This document mostly consists of English translations of the introductory sections, Chapter 2, Chapter 5 and part of Chapter 6 of the French edition of the book Memoirs – Sixty Years under the Flag of Socialist Revolution, written by the well-known Greek revolutionary A. Stinas. As explained below, it was first published in Athens in 1977 by Vergos editions. It was republished by Ypsilon in 1985. The French edition, titled Mémoires: un révolutionnaire dans la Grèce du XX^e siècle, was published by La Breche in 1989. La Breche is the publishing house of the French section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (those interested in Trot-spotting will recognise this as “Mandel’s lot”).

I’ve taken the trouble to translate this material because I think that this book is invaluable both as a source of information about important events in the class struggle and as an expression of the ideas and attitudes of a remarkable individual and the group of revolutionaries which he was associated with. In particular, it is concerned with the practical question of how to maintain a clear class opposition to capitalist war, even while you are directly immersed in its horrors. For Stinas and his comrades “revolutionary defeatism”[1] was not just a slogan or an idea to be debated but, quite literally, a matter of life and death.

Hopefully, this selective translation will be a first step towards producing an English edition of Stinas’ Memoirs (preferably thoroughly checked against the original Greek edition, if not translated from it). If nothing else, I hope to encourage those comrades who can at least read French slowly to get hold of a copy of the French edition and read it all…

The book is concerned with the class struggle in Greece between the end of the First World War and the end of the Second World War. Throughout all this time Stinas was right in the thick of the struggle and underwent a rapid political evolution. During the First World War (while still a teenager) he was involved in a local socialist group in Corfu which consisted of young people gathered around the “professional revolutionary” Ilja Jovanović[2] who “taught them the true principles of proletarian internationalism”. Stinas later joined the Communist Party as soon as he was old enough to do so and later declared himself to be a Trotskyist - but only because Stinas and his comrades didn’t know what Trotsky’s real political positions were! In his words: “Officially I was a member of the Fourth International until the middle of 1947. But in reality perhaps I never was.” In particular, Stinas’ group didn’t know about Trotsky’s main position on the Second World War – the “defence of the USSR” – which implied taking sides in the imperialist slaughter. When they found out they were horrified and eventually stopped calling themselves Trotskyists:

“The first information about the position of the International on the war left us literally open-mouthed. We could not believe our eyes and our ears. A British soldier sent us the first publication in December 1944. It was a pamphlet published by the French Trotskyists with this very revealing title: The Trotskyists in the struggle against the Nazis, that is to say, against the Germans. They justified themselves in front of the Stalinists, who they accused of being agents of the Germans, and produced some proof that they, like all good patriotic Frenchmen, had also fought the Germans.”

The early part of the book gives a clear account of the relationship between the complicated post-First World War bourgeois politics of Greece (coups and counter-coups, military and civilian governments) and the continuous need for capital to suppress the class struggle. Chapter 2 describes the revolutionary opposition to the First World War and then to the war against Turkey. Much of this was carried out by rank and file members of the Communist Party against the wishes and declared policies of their leaders. In fact the unwillingness of proletarians to die for the Greek nation was so intense that it probably goes a long way to explaining Kemal Atatürk’s dramatic military successes. This chapter is very clear in showing both the enormous gap which existed between the reactionary leadership of the Greek CP (which was openly parliamentary, legalist and nationalist) and its radical rank and file right from the beginning of its existence, and, at the same time, the enormous hold which the Party had over the radical elements of the working class. In late 1923 the party organisation in Piraeus, together with part of the Athens organisation, split from the Party and created the Communist Union which published the newspaper Communist Tribune. Stinas himself opposed the split, despite stating that he was in complete political agreement with the break-away fraction!

After a brief spell in prison in 1928, Stinas was sent to Thessaloniki by the political bureau of the Communist Party of Greece. He was sent to take charge of the local organisation at a time of frequent strikes and street confrontations. Here he found “the most authentic, the most conscious and the most organised proletariat in the country”. So conscious in fact that:

“While I stayed in Thessaloniki I was unaware of the existence of football. I never heard any mention, good or bad, of that game of kicks which, to the great joy of governments, stupefies so many today.”

The political evolution of Stinas and his comrades was to have an influence way beyond Greece, perhaps including on many of the people who will be reading this text. For example, the group came to include Castoriadis[3], who became a leading member of Socialisme ou Barbarie and the guru of the Solidarity group in the UK.

Like most of his comrades, Stinas became well-known to the secret police and for most of the time between 1924 and 1942 he was either in hiding or in prison. Therefore a lot of the book is concerned with descriptions of prison conditions, which often make harrowing reading.

From May 1940 to October 1942, Stinas was in the notorious prison of Akronafplia[4] (just outside Nafplio in the Peloponnese). In mid-1940 the two main Trotskyist fractions present in the camp were able to organise extensive political debates, producing a written bulletin which was circulated around the camp. This sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Like me, you’re probably thinking of the debates in the Soviet prison of Verkhne-Ural´sk described by the Yugoslav revolutionary Ciliga in The Russian Enigma…

Perhaps the most inspiring part of Stinas’ story is that describing the activities of himself and some of his comrades during the Second World war, after they had escaped from prison and managed to organise themselves as a group in Athens. Operating under the most horrendous conditions – murderous repression from the fascists and the Stalinists simultaneously, and generalised famine – they nevertheless managed to carry on a significant activity, not merely of propaganda (leaflet distribution, graffiti, speeches from rooftops…) but also of more direct participation in the class struggle. During a wave of strikes, demonstrations and other unrest in 1943:

“We actively participated in the pillage of the warehouses. Some comrades forced open one on Mavromikhalis Street, full of pastries of the highest quality. People formed a queue and the pastries were distributed in an orderly fashion, without those who distributed them keeping anything for themselves. We broke open another one, in Vathis, full of bars of soap, which were then distributed in order, to each person in turn.”

The position of Stinas’ group on the war was very clear. They were in total opposition to any participation in the war on any side, and particularly denounced the Stalinist/nationalist Greek partisan movement. They were against nationalism of any kind. They were for the struggle for working class needs against the war effort. They were for fraternisation with the “occupation” troops. Stinas particularly denounces the partisans’ policy of carrying out killings of individual German or Italian soldiers, something which inevitably led to vicious “reprisals” in which whole villages were destroyed. Stinas regarded the partisans as partly responsible for these actions of the “occupiers”.

The activity of the group is all the more inspiring when you consider just how isolated revolutionary forces were on a world scale at this time. In the words of Stinas at the end of the book:

“Apart from the Bordigists and some anarchist groups and isolated individuals, we don’t know of other revolutionary defeatists in the Second World War.”

Nor do we…

George Gordon,

London,

January 2004

The translated texts are:

Preface by Michel Pablo. An introduction from the famous Trotskyist leader who knew Stinas well in Greece in the days before Stinas discovered he wasn’t really a Trotskyist. It’s interesting because it honestly describes the difference between Stinas’ communist position and that of Trotskyism:

“The ideological evolution of A. Stinas, clearly set out in his Memoirs, explains why during the war he adopted a downright hostile attitude to the formidable popular movement of the Resistance, in reality led by the Communist Party, considering it to be a reactionary nationalist movement in the service of imperialism. His uncompromising condemnation of Leon Trotsky’s line concerning the ‘defence of the USSR’ and the line that the Fourth International adopted during the war, is also a consequence of that position.”

As you would expect, Pablo regrets the fact that this important period in class struggle history isn’t being written up by a Trot!

Michel Pablo (1911-1996, real name: Michalis Raptis) was one of the founders of the Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece (OKDE) which was represented at the founding of the Fourth International in France in 1938. From 1943 to 1961 he was the European and then the International Secretary of the Fourth International.

Forward. This is by the person who translated the book into French, Olivier Houdart. It gives a brief history of Greece before and after the First World War and some additional details about Stinas’ life.

Stinas’ dedication. Stinas’ poetic dedication from the front of the book.

A Brief Autobiographical Note. Here Stinas sets out a few details about his life which he thinks the reader ought to appreciate before plunging into the main story.

By Way of a Preface. Here Stinas modestly states that his Memoirs can’t be a substitute for other historical works which still need to be written.

Table of Contents (from the French edition). This is just to give you an idea of what all the chapters are about.

Chapter 2 (complete). This chapter is concerned with revolutionary opposition to the First World War and then to the war with Turkey.

Chapter 5 (slightly editted). This is the part of the book concerned with the period September 1939 to October 1942 , when Stinas and most of his comrades were in various prisons run first by the Greek authorities and then by the “occupation” authorities of Germany and Italy. Stinas never misses a chance to point out how the patriotic Greek cops and Greek partisan forces were every bit as brutally anti-working class as the Nazi and Fascist forces. In fact he makes a point of showing how the Italian conscript soldiers often tried to behave humanely towards political prisoners like him.

Chapter 6 (the first third). This is concerned with the activities of Stinas and some of his comrades after they escaped from prison in 1942 and formed a revolutionary group in Athens. I have also added a short section which is from near the end of Chapter 6, Our withdrawal from the ICPG and our break from Trotskyism, which explains a bit about the later political evolution of the group.

The USSR and the Struggle for World Revolution. This is a document produced by Stinas and his tendency in the prison camp of Akronafplia during debates with the more orthodox Trotskyist tendency of Pouliopolis. It appears as an appendix in the French edition. I didn’t translate this myself, although I made some improvements – the original version can be found on the Revolutionary History website (see below).

Translator’s Introduction

Further reading