the December '44 uprising, a political blunder of the both the Right and the Left

8/7/2019 the December '44 uprising, a political blunder of the both the Right and the Left

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T he D ekem vriana:Com m unist R evolut ion,R ightist C oup, or Blunder?

by JOHN 0. IATRIDES

Com mem orating the 50th anniversary of theDekemvriana,the bloody events in and around Athens in December 1944,triggers widely conflicting sentimen ts. On the one han d, par-ticularly for Greeks who suffered through those terrible claysor have a strong emotional attachment to either side of theconflict, reviving painful mem ories is not a welcome prospect.Rather than reexam ining o ld wounds that have barely healed,

one m ight wish to sim ply consign to oblivion the events andpassions which caused Greeks to kill fellow G reeks and focusinstead on the process of reconciliation w hich the nation hasfostered since the m id-1970s. Indeed, nothing is more hum anthan the desire to avoid having to relive a horrifying past.

There is, however, a different perspective and an equallyhuman propensity which com pel us to take a retrospective lookat the Dekemvriana. W ithout in the least wishing to rekindleold passions and hatreds, we feel the urge to investigate thenation's past, including its darkest mom ents, to the fullest ex-tent allowed by reliable evidence and dispassionate interpreta-tion. The thirst for knowledge a nd understanding of the pastis a fundam ental characteristic of the enlightened hum an con-dition. We want to know what happened and why, even ifwhat we learn is disturbing and challenge s our perception ofevents we consider important. Genuine and lasting reconcilia-

JoHN 0. IATRIDES is professor of international politics at SouthernConnecticut State University. He is currently at work on a study ofGreece in the Cold War.

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tion is possible only if the bright spotlight of honest investiga-tion has explored complicated and controversial events and hasproduced conclusions supported by the evidence at hand.

Needless to say, history is never totally impartial andobjective. No m atter how hard he tries to be objective, thehistorian remains the prisoner of his perceptions, values, andbias, as well as of the sources he has chosen to explore and ofthe issues he has selected to study. Nevertheless, whatever ourlimitations, we owe it to ourselves and to younger generationsto produce an account of the nation's past that is as complete,balanced, and objective as we know how. The "final" interpreta-tion and judgment m ust be left to the individual who cares toexamine the evidence produced and evaluate the conclusionspresented.

Another reason why theDekemvriana needs to be revisitedis implied in the term "second round," which is often used torefer to that upheava l.' It is im portant to determine whe therthere is direct linkage between the events of December 1944

in A thens and the other two so-called "rounds": the first wasthe clashes in the fall of 1943 between guerrilla bands belong-ing to several different resistance organizations, and the thirdwas the full-scale civil war of 1946-1949. Proof of a strong anddirect link between the three rounds strengthens the view thatall through the 1940s the Greek com m unists were bent onseizing power by force. Conversely, if one or more of the threecrises can be shown to have been isolated or spontaneous, sucha finding weakens considerably the claim that the Greek C om-munist Party moved systematically and m ethodically towardarmed revolution.

M oreover, if viewed as the direct prelude to the civil war,the Dekemvriana events assume much greater historical im-portance than if they are found to have been an isolated crisis.The civil war of the late 1940s profoundly rearranged the coun-try's political landscape under the influence of the cen ter-rightparties, turning Greece briefly into a major episode of the ColdWar and a client of dom inant external forces. It is hardy anexaggeration to claim that the civil war and its consequencesdefined Greek politics and culture until the collapse of the m ili-

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tary dictatorship in 1974. But was theDekemvriana an earlybattle of the civil war?

The literature on the enemy occupation, resistance, libera-

tion and theDekemvriana events, as well as on the civil war,is extensive, rich, and diverse. In addition to the many scholarlyworks, based largely on the archives of the United Kingdom,the Un ited States, and of the Greek C om munist Party, thereare countless memoirs, personal accounts, and historical nar-ratives by Greeks of every political persuasion? From E vangelosA veroff to Nikos Zahariadis, from M arkos Vafeiadis to QueenFrederika, from D imitris Vlantas to Dimitris Zafeiropoulos, vir-

tually everyone who w as involved in those mom entous eventshas presented his or her side of the story.3 Does this plethoraof scholarly and persona l accounts m ean that we know allthe facts surrounding theDekemvriana? In fact, although al-most everything of importance has been established with rea-sonable certainty, several tantalizing questions rem ain.

One such question has to do with communications betweenM oscow and the Greek com m unist leadership prior to (andduring) December 1944. It is known that Soviet A mbassadorNikolai V . Novikov, accredited to the Greek government inexile in Cairo, met with Petros Roussos and possibly other Greekcommunists in Egypt. And a ten-member Soviet military missionunder Co lonel Grigori Popov arrived by plane in July 1944 atELA S headquarters in Thessaly and at least Popov remained inGreece until the following January. But there is no reliable evid-ence that these contacts delivered directives from M oscow tothe Greek communist leadership or influenced the course ofeven ts which led to theDekemvriana. Recently a. veteran ofBritish wartime intelligence wrote that during 1943-1944 theBritish intelligence service (SIS) intercepted " instructions thatwere being sent from the Kremlin to partisan groups andresistance movements under Communist control as to tactics tobe adopted as the day of liberation drew nearer."4 It is not

known whether such " instructions" were also sent to the Greekcom munists. Until Soviet (and British intelligence) archivesare opened to researchers, the tentative conclusion supported bythe evidence a t hand has to be tha t, insofar as theDekemvrianais concerned, the Greek communists acted on their own, pos-

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sibly with vague encouragement from their Yugoslav comrades.A nother troublesome question pertains to the negotiations

conducted in October-November 1944 between Prime M inister

George Papandreou and the leftist-communist EAM coalition onthe proposed demobilization of the guerrilla bands and thecreation of a national army. D id P apandreou agree to dissolvethe Rimini Brigade (which had been formed in the Middle Eastand was considered to be fanatically right-wing), or at leastsend it on extended home leave, but then change his mind,claiming that the British would not allow h im to deactivate theBrigade? Or did the E A M representatives agree to demobilizeE L A S even if the R imini Brigade was retained, only to changetheir minds when the communist leadership vetoed the dis-arming of E L A S unless the Brigade was also disarmed? Thereare countless versions of these negotiations and of the form ulafor dem obilization but, in m y view , the ev idence is less thansolid no matter which explanation one finally adopts.

D espite such gaps in our knowledge most of the key factsare known; where there is wide disagreement is in the m atterof interpretation. Examining the sam e even ts different authorsdraw dramatically diverging conclusions. Hence the title of thisessay: Was theDekemvrianaa communist revolution intendedto place the country under a Soviet-style one-party dictatorship?Was it instead a clever trap set by the B ritish-backed Right todraw the L eft into a fight and reimpose a royalist regime? Orwas it a classic tragedy: the un intended and unforeseen result

of m utual suspicion and fear, of a breakdown in com munica-tion, of posturing and inept politics, in short, a horrible blunderfor which all invo lved bear responsibility?

The crisis of December 1944 canbest be understood againstthe background of three critically important developments.First, since the 1920s a profound political division (ethnikosdihasmos) had sharply polarized the nation, undermined itsdemocratic institutions, and had m ade violence and intervention

by the m ilitary a regular feature of the governing process. Inthe late 1930s and during the war an d the occupation the in-stitution of the m onarchy , and especially the person occupyingthe Greek throne, had em erged as the sym bolic centerpiece ofthe dihasmos.King GeorgeII came to be viewed as the legatee



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of the prewar system of authoritarian rule, suppression ofbasic democratic freedom s, and of the pseudo-fascist ideologyarticulated by the dictator, General Ioann is M etaxas. During

the occupation the single crucial cause of the continuingdihasmoswas the failure of the go vernm ent in exile, and of the B ritishauthorities which sustained it, to reassure the Greek peoplethat King George would not be allowed to return until andunless he had been invited to do so after a dem ocratic referen-dum. The festering uncertainty about this central constitutionalquestion overshadowed all other national issues, inflamed sus-picions, and rendered political compromise extremely difficult.

The second development was the impressive wartime re-sistance movement which began as a spontaneous and patrioticopposition to the foreign occupiers but split into rival, per-sonalized, and ideologically driven arm ed factions whose ambi-tions extended far beyond the desire to fight foreign enem ies.The occupation and resistance m ovem ent gave the Com munistP arty (K K E ) the opportunity to sponsor and ultimately con-trol a rem arkably popular coalition of republicans and leftists,the E A M (National Liberation Front) whose m ilitary arm, theE LA S (National Peoples L iberation A rmy), became the largestand most effective of the guerrilla forces. By the end of theoccupation EAM/ELAS and its main rival organization, theEDES (National Republican Greek League), as well at theGreek m ilitary units form ed in the M iddle E ast under Britishsupervision (the Rimini Brigade and the Sacred Company) were

little more than the military tools of political forces . The sam ecan be said of the city police and rural gendarmerie handeddown from the Metaxas and occupation periods and of theclandestine organization X , all of which w ere fana tically an ti-com munist and (for the most part) pro-monarch ical. It is worthrecalling that ED E S, comm anded by Colonel Napoleon Zervas,had been founded as a staunchly republican organization but,under attack from its rival ELAS, ended up supporting the

King's return.The third development that serves as a backdrop to theDekemvriana was the trem endous expansion of Britain's tradi-tional influence in G reek affairs to the po int where virtuallyall important decisions concerning wartime and postliberation

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Greek problems w ere ultimately m ade by B ritish authorities.To be sure, Britain's dom inant role was m ade possible, if notinevitable, by the inability of Greek political leaders to handletheir country's affairs and keep foreign intervention to levelsconsistent with the fundam entals of national sovereignty. Thefact remains, however, that all through the period of theDekemvriana British officials decided what was to be done inGreece. Whether British policies served or dam aged the long-term interests of Greece is a question that need not be answeredhere. What is clear, at least in retrospect, is that Britain'sdominant role in Greek affairs during October-December 1944,combined with the initially very small British forces in Greece ,made a very difficult situation in A thens even m ore precarious.British officials issued com mands without the ability to enforcethem. To make matters worse, the KK E leaders did not knowthat under the "spheres of influence" agreement of October1944, M arshal Stalin had given P rime M inister Churchill a freehand in Greece. EA M/EL AS wartime achievements had obviouslyinflamed the comm unists' self-confidence and ambitions. How-ever, it is very doubtful that they would have chosen to fightthe British in Athens if they knew that Stalin had in effectabandoned them to their enemies, and if the British had broughtto Greece adequate forces.

A brief chronology of the events surrounding theDekemvrianacrisis may be useful at this point.

P rim e M inister P apandreou returned to liberated A thens

on October18, 1944, as the German troops were evacuating thecountry in the north. He headed a governm ent of national unity,a broadly based coalition formed in the M iddle E ast in M ay ofthat year, following a stormy conference in L ebanon attendedby representatives of the entire politikos cosmos. Organizedunder British supervision, the conference had been m ade nec-essary by the collapse of the governm ent-in-exile (headed atfirst by E m m anuel Tsouderos and then briefly by So phoclesV enizelos). The po litical crisis had sparked m utinees am ongthe Greek armed forces in the M iddle East and there had beenserious fighting between resistance bands in the Greek moun-tains (the first round). The com m unists and leftists of E A M ,who had been severely criticized at the L ebanon conference for



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police and army, were formed and stationed across the country.EA M /ELAS, and presumably the communist leadership be-

hind them , agreed in principle that all resistance bands wouldhave to be disarmed and demobilized, and so did the muchweaker EDE S. The crucial question, however, was when and howwere the guerrilla bands to be dissolved. The leftists feared thatif they were deprived of the military power and political leveragewhich E LA S afforded them, giving their political enemies clearmilitary superiority, the entire leftist-republican movement wouldbe swept aw ay, deprived of its wartim e gains and kicked outof the political arena. On the o ther side, P apandreou and theBritish were afraid that, exploiting the popular EA M front, thecommunists would use ELAS to impose their will upon thecountry, as was already happen ing all across the Balkans. Sus-picions ran high and soon Athens was buzzing with rumorsof impending m ilitary coups, whether from the L eft or fromthe Right.

The suspicions of leftists were further aroused w hen, on

Novem ber 9, 1944, the only com bat-worthy unit of the Greekarm y in the M iddle E ast, the Rim ini Brigade of about 4,000men, arrived in A thens, soon followed by the 500-strong SacredCo m pany. Both units were kno wn for their strong anti-com -munist sentiments, and there was little doubt in Athens thatthey had been brought from the war front as a counterforceto E LA S. In retrospect, bringing them to A thens at that precisemoment without the consent of the EAM ministers in the

cabinet was a serious mistake, especially since these troops wereno match for EL AS.To deflect criticism that he was becom ing the pawn of the

Right, Papandreou announced that, by November 27, the exist-ing police and g endarm erie would be dissolved and replacedby a new "national guard" (ethnofylaki). This national guardwas to take over from EAM's civil guard, which was to bedissolved. Clearly, the purpose of this plan was to get rid ofthe leftist civil guard and rep lace it with a new security forcewhich would be free of the stigma bo rne by the existing po liceand gendarmerie for having served the M etaxas dictatorship andthe German occupation authorities. Once the politically un-tainted nationa l guard was in place, all guerrilla bands were to



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be disarmed and dissolved, replaced by a new and presumablypolitically neutral national army. The details pertaining to thisdelicate transition from the guerrilla bands to the new national

army rem ained tobe worked out between Papandreou and therepresentativesof EA M in the cabinet.While these negotiations were under way, the government's

military strength was further augmented by the arrival in A thens(on November 17) of two British and one Greek squadronsof fighterplanes. Two days earlier a m eeting o f senior E L A Scommanders(kapetanioi) in Larissa, including M arkos V afei-adis and Aris Velouhiotis, discussed the unfolding politicalsituation and h eard at least onekapetanios declare that, ratherthan demobilize, ELA S should seize A thens by force. This boldproposal was rejected by the communist leadership and thekapetanios was reprimanded for advocating a m ilitary solutionto EA M 's problems with Papandreou. A t the same time, how-exer, EL A S units in central Greece moved closer to the capital.

On November22 Papandreou announced that all "volun-teer" m ilitary form ations w ere to be dem obilized. He did notmake it clear whether he included the Rimini Brigade and theSacred Com pany among the "volunteer" troops, although som eneutral observers assumed that this was his intention. Four dayslater, in a high-handed move that offended thefilotimo of manyamong the leftists, General Scobie summ oned the commandersof ED E S and E L A S, Napoleon Zervas and Stephanos Sarafis,and dem anded tha t they sign o rders dissolving their guerrilla

armies by December 10. Zervas agreed to sign for ED E S. How-ever, Sarafis refused, arguing that such an order could only beissued by the Greek governm ent. Wh en Papandreou broughtScobie's order to the cabinet the EAM ministers refused toapprove it.

F or a brief mo m ent an ingenious solution to the im passeappeared to have been found. On November 28 the cabinetagreed to adopt a demobilization formula proposed by the

E A M m inisters. U nder this proposal, the new national arm ywas to have a nucleus of troops consisting of two separatebrigades of equal strength: one brigade would contain theRimini Brigade, the Sacred Com pany, and an EDE S unit. Theother brigade was to be m ade up entirely of E L A S m en. The

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was an order to shoot, whether policemen panicked and firedwithout authorization, or whether the first shots came fromthe marchers themselves. At the square, after minutes of chaos,

order wa s restored, and the dem onstrators dispersed w ithoutfurther incident wh en a platoon of B ritish soldiers, marchingsingle-file, placed itself across the square and between thecrowd and the police.

E lsewhere across the city, however, violence w as spread-ing. EL A S units attacked police stations and known hangoutsof royalists and members of the organization X. For a fewdays the British forces in and around A thens remained inactiveand were not attacked. But when B ritish troops were orderedto defend government buildings and prevent E L A S from seiz-ing the center of the capital, E L A S did not hesitate to take onthe British as well. The British made effective use of theirlight arm or and Spitfire aircraft, and substantial troop reinforce-ments were rushed in from Italy. The worst of the fighting w aslargely confined to the A thens-P iraeus area, but there was also

violence in Epirus where ELAS defeated the main body ofE D E S, whose remnants were evacuated to the island of Corfuby British vessels. In the second half of December the rein-forced British troops began a systematic drive to expel EL A Sfrom Athens and its suburbs. This was accomplished by thefirst week of January, with much loss of life am ong the com -batants and the civilian population.

In the first days of the fighting Papandreou offered to

step down but was ordered to rem ain in office by Churchill,who had assumed personal direction of British policy in Greece.Churchill's dictum, which he repeated often and with greatem phasis, was "no peace without victory." There would be nopolitical solution until E L A S had been crushed and rem ovedfrom A thens. On D ecem ber 24, Christmas E ve, Churchill andForeign Minister Anthony Eden arrived in Athens and con-vened a conference with representatives of pro-goverment fac-tions and of the insurgents. While there was no immediateagreem ent on how to end the crisis, and insults and accusationsflew across the table, there w as one m ajor accomplishm ent:with Churchill 's endorsement A rchbishop D amaskinos w as ac-cepted as Regent. Thus, the burning constitutional question

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regarding the monarchy's future could be formally shelved.King George, now living in London, would not return to Greeceuntil a referendum had given the nation the opportunity todecide his future. On D ecem ber 30, after much pressure fromChurchill, the king accepted the arrangem ent and recognizedDamaskinos as Regent.

A lthough sporadic fighting continued for some days, EL A Swas retreating, taking along as hostages thousands of prominentA thenians, many of w hom died of exposure or were killed bytheir captors. A formal truce was signed on January 10 and

went into effect at1:00 A.M.

on the fifteenth. TheDekemvriana

was over. On F ebruary12 the V arkiza A greement called forE L A S to be totally disarmed and dem obilized (E D E S w as al-ready dissolved), granted partial amnesty for "political crimes"comm itted during the December events, and scheduled a plebis-cite on the m onarchy question to be followed by national elec-tions for a new parliament and go vernm ent. In the m eantime,since January 4 and at the invitation of the British authorities,

Nikolaos Plastiras, a staunch republican but equally staunch anti-communist, had replaced Papandreou as prime m inister.With this chronology of events in mind we may now turn

to the question posed by the title of this essay: was theDekemvri-ana a failed communist revolution, a right-wing gambit todestroy the L eft by crushing its military arm, or a terrible blun-der for which both sides are responsible?

In retrospect there canbe little doubt that the EL A S troopsthat fought in theDekemvriana even ts were under the ultimatecontrol of the comm unist leadership. EA M m ay have been acoalition whose noncommunist factions had some say in decision-making, and many if not most EL A Sites were not communists.But E L A S's comm and and control were in com munist hands.As for the KKE, by its very nature, ideology, structure, andoutlook it was a revolutionary party. It was com m itted to theeventual overthrow o f the bourgeois-capitalist order and its re-placement by a com munist system. The K KE considered itselfto be a unit of international com munism and a loyal supporterof the Sov iet leaders, the architects of a worldwide com munistrevolution. In short, revolution was the ultimate goal of theK KE , and at the time o f liberation in October 1944 it had at its



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disposal a military force which could serve as the army of revolu-tion. For the first time in its history the KKE found itself in aposition where victory over its domestic foes was possible. And

yet, what happened in A thens in D ecember 1944 w as not acommunist revolution.Whatever its long-term goals, at the end of World War II

and a ll through theDekemvriana the KK E (and its partnersin EA M) was content to pursue its immediate objectives throughaggressive political confrontation, not armed revolution. Thecommunists wanted legitimacy and a m ajor share of politicalinfluence, which they believed they had earned through theircontributions to the resistance m ovem ent and which wouldafford them the opportunity to help define the country's future.For the time being they were not contemplating seizing powerby force of arms. Nothing in the KK E 's own com municationsprior to theDekemvriana suggests a deliberate decision to launchan arm ed revolution or even to take the initiative in E A M 'sconfrontation with Papandreou. Nor do the disposition andstate of alert of ELAS forces before December2 suggest prep-arations for battle in A thens. At the last minute there was anattempt to energize ELAS units near the capital and prepare themto respond to the governm ent's measures. These moves, how-ever, appear to have been defensive in nature rather than theopening phase of revolutionary war. In short, theDekemvrianawas not the "second round" in a communist-inspired struggleto seize control and monopolize power. The KKE would switch

from rough politics to armed revolution more than two yearsafter the crisis that produced theDekemvriana events. By thenthe party's true Bolshevik, Nikos Zahariadis, who had spent thewar years in a Nazi extermination camp, was once again in charge.

If not a com munist revolution, was theDekemvriana theresult of a clever m aneuver to disarm and destroy the Left,paving the way for the restoration of a right-wing monarchistregime?

A fter liberation and a ll through the difficult m onths ofOctober and November 1944 there were some in Greece itis impossible to say how many who would have welcomed aroyalist or right-wing coup. If successful such a coup wouldhave disarmed E LA S, dissolved E AM , and banished the entire

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leftist movement. Among those who harbored such views somewere true-blue m onarchists and staunch conservatives; manymore had become so afraid of the comm unists hiding behindE A M /ELA S that they came to regard a right-wing regime asthe lesser evil. In the ranks of those favoring a right-wing coupwere civil servants who had become identified with the M etaxasdictatorship and the collaborationist governments of the occu-pation years, including m en who had served in the SecurityBattalions which had been armed by the Germ ans for opera-tions against EA M /E LA S. There were also judges and justiceofficials, men of the police and gendarm erie, career army of-ficers, and those who had belonged to right-wing or anticom-munist groups and organizations such as X.

But if there were royalists and fanatical anticommunistsin postliberation Greece, they were hardly in a position to seizecontrol of the country or dictate policy. At the time of libera-tion virtually all of them were discredited and despised for theircollaboration with Metaxas, the Germans, or both. They had

no significant influence over either the P apandreou governmentor the public, and they were no match for the well-organizedand well-armed EAM/ELAS. Indeed, until the end of theDekemvriana and the disarming of EL A S most of the countryhad been under the control of the leftists, and in those areasit was the anticommunists who were the targets of persecution.In the aftermath of theDekemvriana this situation was to bereversed. After February 1945, with E LAS disarmed, right-wing

groups came to the surface with a veng eance and began asystematic persecution of the Left, especially veterans of EA M /ELAS. This attack on the Left (often called the "white terror- ),which the government could not or would not stop, served asthe backdrop for the civil war of 1946-1949.

A s for Papandreou, while he was greatly alarmed by thepopular strength an d boldness of the L eft, he w as hardly aman of the Right. Having been a liberal with socialist-republicanleanings, his agenda was that of a moderate centrist who hopedto win the public away from the L eft by presiding over thecountry's successful recovery from the devastation of the warwith the help of Britain and the United States. Whatever his



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faults, he had no wish to serve the cause of the monarchy andof right-wing politics.

Finally, the British were determined to prevent a communist

takeove r and to keep Greece in Britain's postwar sphere inthe face of Soviet expansionism. However, they were equallyopposed to a rightist regime. M ost of Ambassador ReginaldLeeper's warnings against any contemplated coups were directedagainst the Right. E ven Churchill, whose support of the Greekking during the war contributed to political divisions, had nouse for the Greek Right and had a low opinion of King George.What C hurchill wanted for Greece was a stable governm entthat would not become a tool of M oscow but would remainresponsive to Britain's increasingly threatened strategic interests.

In short, although the tactics of the Right, of Papandreou,and of the B ritish added to the vo latile situation in postlibera-tion Greece , theDekemvrianacannot be viewed as the resultof a rightist plot.

We thus come to the third alternative explanation for theDekemvriana:a blunder.

The problems which plagued Greece at the end of WorldWar II were enormous and dangerous, but they were not beyondsolution. Other countries, including Italy and France, facedsimilar situations yet managed to keep their internal con-flicts from exploding into large-scale violent upheavals. Inretrospect, in the Greek setting it was the standoff over thedemobilization issue thatbecame the spark w hich set off the

political powderkeg in A thens. A lthough com plicated andseverely hindered by suspicions and m istrust, the negotiationsfor the dem obilization of the various armed units could havebeen brought to a successful conclusion. What was required wasgreater diplomatic dexterity and less posturing, more patienceand confidenco, building gestures, and fewer perem ptory ordersfrom imperious-sounding British officials, and no ultimatumsfrom either side.

By failing to address effectively the problems of economicrecovery and to purge promptly and decisively the civil serv-ice and security forces of wartime collaborators, the P apan-dreou government contributed to the creation of an atmosphereof gloom and anger, allowing suspicions across the political

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divide to increase with each m ove and countermove. Inhishandling of EAM Papandreou was too highhanded and in-flexible and too confident that no matter what happened, inthe end the B ritish would bail him o ut. By setting sho rt dead-lines and issuing public ultimatums and permitting GeneralScobie to do the same, by treating his cabinet as school-childrento be disciplined rather than persuaded, he backed the E A Mministers and the com munists into a corner where they couldeither capitulate or fight. For a national leader and head ofa fragile coalition governm ent such tactics constituted a fatalmistake.

As for the Left, it became the victim of its own successduring the years of occupation. It emerged from the war con-vinced that it represented the w ave of the future and tha t itscritics were little more than the "monarchofascists" of the M eta-xas and collaborationist governments. The leftist leaders refusedto consider that for many Greeks who were neither fascistsnor royalists EAM looked very much like the Trojan Horse

through which the communists would capture the country. TheL eft was oblivious to its own image problems and ignored thefact that its tactics during the occupation , including the "firstround," had frightened away m any w ho otherwise would havewelcom ed radical reforms and even populist solutions to thecountry's problems Within the tenuous EAM coalition thecommunists emerged from the war without a concrete programof action, with a leadership that was experienced in clandestine

operations and the agitation of the masses but not in politicalcompromise with ideological adversaries. UnderestimatingBritain's determination to prev ent a leftist victory in G reece,EA M and the comm unists chose the wrong tactics to challengePapandreou and his backers to a gam e of political chicken. Asa result of such m isguided action by all concerned, the Greeknation blundered into theDekemvriana.



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NOTES

1The term cam e into use long before the publication of my boo kRevolt in Athens. The Greek Communist "Second Round," 1944-1945(Princeton U niversity P ress, 1972). The present essay relies heavilyonthe evidence presented in that volume.

2A lthough dated, H agen F leischer's "G reece under the A xis Oc-cupation: A Bibliographical Survey," in John 0. Iatrides, editor,Greecein the 1940s. A Bibliographic Companion (University P ress of NewEngland, 1981) and its updated Greek edition (Themelio, 1984) re-mains the most useful guide to the literature on Greece during thedecade of the 1940s.

3E vangelos A veroff,By Fire and A xe: the Communist Party andthe Civil War in Greece, 1946-49 (Caratzas, 1978); Nikos Zahariadis,New S ituation New Duties (in Greek) (Nicosia, 1950) ; MarkosVafeiadis,Memoirs (in Greek) (Nea Sy nora, 1985); Frederika, Q ueenof the Hellenes,A Measure of Understanding (St M artin's Press, 1971);D imitris V lantas,Civil War 1945-1949 (in Greek) (Grammi, 1981);Dimitris Z afeiropoulos,The Anti-bandit Struggle, 1945-1949 (in G reek)(A thens, 1956).

4Robert Cecil, "Five of Six at War: Section V of M I6,"Intelligenceand National Security, Vol. 9, No. 2 (A pril 1994), 352.

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the December '44 uprising, a political blunder of the both the Right and the Left

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