LE SYMPOSIUM INTERNATIONAL LE LIVRE. LA ROUMANIE. L ...

61 years since the end of the Civil War in Greece
(1946–1949)
ApoStoloS pAtelAKIS
the present paper offers a very general survey about a troubled time in
the history of Greece. these few pages can not even sketch a very complex
field of phenomena occurring in the fifth decade of the last century.
I learned about the tragic events in this dark decade of the history of
modern Greece, when I was a child, from my parents, active participants in
the Civil War on the side of the leftists’ forces. therefore, this bloody war
marked our lives and also the life of the entire Greek people.
this life-and-death confrontation between the right wing and the
supporters of the Communist forces in Greek society, with implications for
the entire Balkan peninsula, has incited the interest of many historians, who
have sought to unravel the causes of this fratricidal war, whose result was
disastrous: a destroyed country, 70,000 dead and 120,000 political refugees.
Study of the fifth decade began almost immediately after the end of
the Civil War. the authors of the first writings were Greek senior officers
referring to their experiences in this war. Although documentary sources
did not exist yet, more works were published in the first decade after the
war than during both of the next decades together. After the removal of the
dictatorship in 1974, and especially after 1981, when in Greece there was a
genuine democratization of political life, with the coming to power of the
pan-hellenic Socialist Movement (pASoK), favorable preconditions have
been created for a more systematic and more scientific approach concerning
the period of foreign occupation and that of the Civil War. thus, in the
period from 1945–2003, 1,800 book titles were published and more than
50% of them were issued after 1981. the majority is made up of diaries,
recollections and memoirs. Very interesting are the testimonies of those
British officers who worked in Greece during the Civil War.