meetings to deal with this problem and many members were expelled. With similar demonstrations of joy and enthusiasm across the whole country the popular masses greeted the defeat of Venizelos and the victory of the United Opposition.
In December the same year a plebiscite returned Constantine to the thrown.
The CPG stood election candidates in the main regions of the country. The local organisations proposed the candidates, who were finally designated by an extraordinary electoral congress. The electoral programme was elaborated at this same congress (September 1920). Massive rallies and meetings in Athens, Piraeus and Thessaloniki testified to the vitality and success of the campaign. The slogan “hammer and sickle” resounded in the working class neighbourhoods and the trade union centres. The presence of the party was very visible. It got a hundred thousand votes, a significant figure, if we take into account the fact that the population was then less numerous and that women did not have the right to vote. And without any doubt these voters were workers. But the same workers voted simultaneously for the United Opposition, believing that a vote only for the Communists would be taken as a demonstration of support for Venizelos. The electoral system allowed for this double vote (a system of balls: there was one ballot box per candidate, and you voted by putting a black ball or a white ball in each one of them).
During the plebiscite for the return of Constantine, the party called on the people to abstain. But, in Thessaloniki, we called on the workers to vote against, and in favour of the republic. This brought us immediately into conflict with the monarchists.
The popular joy didn’t last long. The United Opposition had denounced Venizelos over the years, and the war and the terror with him. They had publicly, formally, categorically promised that they would bring it to an end and that the people would finally enjoy freedom and peace.
It became apparent very quickly that all these promises of peace and freedom were nothing other than the usual pre-electoral trickery. In its turn the new government used violence and terrorism against its opponents. Para-state organisations appeared everywhere. The government imposed new taxes and seized half the value of the currency in circulation by a forced loan. The hundred drachma bill became worth no more than fifty. And, most importantly for the people, the war in Asia Minor continued with a redoubled intensity. In March, the classes were called under the flags again. The Sakarya[11] campaign, led by Constantine and designed to raise his prestige, cost rivers of blood and ended in a pitiful defeat.
The illusions began to crumble, and with them the fanaticism born from the opposition between royalists and Venizelists, which had confused everything and so held back the class struggle, faded. The masses began to recognise their flag and to gather around it. The surprise, the bitterness born from the deceit and betrayal of the United Opposition turned to anger, to a resolve to struggle.
The year 1921 is rich in struggles which clearly display their class character. On 10 February the sailors went on strike. The ships moored in the ports only left when the demands of the strikers had been satisfied. At that time the sailors formed one of the most combative and best organised battalions of the working class. The headquarters of their federation could be found in Piraeus, in a building visible from a long distance by the crews of the ships entering the port. It was agreed that a flag should be raised there in the event of a call to strike. Many sailors abandoned their ships and threw themselves into the sea before even dropping the anchor, just on seeing it. And for the whole duration of the strike, they remained in the area ready to intervene if the ship owners tried to use scabs.
At this time Angelis was the secretary of the sailors’ federation almost permanently; he didn’t understand a lot about politics but he was faithful and devoted to the party.
On 15 February there was a general strike in Volos, combative demonstrations and violent confrontations with the police lasting two days. The exasperated demonstrators wrecked numerous factories and shops. Finally “order” was re-established and some people were arrested. Thus A. Benaroya, K Theos, Th. Apostolidis, Y. Papanikolaou and many others from amongst the thousands of fighting workers were arrested, imprisoned and brought before the courts for rebellion.
The same month the railway workers went on strike across the whole country. The government replied by a massive number of arrest warrants, conscripting the strikers and sending them to the front. Their ardour and determination was only reinforced by this. Despite the pleas of the government, which asked for a train to be put in service to transport the Patriarch of Antioch from Kalamata to Athens to bless the marriage of the crown prince, the strikers refused. The strike ended with a certain degree of success.
On 18 April (the First of May according to the new calendar, but Easter according to the old one which was still in force then[12]) in Thessaloniki, the workers celebrated their international day with gatherings and demonstrations in various neighbourhoods, despite the police ban. The same day, a convoy of soldiers heading for the front mutinied, refusing to board and joining the workers. Martial law was declared and A. Papadopoulos, Ch. Tzallas, A. Dimitratos and S. Priftis were arrested and put in front of the exceptional military tribunal of Adrianoupoleos.
In May, there was a strike of the Athens-Piraeus electric railway workers. The trains were immobilised on the tracks, and one blocked the underground station of Omonia in Athens.
The government arrested many strikers and sent them to the military tribunal. Eleven of them were sentenced to eight years in prison and sent to the Akronafplia fortress.
In Corfu in December a rally of olive producers, demanding only the free extraction of oil, transformed itself in the afternoon into a combative demonstration against the war. The roar of blunderbusses and dynamite accompanied the cries of “down with the war!”. A section of soldiers joined the angry peasants. The authorities were terrified. The prefect was trembling so much when he appeared at his window to speak that his false teeth fell out. Later that evening the gathering got out of hand and the police re-established “order”.
The following episode is very indicative of the state of the peasants’ spirit: at that time I had deserted from the army and at that very moment I was hiding in the town. When the rally turned into a demonstration against the government and the war, I naturally slipped into the mass of demonstrators. Besides, there I was safer from discovery by the police or the military authorities. On Telegraph Square, now Theotokis Square, surrounded by peasants, I tried to make a speech. But I was wearing a tie, and I didn’t really have the manner of a peasant, certainly not that of a peasant of the era. Worse, I was used to workers’ meetings and began with: “Comrades!”. It was impossible to say another word. Cries of protest came from all around: “Down with the stiff collars!”, “We are not comrades!”, “Down with the politicos!” Following me, one of our peasants spoke and took up the speech that I had started to make. His dress, his face, his hands, his language were those of an authentic peasant. This time the peasants enthusiastically greeted, acclaimed, applauded the orator and his speech.
Such are the most notable events of this first year of anti-Venizelist and monarchist power, or at least those which still live in my memory after so many years.
The most conscious, the most combative, the best organised workers of that time, in Athens and Piraeus, were the sailors, the mechanics, the cigarette makers, the tram drivers, the postal workers, the typographers, the food industry employees, and finally the electricity workers (in production, power station service and lines). These, after a series of victorious strikes, secured serious gains (according to the standards of the time). Apart from high wages (relatively) and tolerable conditions of work, their solidarity fund (intended first of all for the sick) was financed by the company, without being taken from their wages, and without any right of control by the company or the state. The president of the union was on leave of absence with a full salary for the whole of his term of office. This meant that the company paid him without him working.
Generally, all the electricians were active members of the union, and most of the technicians and power station workers passed through the party at one time or another. Two of them, M. Sideris and G. Papanikolaou, are counted among its founders and were members of its Central Committee. Their strikes, always launched without warning, count amongst the most grandiose and impressive events of the era. Athens and Piraeus would be plunged into darkness, the trams and the electric railway stopped in their tracks. In the power station they made sure that the cables were tangled up in such a way that only they knew how to untangle them, and they put signs everywhere saying: “Deadly danger”. No one dared to venture in there, even the most qualified. The strikers gathered in front of the power station or in the union offices, ready to intervene.
This incident with Venizelos, which I believe is not very well known, illustrates very well the strength of the workers. The head of the union committee insistently demanded to be received by Venizelos at an ungodly hour: it was night time and the “revived” Chamber of 1915[13] was in session. Visibly irritated, Venizelos received the committee in one of the rooms in parliament, but the committee had just begun to express its opinion when he interrupted with a “rejected without discussion” and headed straight out. He had hardly uttered these words when the lights of parliament went out, along with all those of Athens and Piraeus. Calmly and imperturbably, Papanikolaou, the president of the union, a boy who was fast on his feet, took a candle out of his pocket, lit it and said to Venizelos, very solemnly: “Sit down, Mr. President, so we can continue this discussion”. Venizelos stayed, the demands were accepted, and only then did the lights come back on.
Nevertheless, these workers, most of whom passed through the party, ended up a few years later in the most conservative wing of the movement. When the enterprise passed from Poloyorgis to the Power company the gains of the workers were legally guaranteed in all the official documents of transfer and in the contract between the public authorities and Power. But this only applied to the workers who worked in the enterprise before the advent of the new contract, and not to those hired afterwards by Power. Power immediately took on hundreds of scab workers on starvation wages and without any of the privileges enjoyed by the old workers. Not only did the union not try to make them beneficiaries of the advantages of the old workers, but it refused to have them in its ranks. All the attempts by the party to change the position of the union failed. I myself, as the secretary of the Piraeus region in 1927-1928, brought up the question many times in front of the numerous enough fraction of electricians, but they resisted inflexibly. These people had assured themselves of a privileged position in relation to other workers and they had no intention of risking it for reasons of solidarity. The duty of a revolutionary party was to exclude them, to denounce them and to stigmatise them in front of the working class. This did not happen.
Indisputably the CPG organised in its ranks in that era cadres who were the most combative, the most devoted and the best pick of the working class. Everywhere, in all the fights it experienced, they were in the front line. Members of the party had been arrested at Volos, Athens, Piraeus, Thessaloniki and elsewhere. In the army, its conscripted members – most of its members found themselves under the flags – had developed a very serious and responsible antimilitarist and antiwar movement. There existed a Communist cell in almost all the frontline units. These cells were connected with each other and their activity was coordinated by a central committee whose authority they all recognised. Propaganda material (leaflets, newspapers, pamphlets) circulated everywhere and was sent to the front from bases created in Thessaloniki and Dedeagach[14]. The railway worker strikers who had been mobilised and sent to the front served on the railways there. They were in charge of communications and the transport of material. Pantelis Pouliopoulos was the brain and the spirit of this Communist organisation in the army. Everything happened without the knowledge of the Central Committee and against its will.
The party in no way had a stable line and concrete objectives. Its confused and opportunistic politics undoubtedly presented pro-peace and “pro-worker” aspects but never went beyond that stage. Here and there articles burst out under sensational titles “The Brothel State”, “We answer by the word of Cambronne”, but we always waited for a revolutionary policy which would rise to the level of the critical issues of the war.
I arrived in Thessaloniki one cold morning in October 1920, after a lengthy voyage on board an old tub of a boat. I sat at a table in a cheese shop next to the sea, drank some milk and then asked the owner to direct me to the trade union centre. He helpfully left the shop with me and showed me an imposing building on top of which flew an immense red flag.
From the customs office to the White Tower, and from the shore up to the Agiou Dimitriou strip, everything had been burnt. The pile of mines dating from the fire of 1917 threw even more into relief the only two big buildings which were still standing in the area, the governor’s palace[15] and the trade union centre.
Thessaloniki enjoyed a long socialist tradition. Before 1912, the Federation had been the Turkish section of the Second International (it had been admitted in November 1909). Rakovsky had visited it in 1910 and had spoken at a public meeting held in the Krystall café. When the town became Greek, the Federation immediately took the initiative of unifying all the socialist groups in the country and creating of a single socialist party. At the founding congress of the party its representatives situated themselves politically in the centre.
The majority of its members were workers and Jewish intellectuals, influenced by the reformist ideas of social democracy and the democratic traditions of the old workers’ movement. Starting in 1919, when the Federation became a section of the party, a good number of Greek workers joined it, particularly cigarette makers and tobacco workers. The party organisation worked closely with the trade union centre and had its offices in there. The centre could be found in Agiou-Dimitriou, between the church of Agios Dimitrios and the governor’s palace. It was a building with three floors, but it was one of those old hotels which were almost as tall as buildings with several floors today.
On the ground floor was the restaurant and the music and conservatory rooms. On the first floor was the buffet, a big room for meetings and, around it, the offices of the party, those of the organisation of bakery workers, carpenters and cobblers, the library and the reading room. On the upper floor, were those of the executive of the trade union centre, the tobacco workers, the employees and the youth. On each floor was a big veranda looking out onto Agiou-Dimitriou street. The building was surrounded by quite a high wall setting out a vast courtyard behind it and to its left. Every evening the rooms were full of workers and everywhere, apart from in the reading room, debates were taking place, passionately but in a comradely atmosphere, on all the problems of the movement. The reading room was also full of workers of both sexes who were calmly engaged in study. Here we wrote in chalk on a blackboard fixed to the wall, in the form of “war reports”, the victories of the Red Army in Poland, in the Ukraine, in Siberia. The first thing workers looked at when they came was this board. Groups existed in all the Jewish quarters, and every evening crowds of young men and women gathered, following the conferences and participating in the debates.
The secretary of the local party organisation was Sargologos, and that of the union centre was Gr. Papanikolaou.
Avanti, the party daily in the Jewish language[16], had quite a large distribution, as did Workers’ Voice, put out every week by the union centre and the party. Workers made up the great majority of the members, particularly those in tobacco and cigarette making. Among the Greek speaking members, only the doctor Evropoulos and the journalists Kastrinos and Riginos were intellectuals. Among the Jewish members on the other hand, there were a lot of them, and some of a very high level, with a solid Marxist formation: Abraham Cohen (he went to America with Trotsky), Roza Cohen, Alberto Carasso, Moïssis Carasso, Ventura, Arditti, Nephoussi and others. Many Jewish members worked in the press and some wrote articles. At the assembly of the organisation some comrades and I raised this problem. Was it possible to be a communist and at the same time to write for the bourgeois press? The assembly decided that it was not compatible and called on those concerned to stop. Those who did not obey were expelled.
Every three months the members of the party met at the Ordinary General Assembly. Criticism and debate on the most burning problems of the movement followed the report of the local committee and the control commission. Most of the members participated and the debates took place on a very high level. All the speakers freely set out their opinion whatever it was. There were no taboos, we did not have to conduct ourselves like robots and nobody had their name dragged through the mud because they disagreed. These assemblies lasted several days (in fact just the evenings, after work). At the end we took the decisions and elected the members of the local committee and the control commission.
Pamphlets were sent out quickly, along with The Marxist Review, and their content gave us material to debate for days. At that time the unions organised the majority of the workers in Thessaloniki. The cigarette makers and the tobacco workers were all active trade unionists, and you couldn’t find a single one amongst them who defended the bourgeois parties. They were Communists, Socialists or anarchists (mostly the cigarette makers). But all felt themselves above all to be workers, with a high level of class consciousness and a strong sense of solidarity.
The various tendencies within the workers’ movement could express themselves without any hindrance. When Sargologos (secretary of the local party organisation) tried to stop members of the Communism group from selling their journal in the union centre, it was disapproved of by all the workers, Communists or not, and Communism was sold freely.
The party enjoyed the confidence and respect of all the workers organised in unions. The Socialist and anarchist workers who forcefully opposed the Communist leaders of their union considered it their duty to defend the party in their neighbourhoods when it was criticised by the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie.
The workers had confidence in the leadership of their union and obeyed it, quite simply because they had freely elected it. But for the most serious problems it was definitely the assembly which decided.
In all the tobacco processing factories there were committees elected by the workers and each “salon” had its representative.
In the neighbourhoods and the workers’ cafés, in the houses, every day there were debates about the movement.
When the International was played by the orchestra or sung by the choir at the Centre, all the workers stopped what they were doing, took their hats off, and stood to attention.
At that time (October and November 1920), all the members of the party and hundreds of non-party workers were primarily absorbed by electoral agitation and propaganda. I myself took a very active role in this, distributing leaflets, putting up posters, painting the hammer and sickle on walls, making speeches in the neighbourhoods.
I want to emphasise some events which illustrate the high level of class consciousness of the workers of Thessaloniki.
We knew about the “Balfour declaration”, the official promise made to the Jews by the British government during the First World War that it would set them up on the soil “of their fathers”. The Jewish community and the Thessaloniki synagogue had called the Jews together to celebrate the news. The gathering took place in the morning, and behind closed doors. The afternoon of the same day masses of Jewish workers and intellectuals took to the streets, waving red flags, with these slogans: “It is not in the state of Israel but in the world socialist society, united fraternally with all the peoples of the world, that we, the Jews, will guarantee our lives, our security and our well-being”, “Long live the world socialist revolution”, “Down with Zionism”.
There is something we should note here. It was not only the Jews of Thessaloniki but millions of Jews across the world who put all their hope in socialism and struggled for it. The socialist and revolutionary parties could count within their ranks a large number of Jews, out of all proportion to their numbers in the population. The greatest theoreticians of Marxism, Marx, Luxemburg, Trotsky, were Jews.
How can these same Jews, the most authentic internationalist revolutionaries, have been metamorphosed into nationalists? How could Zionism, originally an insignificant sect of religious fanatics, transform itself into a mass movement? How could millions of Jews who lived with the grand vision of a world society of free producers decide to make the creation of a little national state their aim in life? Were those who employed a language against Israel little different from that of Goebbels ever able to ask these questions?
The movement for the foundation of the state of Israel, which at the start only gathered an insignificant number of fanatical bigots in quest of a utopia, became a matter for large masses of Jews in the years before the Second World War and the Hitlerian genocide. When already the hope of a social emancipation within a global community had begun to evaporate. When it had become clearer that the realisation of the age-old dream of the oppressed of the whole world looked more like a hideous nightmare. Then came the war, and the camps, the crematoria, genocide, the holocaust of Warsaw with the benevolent neutrality of the Russians, the disgraceful attitude of France and Britain towards the refugees. The whole world participated in the pogrom. In an era when the socialist ideal had drowned in a sea of nationalist hatred, how can we not understand that all of the Jews should fix on the aim of finding a corner of the planet where they could settle, or at least die defending themselves with guns in their hands. But people already lived in the place where they settled, poor people like them, workers and peasants. Thus, with the blessing of the two superpowers, the conditions were created for a permanent war between Jews and Arabs. Can’t those on the left who call for the destruction of Israel, that is to say the achievement of the work of Hitler, not imagine another politics? Haven’t they ever thought about the fraternisation of peoples, their common struggle against their respective governments and for the republic of workers’ councils in the Middle East?
At this time the lot of the cigarette makers posed a problem for the working class. By way of a response to their last strike, the industrialists had replaced them with machines. It was the first time that cigarette making machines had been used in the country. As well as protests, motions etc., the trade union centre decided to call a mass demonstration which all the workers of Thessaloniki took part in with their wives and children. The workers swamped the streets of the town, demonstrating massively in solidarity with their brothers. At the head of the human wave was a big sign: “Give bread to the cigarette makers”. Finally, they were compensated on several occasions, but each time “once and for all”.
One morning in February 1921, we were told at the union centre that a pogrom was being prepared against the Jews. Word had gone round that they had kidnapped a little Christian girl with the aim of killing her and using her blood in their religious rites. The criminals, adventurers and bigots had begun to gather, to shout, to insult the Jews, and were openly pushing for a pogrom. The union centre buglers sounded the alarm and called the workers to stop work and to get together. It was an alarm known to the workers, and when it rang out they had to immediately stop whatever they were doing, arm themselves with whatever came to hand and rush to the union centre. Some young people headed for the factories and the workers’ neighbourhoods. In less than half an hour, thousands of workers had assembled in front of the union centre and an enormous human mass set off in the direction of the pogromists, with a sign at its head: “Hands off the Jews”. The whole bunch of vagabonds, thugs and cretins, along with the traders and priests who had stirred them up, scattered at the sight of the popular torrent. Following this we formed a committee and demanded that the Governor General arrest the instigators. They were arrested and imprisoned. Two months later, we met them again in the new prison, when it was our turn to be granted its hospitality.
A gathering of bakery workers, called outside the union centre because of some decision by the government, suffered a savage attack from a powerful group of thugs from the Macedonian Royalist Youth. Many were injured in the clashes, and I myself suffered a serious blow to the head. After breaking up the gathering, the thugs, shouting and pushing barrel organs in front of them playing the monarchist anthem The Son of the Eagle, headed towards the union centre. But in the meantime, informed in an instant, all of workers’ Thessaloniki rushed from the factories and the neighbourhoods with improvised weapons, iron bars, axes, clubs, to defend the centre and their comrades.
The centre was the target of daily attacks from royalist thugs. They went around in cars, shouting crude insults, firing shots, but fleeing chaotically when the workers marched out of the building. At this time the police left us alone, but they left the henchmen of the Royalist Youth alone as well. The liberals had disappeared from the scene and no one mentioned them.
At the end of 1920 and at the beginning of 1921, Communists came from numerous other towns and gathered in Thessaloniki. We were all young and thoroughly impregnated with the principles of the Russian Revolution. Thessaloniki, the heart of the movement, attracted us like a magnet. Here are some names which come back to me from that time: Y. Ioannidis and Kaltekis (the first, a barber, the second, a cigarette maker, sought refuge here, hunted since the February events in Volos), M. Papadopoulos, Mikhailidis, Zissiadis, Avgoustis, Alekos, Dimitratos (tobacco workers), St. Arvanitakis (cigarette maker), Kypridimos (bakery worker), Tomoglis (building worker), Stefanoudakis (electrician), Sfontilis, Seïtanidis, Palaistis, Yamoyannis and myself (employees), Spanakis, Zogas, Vintsilaios (soldiers), Strakos (sailor in Karamboumou).
The best known were: Yannis Ioannidis, very well known in the movement since he refused to put party cards in circulation with a photo of Benaroya. “Cards with his photo will only circulate when he is dead, and on condition that he was revolutionary right to the end”, he had said, and the party cards were not distributed in Volos. The same Ioannidis later turned into the most resolute and sinister Stalinist bureaucrat. As for Aristidis Dimitratos, it was indeed he who became the Minister of Labour under Metaxas and then Karamanlis. Sfontilis (Pyliotis) and Vintsilaios were in the Communism group. Pyliotis evolved a bit like Ioannidis. Khristos Seïtanidis, who later led the group Towards the Masses, was executed under the Occupation by the Italians. Stelios Arvanitakis was for some years the principal spokesman for the most extremist tendencies in the party. He was killed by OPLA during the Occupation for having committed this sin. Alekos G. (I don’t remember his family name any more) killed a grass and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Tomoglis was killed in a police station during the general strike of August 1923.
We met up with each other very quickly. In agreement on ideas, we strengthened our links and decided to organise the fight to purge the party of opportunists and to take in hand the struggle against the war as we understood it, without taking account of the official leadership and what it was able to decide.
The twenty one conditions were then discussed in all the Communist parties, conditions that had to be accepted unreservedly by those who wanted to be admitted into the Communist International. We called for their acceptance without reserve. One of them made provision for the immediate expulsion of all those who had stood for the defence of the nation during the war. For us this condition had a decisive importance. Most of the other ones dealt with the discipline of the parties in the International. This discipline, for us, went without saying. There is only one revolutionary movement, worldwide and indissoluble.
To extend and coordinate our action across the whole country, we then tried to enter into contact with comrades of the left known from the other party organisations. I was put in charge of this task. So we established contact with Serres (Hatzistavrou), Volos (Theos, then in prison), Athens (Ikonomou), Corfu (Rallis) and with the front.
Our struggle enabled us to overturn the old local leadership of Sargologos, and worker comrades close to our views entered it again (Papadopoulos, Tzallas, Ikonomou, Paschalis). But it was in the editorship of Workers’ Voice that our victory was most complete. The editorial committee comprised the journalist Riginos, the doctor Evropoulos and myself, and I was appointed director.
As Riginos and Evropoulos were mostly there for reasons of protocol, the editorship of the journal fell entirely to me and through me certainly to our fraction. Thus, Workers’ Voice became an authentic revolutionary organ, an organ of intransigent struggle against the war.
The respective editorial committees of Avanti and Workers’ Voice were elected by the assembly. The local committee did not have the right to dismiss them, only the assembly could do that. Thus the editorial committee enjoyed a certain independence.
At the same time, as a fraction, and not as a party organisation, we organised the sending of propaganda material to the front. Every week we prepared packages with Workers’ Voice, pamphlets and leaflets, which were sent to Smyrna, poste restante, in the name of Raoul Avgeris. Our organisation in the army then picked them up and shared them out to the various units. (I knew Raoul Avgeris – this obviously wasn’t his real name - in Corfu in 1924. He was a pupil at the urban police school, which had just been created. It was the very same person who had been in contact with us. Constantin Bastounopoulos, alias Costis Bastias[17], was also once a pupil in that school. He also acted the leftist and was linked to progressive literary circles. He had a bust of Liebknecht on a table in his room.)
Apart from these regular dispatches, we noted from weekly publications the addresses of soldiers and NCOs who wanted to correspond with young ladies. We wrote to each one saying that it was all well and good to correspond with girls, but that he mustn’t forget the other much more important and serious problems: why was he fighting? Why was he putting himself in permanent danger being killed or maimed? What was the sense of this war? Who had an interest in it? etc. In this way we made contact with numerous soldiers and afterwards put them in contact with the organisation inside the army. During the mobilisation of March 1921, there wasn’t a single reservist assembly point where we were not present, making speeches and distributing leaflets. There was almost no surveillance on the part of the military and police authorities. The official authorities of the party obviously had no responsibility for all this antiwar and antimilitarist work. Everything was done on our initiative and took place under our responsibility.
In 1921, Easter Day fell on 18 April according to the old calendar; but it was also 1 May according to the new one, the First of May which the workers of the country celebrated, with all the workers of the world. The police, using the pretext of the Christian celebrations, banned all workers’ gatherings. We (the union centre and the party) decided to go outside and ignore the Easter of the Christians and the police ban. On Good Friday, while the services were taking place, thousands of leaflets were distributed calling the workers to meetings and demonstrations for the Sunday, Easter Day. On Holy Saturday the issue of Workers’ Voice, with more red than ever before, called on its front page for workers to take to the streets.
On Good Friday, Ar. Dimitratos, secretary of the Communist Youth, was arrested. On Saturday at mid-day, it was my turn. In the evening the door of the nick slammed shut on Ch. Tzallas, secretary of the bakery workers’ union and member of the local committee of the party. On Easter morning they brought us A. Papadopoulos, secretary of the party organisation.
The police and the military government had taken exceptional measures to prevent the workers’ demonstrations, without result. In various parts of the town gatherings and demonstrations formed, red flags flew, cries of “down with the war” and “fraternisation of peoples across borders and countries” rang out, shaking the whole town. Confrontations with the mounted police broke out in Koule-Kaphe, in Tsinar, in the Jewish areas, and above all, soldiers destined for the front in Asia Minor refused to get on board, mutinied, smashed portraits of the king to bits, fraternised with the workers and joined them. The same day, martial law was proclaimed.
The police handed us over to the military authority, and we were transferred from the nick to the military prison of Toumbas. There the soldiers showed their sympathy in all sorts of ways, greeting us, throwing us cigarettes and fruit, showing us leaflets. The examining officer brought charges against us of high treason, inciting the people to revolt and soldiers to desert, and sent us before the emergency military tribunal of Adrianoupoleos.
A few days later, chained up and escorted by six men commanded by a sergeant, we were taken to the station for Adrianoupoleos. Some thugs from the Macedonian Royalist Youth were waiting for us there. They were standing there to yell, to shower us with obscenities and take us to task. But the escort, with bayonets fixed on their rifles, pushed them aside with kicks and bayonet prods. The soldiers, along with their sergeant, were very nice to us during the voyage. The train only went as far as Karagatch. From then on the line was destroyed, and we took the road to Adrianoupoleos partly on foot and partly by truck.
A pleasant surprise was waiting for us. Barely had the soldiers taken us to the transfer section, and completed the formalities of our handover, when the two sergeants who had accepted us shook our hands effusively and put us in a room in the section and not in the prison. They sympathised with the CPG. One of them had discovered revolutionary ideas and had been influenced by them when he had been following Benaroya on behalf of the Security Police.
Two or three hours later, the second lieutenant Vlakhos, accompanied by a few soldiers of the telegraphists’ battalion, came to visit us and told us, after greeting us, that “The battalion is entirely ours. After discussing your case, we have all entered into an agreement and we are ready to free you if ever the tribunal sentences you to death or to a severe penalty.” The two sergeants present at the discussion assured us of this as well. Shortly afterwards it was the turn of lieutenant Konstantinidis to pay us a visit. At midday the soldiers provided us with a whole lamb that they had roasted in their unit. This stay in Adrianoupoleos passed in quasi-freedom, and the soldiers never ceased visiting us (I came to meet up with one of them again in Akronafplia camp in 1940) .
The soldiers, Vlakhos and the sergeants did not carry out their decision. The tribunal declared itself not competent because martial law had been declared after the events of Easter, when we were already in prison. After the tribunal had made the pronouncement we stayed in Adrianoupoleos for another two days, just to visit the town and its curiosities. At least to me, nothing made any particular impression apart from the mosque of sultan Selim and the women in rags who swept the streets. Redirected to an ordinary court, we returned to Thessaloniki escorted by just three gendarmes, and not handcuffed.
Locked up in the cellars of the Governor’s palace for four days, we drafted a protest against the persecution of Turks and Slavs by the Greek authorities, expressing our sympathy and our solidarity towards the persecuted minorities and criticising the attitude of the Central Committee of the Party which, although told about it by the comrades in the army, had not published anything or done anything.
The soldiers and the two sergeants had given us plenty of concrete examples of the ferocious persecution of the ethnic minorities of Thrace by the Greek government. Our testimony was published by Rizospastis, which was not yet the Party organ. From the cellars of the palace, which were the most foul prisons I have known, we were transferred to the new prison. Kordatos came to visit us after a few days, in his double capacity as a lawyer and a member of the Central Committee. We were ready to clash violently with him. But, in the visiting room, in front of this reserved man, who grasped our hands with obvious emotion, our anger and hostility evaporated. He agreed with us about the protest we had sent, and spoke to us sadly about the poor situation prevailing in the CC.
At the end of July 1921, we were freed. I didn’t know the legal reasons for our release and I didn’t try to find out what they were. A few days later I left for Corfu. I presented myself to the office of that place, which sent me to Yannina, in a half-batallion of the tenth regiment of infantry, stationed in Akraios. Two days later, for the first time I came into contact with the comrades of the local group of the Party and with F. Bratsos (a member of the CPG), from the offices of the headquarters of the gendarmerie of Epire, Ar. Papadatos, a warrant officer (also a party member) and St. Yannoulatos, a second lieutenant (who had been excluded from the party for indiscipline and anarchist tendencies). We organised ourselves to intervene politically. Stationed at Akraios there was the half battalion of the tenth (where I served as a private and Papadatos as a warrant officer), a half battalion of the twenty fourth infantry regiment and the first and second mountain artillery sections.
Our first need was to establish friendly relations, which would allow us to make individual propaganda, and at the end of one month we had created groups in all the units. Pamphlets and leaflets circulated everywhere and provoked discussions. Some evenings, after secretly leaving the barracks, we met in the ruins of Velisarion, thirty or forty soldiers, to draw up a balance sheet of our activity and decide on actions to follow. Some soldiers joined the Party after their demobilisation. Sympathetic drivers transported our propaganda material to the border[18]. It is true to say that there was no surveillance on the part of the military authorities. We regularly visited the trade union centre and had discussions there with the workers.
I wrote to the Central Committee to inform them of our activity and to ask them to send pamphlets, anti-war leaflets and a duplicator. The response arrived very quickly, signed by P. Dimitratos. He formally disapproved of our action, which according to him was dangerous for us and for the Party, and enjoined us to stop it. Needless to say we did not obey him.
At the beginning of October 1921, our unit received the order from the army corps to select four educated soldiers for the recruitment centre in Corfu. I was part of this batch and, like the three others, I received my movement order for Corfu. There, the register was entrusted to me.
We were two soldiers employed in writing who had the same surname. Shortly after we had taken up our functions, the captain Nikolouzos called us together and asked us which of us two was a Bolshevik.
“It is me that you are speaking to us about, Captain”, I said to him.
“What does that mean”, he said to me, “Are you one or not?”.
“I was a citizen, but now I am a soldier.”
Another day, the commander of the recruitment office came into our room and said: “Is there anyone here who can explain to us what the word soviet is supposed to mean, hey! Priftis?” But I answered that I didn’t know.
It seems they had received some information about me, whether from the Security Police, or, more probably, from the mayor of Corfu. I had made the journey from Thessaloniki to Corfu in the same bus as him, a car drawn by horses, as one travelled in those days. I was going back to my village, and he to Dassia. We began a discussion which obviously ended in accusations and insults. When the mayor tried to pull off the hammer and sickle insignia which was pinned on my tie, I grabbed him by his bowtie and we came to blows. However, nobody took any particular measure against me in the recruitment office, and those who pushed me into discussion were more trying to make fun of me. Every day, after the officers had left, we stayed in the offices and, with soldiers from the other companies, we debated the situation, the war, the workers’ movement, communist theory.
At that time N. Dimitratos passed through Corfu returning from Russia via Italy. He spoke to us about contacts he had had and about the situation of the country, but he appeared rather disillusioned.
In mid-December 1921, a day when I was “on duty”, the postman turned up, before the arrival of the other soldiers and the officers, and gave me an urgent telegram from the army corps. I opened it without thinking so as to make a note of it. I remained holding the pen in the air as I read its content: “Send escort soldier Priftis Spyridon - stop – Confirm execution telegraphically – stop - army corps”.
I put the telegram in my pocket, took up my gun and my bag and returned to my village.
I then lived the life of a deserter in wartime, until the end of August 1922, eight months in all. The life of a hunted beast. The detachments of Gounaris[19] combed the villages, as those of Venizelos had done five years before. They didn’t smash the jars of olives and the barrels of wine, but made their quarters in the houses of the deserters, transforming them into barracks, sleeping there, killing the chickens, lambs and pigs to eat them, making the parents of those they were hunting serve them. The villages and the mountains were filled with deserters. Soldiers who obtained a permit (most often the wounded) no longer quickly rejoined their units.
Obviously the gendarmes chose to put themselves in the most comfortable houses, and mine was one of them. Very often ten to fifteen gendarmes invaded the house, running into the rooms to be sure of a place to sleep, setting out their possessions and their guns, and then setting about devouring everything which can be eaten, drinking wine until they’ve had their fill, throwing themselves like foxes on the hens and like wolves on the lambs. My mother and father were obliged to serve them, to cook for them, to wash their dishes and to remove their rubbish from the garden. In winter, they had to provide them with wood non-stop, if not they would warm themselves by burning anything which came to hand, chairs or tables.
The situation of the monarchist authorities worsened by the day. All their desperate attempts to guarantee a loan from abroad had failed. Everywhere the government came up against a categorical refusal. The great allies, those on whose account and for whose interests they had begun the war in Asia Minor, abandoned the country to its fate and ended up by turning towards Kemal. They understood that he was not the dangerous revolutionary that they had once believed, but a nationalist leader which it was possible to get along with. This was sufficient for them to sacrifice their old ally and faithful agent Greece. That’s what they did. It was a long time since the Turkish ataman chief of the partisans. Kemal had become the chief of a large army – powerful, organised and supplied with the most modern weapons.
The Greek army was falling to pieces and no longer had even salted herrings to feed it. Its morale had fallen to zero. From hour to hour the number of deserters grew. You could no longer count the soldiers in cushy jobs, offspring of the bourgeois class and “string pullers”, who lounged about in the cafés of Athens carrying out some so-called special mission, while the sons of the people were dying on the plains of Anatolia.
The discontent and indignation of the popular masses was obvious. There wasn’t a day without a strike or demonstration. The collapse of the front was only a question of time.
A revolutionary party worthy of the name had to prepare itself and prepare the masses for the inevitable revolutionary crisis. What was the policy of the Central Committee of the CPG?
At its second congress, in April 1920, the Party condemned and rejected the social democratic theses of its founding congress (popular democracy, national defence, League of Nations), adhered unreservedly to the Communist International and accepted its programme and its principles. But the closer we got to the revolutionary crisis, precisely conditions which would allow the character of the party and its real attachment to its principles to be proven, the more it trampled them underfoot, ending up by completely rejecting the revolutionary programme.
At the beginning of the month of February 1922, the central committee called an extraordinary conference. The following lines summarise the spirit of the resolutions that it took up under such critical conditions: “The Party, going through such a period of organisation and propaganda, needs a long legal existence... The intensity of the Party’s offensive cannot go beyond the limits of the political resistance of the working class and the general capacities of the movement”. In the language of the class struggle, this means that the Party has to keep its political activity within the limits defined by the state and not give any pretext for police intervention. This means that it is necessary to contain workers’ struggles, to restrain them within a framework defined by bourgeois legality. And if, despite its efforts and good intentions, strikes, demonstrations and clashes with the police spontaneously break out, if, without its permission, the workers break the limits of bourgeois legality, thus perturbing the legal conditions so necessary to its existence, it must logically put itself on the side of law and order against the troubles that are “fomented by elements foreign to the working class, adventurists, provocateurs”, etc.
Such a theory obviously can’t stand up to any serious examination and contradicts historical experience. Not only is it not the Party which sets the pace of the class struggle, but, and this has almost the status of a law, all the great class struggles in history have broken out when no one, party or individual, was expecting it. Besides, who can measure the limits of the political resistance of the working class, and according to which criteria? When a revolutionary organisation has to limit its activity to propaganda, it is not in its nature and still less can it fix the term of this activity. The march of the class struggle takes precedence over everything. The organisation must therefore always be ready to pass from the propagandist stage to that of agitation and immediate action when the conditions change. Only the panic which gripped these unlikely “revolutionary” leaders in the face of the approaching storm can explain these resolutions.
Another resolution at the same conference, according to which the decisions of the International had only a “historic significance” for the Party and therefore did not commit it to anything, in fact placed it outside the Communist International.
Only two delegates expressed their opposition: the lawyer Vanguelis Papanastassis and the building worker Alevizakis, representing the Piraeus organisation.
Kordatos, Georgiadis, Papanikolaou, A. Sideris and Petsopoulos formed the new central committee.
It would however be wrong to think that these shameful resolutions expressed the opinion of the party members, quite simply because, in their great majority, the mass of the class youth, the lively and revolutionary elements were either conscripted or were deserters and fugitives. These members, where they were, particularly in the army, carried out a courageous action against the war on their own initiative. This is something which the legalist leaders of the Party would pay somewhat dearly for, even though they had nothing to do with it.
In June 1922, the five members of the central committee, the trade unionists Evanguelou and Anguelis and the journalist Strangas were arrested and imprisoned.
In view of the seriousness of the charges against them, in the context of a war, they risked the death penalty. These people were afraid, and to prove their innocence and to get out of prison there was no degradation and humiliation to which they didn’t submit. They used means which were the most contradictory not just to their quality as revolutionaries but, quite simply, to their human dignity: petitions to influential personalities of the regime, to friends close to the government, to the king etc.
The general offensive of Kemal began on 13 August 1922. It was remarkably well organised and we know its tragic result. The front gave way on the first attack. The army dissolved and the retreat of the first few days quickly turned into a disorderly flight. All the equipment was abandoned. The dead, and even more so the wounded and those taken prisoner could be counted in the thousands. With the army the Christian inhabitants of Asia Minor also fled in their thousands, terrorised, abandoning all their goods. Everywhere there were massacres and burning. Everywhere bodies and smouldering ruins. And to crown this drama, the indescribable horror of the burning of Izmir.
Who was responsible for this unprecedented crime against the country and the people? The Liberals, who sent the army, or the monarchists, who continued the war? All were, without doubt. It was the bourgeois class in its entirety.
Then came the military “revolution”, the abdication of Constantine in favour of the crown prince, the overthrow of the authorities by that same revolution, the putting on trial for treason of the monarchist government, the sending to the revolutionary tribunal of the most responsible ministers, Gounaris, Stratos, Theotokis, Protopapadakis and Baltatzis, and of the chief general, Hatzianestis, their condemnation to death and their execution.
All this is well known. Some have lived it, others have read about it or heard about it. And yet the most interesting thing is precisely what everyone avoids mentioning: the situation amongst the popular masses and their reaction to the events.
The country was in ferment. Everywhere anger and indignation were being expressed. The roads were full of armed soldiers who no longer obeyed anybody. Thousands and thousands of refugees, penniless and starving, invaded the ports, the streets, the squares. The authorities, stricken with paralysis, no longer had any real existence. In Redestos[20], the authorities were abolished, red flags appeared in the demonstrations. The “revolutionary” government, racked with anguish, tried to disarm the soldiers, granting them freedom in return for their weapons. There were more and more appeals to the masses and the army for order, discipline and national unity. The primary mission of this “revolution” was clearly to safeguard the capitalist regime. To appease the desperate mob, it threw them the heads of five ministers and the chief general, and in unison the pathetic leaders of the CPG, released from prison in the interval, scattered themselves about to explain that in the face of national disaster it was necessary to put away the flag of class struggle.
But the class struggle obeyed its own laws. The masses, guided by their class instinct, did not concern themselves unduly with the national disaster and were hardly concerned at all about the crisis of power of their exploiters.
The explosive materials which ceaselessly accumulated were not slow in spontaneously combusting. A strike wave swept across the country. The refugees demanded bread and housing. Many violent strikes led up to the general strike of August 1923. In all the industrial centres thousands of workers took to the streets. Everywhere there were clashes with the police. Ferocious fighting in Piraeus caused eleven deaths and hundreds of injured people. The army office there was besieged by the masses in revolt. Some of the troops fraternised with the strikers. The government sent some Cherkesses against the workers. A state of emergency was proclaimed across the whole territory, the workers’ unions were made illegal. In Thessaloniki, Tomoglis was murdered in cold blood in the gaols of the Security Police.
The military government finally succeeded in re-establishing “order”.
In May 1923, two months before the general strike, the central committee (then in prison) had called a meeting of the national council. At this council some people had declared that the resolutions of the February conference were annulled, but it was recognised immediately that the council, not being a representative body, did not have the authority to change theses and resolutions of conferences and congresses. This prevarication allowed them to avoid any debate on the situation and on the tasks of the Party. The council was content to take a series of decisions on Party organisation, education, conferences and publications. Despite this, most of the debates were about the innumerable capitulations of the old and the recent central committees.
Like rats leaving the ship just before it sinks, the leaders abandoned the Party just before the storm.
In September 1923, one month after the general strike, an extraordinary electoral congress was organised. This congress, also using its narrow competences as an excuse, avoided all debate on the situation and on the formidable events of the previous month and limited itself to preparation for the elections, the designation of candidates and the elaboration of an electoral platform which, moreover, did not distinguish itself in any way from the electoral programmes of the reformist parties. Maximos, Apostolidis, Stavridis, Tzallas and Akrivopoulos were elected to the central committee.
The “revolution”, become the government, gave the order to liberate the imprisoned leaders of the CPG. The Party was therefore blessed once again with its “leadership” elected by the February conference.
The central committee then called an extraordinary congress for October. The resolutions of that congress had perhaps no precedent in the political history of the world. The collapse of the front had created a revolutionary situation in the country, and the “revolutionary” party of the working class, the party supposed to prepare itself for precisely such circumstances, declared with alacrity in its resolutions that it was not the place for it to occupy itself with programmatic questions, and that any debate on the setting out of new tactics would serve no useful purpose. Finally, it decided that the theses of the February conference could serve very well as the provisional basis for the activity of the Party.
The congress also decreed the exclusion of Petsopoulos. Georgiadis, A. Sideris and M. Sideris submitted a motion to that effect, because of the tactic that he had put into practice: “a changing mixture of ultra-communism, chauvinism and reformism”, etc. This motion provoked some discussion, the creation of a commission of enquiry, and everything ended up with his exclusion. But I am sure that the real reasons rested rather on his attitude during a rally in Sofia. At this huge rally in the biggest square in the town, Petsopoulos, after having saluted the Bulgarian workers in the name of the Greek workers, then hugged and kissed the Turkish representative in front of the crowd of assembled workers and the two men, the Greek and the Turk, while Greeks and Turks massacred each other in Asia Minor, denounced the war, proclaiming with a loud voice the solidarity, the common interests and ideas of the Greek and Turkish workers and called on the two peoples to fraternise and to join together in the fight for socialism.
The Greek ambassador in Sofia had immediately informed his government.
This internationalist position of Petsopoulos obviously didn’t fit in at all with the policy of “legal existence” and the appeal to “put away the flag of class struggle”, and risked compromising the Party in the eyes of the “officer patriots” or even of provoking the intervention of the police and the courts. There lies the real reason for his exclusion. The central committee elected by this congress comprised Kordatos, Lagoudakis, Mangos, Sargologos and Yamoyannis.
The circumstances experienced by the country after the collapse of the Asia Minor front and the army revolution were precisely those which violently propelled a revolutionary party on to the scene. Yet in no way or at any moment did the CPG assert its presence, even in the most elementary way. It was nothing other than a pathetic side-kick of the military government. Its leaders were in permanent contact with the officers, and in their “memoranda” which came from the “Commander” who was with Plastiras[21]. What they asked from the military was even more moderate and measured than what was demanded by the officers and the Republican Union of Al. Papanastassiou. It didn’t propose even the shadow of an independent class politics.
When the working class entered into struggle, despite the advice of the central committee of the CPG, opening a front against the army revolution, the Party, if it did not openly take the side of those who machine-gunned the workers in Piraeus, deployed all its effort to sap the morale of the masses in struggle and to break their combativity. During the general strike it played the role of fireman and scab.
To justify its strike-breaking attitude, it declared that the conflict between the working class and the army ran the risk of being exploited by the monarchists. It was for that reason that it did everything in its power to restrain the workers and contain their struggles. It is a policy as old as the workers’ movement, which the workers always pay very dearly for. This is because the opposite is true: the workers’ struggle bars the way to reaction while capitulation opens it.
The proletarian organisation of Piraeus finally saved the honour of communism in Greece. Seeing that the central committee acted as scabs, the Piraeus organisation detached itself from the Party, and, with part of the Athens organisation, created the Communist Union and published the newspaper Communist Tribune. This organisation did everything it could to help the workers in struggle, its members were in the front line of all the battles, and by its newspaper and its slogans it stimulated courage and maintained confidence in the victorious outcome of the struggle. Its main slogan for the sailors was “Take over the ships”.
The Communist Union, by its politics, its action and the blood of its fighters, wrote one of the most brilliant pages in the history of our workers’ movement.
Kordatos, in his History of Greece (1900-1924), doesn’t say a single word about this split, nor about the Communist Union. He presents the Communist Tribune as the personal organ of V. Papanastassis, and the latter as an agent of the Security Police. Here Kordatos engages in deliberate falsification and distortion of the facts. He settles accounts, by a really dirty calumny, with history, which contradicts him, and with those who took on what neither he nor the other theoreticians of the conference of February 1922 had the courage or the stature to take on.
At that time I was serving with the 1/10 Company in Corfu. I presented myself there just after the rout, like hundreds of other deserters. In Corfu as everywhere, the revolutionary situation was evident. On our own initiative we then opposed the antimonarchist slogans of the liberals, the Republican Union and the agrarians of Dendrinos with the slogans of the proletarian revolution: “It is capitalism in its entirety which is responsible for the war, famine and destruction, and not just one of its camps” ; “The refugees should be put up in the houses of the rich”.
We openly spoke in the army buildings, in the cafés, in the street. Every evening we gathered a crowd of soldiers in the Party local offices. We debated, we sang the International, The Labour Song and a detourned version of The Son of the Eagle: “From the cannons of the fleet we make hammers to smash the heads of the bourgeoisie, and from sabres we make sickles to harvest…”.
During the general strike we were all confined to barracks, required to remain armed at all times, with full cartridge belts. But beforehand we had convinced most of the soldiers to choose targets other than the heads of the workers if we were to receive the order to fire. Some soldiers, in groups or individually, approached me to give me their hand, addressed me with smiles or winks of the eye and whispered to me “We are ready”.
When we received the order to assemble the soldiers who knew how to knead bread to replace the bakers on strike, everyone refused to break the strike, agreeing only to make bread for the army, although many had declared their profession as baker. We had done some good work. We also did what we could to help the refugees looking for assistance and a roof over their heads, calling on them to occupy the houses of the rich. Once we, a few soldiers, took the head of a group of refugees and all together we pushed back the gendarmes and occupied a wing of the royal palace.
During the left split in Piraeus and Athens and the formation of the Communist Union, the comrades who had taken on its leadership, all workers and people that I knew for the most part, wrote to me, persuaded that the Corfu organisation was going to follow their example. I replied that I was in complete political agreement with them but that it was necessary to avoid a split in so far as it was possible. That did not stop us from distributing Communist Tribune, which was an authentic proletarian journal.
[1] The Spartan king who was killed at Thermopyles resisting the Persians (480 BC). A patriotic and military symbol in Greece.
[2] At the start of the war, Constantine had ceded Kavala, in Macedonia, to the Central powers. The Greek garrison of the town had been interned in Görlitz.
[3] General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE).
[4] Socialist Workers’ Party of Greece (SEKE).
[5] An anti-bolshevik conference held in London by the socialist parties favourable to the Entente. The three Greek delegates, led by Venizelos, had agreed to defend the territorial demands of Greece.
[6] Yannios and his Socialist Centre were situated on the right of the socialist movement.
[7] Initials of “Organisation for Protection of the People’s Struggle” (“opla” means “arms” in Greek). This was the political police created by the CP during the Occupation. OPLA hunted down and murdered opponents of the party line.
[8] A treaty signed in August 1920 between the victorious powers and the Turkish empire, which consecrated its dismemberment; it’s notable that Greece received the region of Smyrna (Izmir).
[9] In fact at Lyon station in Paris; an attentat carried out by some monarchist officers.
[10] The monarchists.
[11] An Anatolian river to the west of Ankara. The objective was to take Kemal’s capital, Ankara.
[12] The Julian calendar, which is thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar, was only replaced by the latter in 1923.
[13] A chamber favourable to Venizelos, elected in 1915, and reconvened after the reinstallation of Venizelos in Athens by the French army in June 1917. Also called the “Lazarus” chamber.
[14] Today Alexandroupolis.
[15] Thessaloniki, Macedonia and Thrace, only integrated into Greece since 1913, had a special status and were placed under the authority of a governor.
[16] That is to say, in Ladino, a language derived from Spanish spoken by the Jews of Thessaloniki, descended from the Jews driven out of Spain in the fifteenth century by the Catholic Isabelle.
[17] Later a journalist and man of the theatre close to the authorities.
[18] In the units stationed on the Albanian frontier.
[19] The monarchist Prime Minister at the time.
[20] Now in European Turkey and known as Tekirdağ.
[21] The chief of the military junta which had come to power.