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Conclusion
In analysing the extent to which development was accelerated by war, and assisted
or constrained by government intervention, this research depends on officiai and
"officiai" sources. Of necessity research encounters access and data limitations, and
the effects of a possible "siege mentality" affecting information systems. Whilst
there is an undeniable résistance to counter-cultural understanding, current politicai
realities can not stifle a natural Cypriot warmth, openness and generosity to
outsiders.
Peter Loizos 85 talks of "supercharged aspirations" encouraged by the new wealth,
which began to trickle down through some of the villages of Cyprus (particularly
around the citrus groves and new tourist destinations of the pre-1974 north of the
island), with access to export earnings, in the I960's. With new riches came new
prospects for the people of the new Republic, but also new politicai tensions:
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please...
The tradition of the dead générations weighs like a nightmare on the minds
of the living. And just when they appear to be engaged in the revolutionary
transformation of themselves and their surroundings... they timidly conjure
up the spirits of the past to help them; they borrow their names 86 , slogans
and costumes so as to stage the new world historical scene in this venerable
disguise and borrowed language." 87
85 Loizos 1981. op. cit., p.48.
86 "Dighenis" was a Byzantium soldier "the legendary hero who guaided the outposts of empire in
late Byzantine times and whose name George Grivas adopted". (Grivas foimded EOKA - translated
as the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters - commanded the Cyprus National Guard from 1964
to 1967, when Turkey demanded his recali. In 1971 he secretly re-entered Cyprus as leader of EOKA
B, which he led tili his death in January 1974.) Also "Akritas" - as in plan - means frontiersman -
and "was the epithet of the original Dighenis" Mayes 1981. op.cit., pp. 60, 161).
87
Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" (in Tucker R.C. (ed.) 1978. Marx-
Engels Reader. (2nd édition) London: W.W. Norton, pp.595).
56