Istoria tou Ellinotourkikou Horou apo ton E. Venizelo song g.

Papadopoulo, 1928-1973 by
Dimitris Kitsikis; Synkritiki Istoria Ellados kai Tourkias stou 20% aiona by Dimitis Kitsikis
Review by: D. G. Kousoulas
The American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 3 (Jun., 1984), pp. 803-804
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
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 ModernEurope
tually,in Germany, the nostalgic adherents of this
aristocraticauthoritarianism supported Hitler, be-
lieving, wrongly,that they could use him for their
own aims. TFhismarriage of authoritarianism and
totalitarianismcan be found in Metaxas's thought
and politicalactivityduring his royal dictatorshipof
1936-41. Metaxas, like Hindenburg, was never a
fascist. Nevertheless, living in the fascist age, this
unconditional monarchist was influenced by fascist
populism and used fascistmethods.
Kofas fromthe startadopts cliches to characterize
Metaxas and Venizelos. The latter is called the
"pillar of republicanism" (p. ix). but this English-
style liberal never thought it important to choose
between a king and a president. T'he liberal system
could be vindicated by both formuilas. In fact,
Venizelos personally preferred a constitutionalking
for his country.The former'spolitical portaitis also
readily drawn in the form,as the French say, of an
image d'Epinal. Tfhe author sees "Metaxas, a self
proclaimed fascist"(p. 14) and shows his "perserver-
ance in crushing the lower classes and their leader-
ship" (p. 1). In fact,Metaxas's populism was antiplu-
tocratic, and he earnestly tried during his
dictatorshipto institutea social policy favorable to
the lower classes. What the author probably means
by the lower classes' "leadership" is the KKE, the
Communist party of Greece, which Metaxas
crushed. The author expresses his political sympa-
thies candidly when he writesthat "the frightening
reality was that the Communists weakened after
1938" (p. 145). Some statements are particularly
extreme: "Class collaboration to Metaxas meant the
suppression of the workingclass and the peasantry"
(p. 57). Did Metaxas plan to suppress the whole
Greek population? His social program to alleviate
the plight of the poor is seen by the author as a
"Machiavellian device . . . to portray the chief as a
benevolent ruler" (p. 67).
The section devoted to "The KKE under the
Dictatorship" (pp. 129-45) is particularlyweak not
for what it says on the subject but rather for what it
does not say. From 1936 to 1941 the KKE was split
into three groups. Metaxas's police put its own
agents at the head of two of these groups. None of
this appears in the book.
Even though the author makes use of interesting
unpublished Foreign Office and State Department
documents, he draws heavily from Greek commu-
nist authors, many of whom are not professional
historians,or from amateurs like Komnenos Pyro-
maglou, who is labeled "one of the great literary
contributorsto modern Greek history"(p. 136). Fhe
result is an oversimplificationof problems in the
lightof popular Marxism.
DIMITRI KITI'SIKIS
University Ottawa
oJf
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803
DIMITRIS KITI'SIKIS. IstoriatouEllinotourkikou
Horou apo
tonE. Venizelostong. Papadopoulo, 1928-1973 [His-
toryof the Greek-Turkish Area from E. Venizelos
to G. Papadopoulos, 1928-73]. Athens: Vivliopolion
tis "Estias." 1981. Pp. 364.
IstoriaEllados kai Tourkias
DIMITIS KITSIKIS. Synkritiki
stou20% atona [Comparative Historyof Greece and
Turkey in the Twentieth Century]. Athens: Vivlio-
polion tis "Estias." 1978 Pp. 31 1.
These two volumes by Dimitris Kitsikisrepresent an
uncommon orientationin contemporary Greek and
Turkish historiography. Both Greek and Turkish
historians tend to treat the relations between their
two countries from opposing viewpoints. Neither
side findsmuch good to say about the other. Kitsikis
boldly departs from this traditional mold. One of
the few Greek scholars who can read Turkish,
KitsikistreatsGreek-Turkish relations in the twenti-
eth century-a very eventful period for both na-
tions-with a remarkable degree of detachment and
impartiality.He views with deep regret the animos-
itythatoften mars Greek-Turkish relationsand that
seems to subside only for very short intervals. He
would like to see the two nationsjoin in a confedera-
tion because, in his view, both belong to a single
cultural and geopolitical area.
Many, including this reviewer,would agree that a
close and uninterrupted cooperation between
Greece and 'Turkey is in the mutual interestof the
two nations. Eleutherios Venizelos, the Greek states-
man who fought the Ottoman empire to liberate
Greek-inhabited territoriesand bring them under
the sovereignty of the Greek state, and Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk,who founded the modern Tfurkish
state, worked hard in the early 1930s to bring the
two countries closer together.But the "Greek-Turk-
ish Friendship" they fashioned never really took
hold of popular imnaginationand loyalty in either
country.
Since the Truman Doctrine in 1947, the United
States has recognized the strategicunityof the area
and has dealt with the two countries as though they
were part of a single entity.Tlhe approach is histori-
cally sound. The lands where the states of Greece
and Turkey are located today have been for many
centuries under a single sovereignty-under the
Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottoman empire. The
Americans, of course, saw Greek-T urkish cooper-
ation in the contextof the East-Westrivalry,withthe
two countriesbeing part of the West, especially after
joining NATO in 1952.
Kitsikissubscribes to a close cooperation between
Greece and Turkey but not as part of the Western
community of nations. According to the author,
these two countries belong to an "intermediate
region" (enthiamesiperiokhi)distinctfrom his version
804 ReviewsofBooks
of "West" and "East." This novel geopolitical divi-
sion is of particular interest.TFhe intermediate re-
gion includes the entire landmass of the Soviet
Union, the non-Catholic countries in Eastern Eu-
rope and the Balkans, Greece and Furkey,the Arab
states of the Middle East, and the countries of
northernAfrica from Egypt to Morocco. The West
includes Western Europe; Poland, Czechoslovakia,
and Hungary; Australia and New Zealand; and
presumably all the countries in the Americas. TFhe
East includes India and Pakistan and all the coun-
tries south of the Himalayas, plus China, Japan,
Korea, Indochina, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
South of the Sahara, Kitsikis speaks of a "Black-
AfricanCivilization."The apparent criterionforthis
geopolitical construct is primarilycultural, but one
cannot ignore its political implications. In this inter-
mediate region the dominant power is unquestion-
ably the Soviet Union. If Kitsikis'sgeopolitical view
of the world is to be accepted as valid, one will have
to accept the logical corollary that the affiliationof
Greece and Turkey with the West is a departure
from their cultural heritage allowing the West's
intrusion into the intermediate region. Although
Kitsikisdoes not advocate in these two volumes that
Greece and Furkeyshould come under Soviet dom-
ination, he questions the notion that these two
countries are part of the Western community of
nations and leaves the impression that, in his view,
they are culturallypart of the Middle Eastern and
North African milieu. Some may interpretthisas an
advocacy for Greece's Third World orientationl.
In discussing Greek-Turkish relations during this
century,especially in the second volume covering
the years between 1928 and 1974, Kitsikis tries to
interpretevents through a basic dichotomyof politi-
cal thought. He argues that in Greece (as well as in
Turkey) political leaders and theoristsespouse as a
rule two basic orientations. One has traditionally
favored the notion that Greece is part of the West;
the other sees Greece as part of the East. The latter
placed greater emphasis on the Eastern roots of
Greek culture and presumably wanted close cooper-
ation with Turkey. In Kitsikis's view, Eleutherios
Venizelos was a Westerner while I. Metaxas was an
adherent of the Eastern persuasion. By the same
tokeni,he sees Con. Kararnanlisas a Westernerwhile
he views the leaders of the colonels' dictatorship
(1967-74) as Easterners because they supposedly
favored a return to Eastern notions of Christian
"Orthodoxy" and "Greekness." Because of his per-
ception that the dictatorial regimes of Metaxas
(1936-41) and of the Colonels were of the Eastern
persuasion, Kitsikis treats them with a leniency
uncommon for a Greek historian with a left-of-
center background. Although both regimes favored
good relations with Turkey and an emphasis on
"Greek" values, there is no evidence, so far as I
know, that either saw Greece as part of the interme-
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diate region. In fact, their strong anticommunism
would have been in fundamental conflictwith such
a geopolitical division in which the Soviet Union
would be the dominant power.
In spite of reservationsabout the author's geopo-
liticalviews and about some of his detailed interpre-
tationsof key events or developments, this reviewer
found the Kitsikis'stwo volumes a significantcontri-
bution to the study of Greek-Turkish relations,
particularlybecause of his non-nationalistic,Greco-
Turkish approach.
D. G. KOUSOULAS
Howard University
misaoi socijalizam[Yugo-
ENVER RED2I1i.Jugoslovenska
slav Thought and Socialism]. Sarajevo: OOUR.
1982. Pp. 324.
ENVER RED2I. AustromarksizamiJugoslavenskopitaryje
[Austro-Marxism and the South Slav Question].
(Biblioteka Studije i Monografije Jugoslovensko Pi-
tanje.) Belgrade: Narodna Knjiga. 1977. Pp. xiii,
497.
The national quarrels that rent the old Austro-
Hungarian empire were reflected in the polemical
writingsof the Marxist-oriented social democratic
movements withinthe empire and inspired some of
the most thoughtfuland thought-provokinglitera-
ture of the period by Austro-Marxisttheorists.
Fhe contents of Austro-Marxism and theSouthSlav
Questionare what the titlesuggests-a review of the
Marxist classics on the national question as applied
to the South Slav lands withinthe Austro-Hungar-
ian empire, and to its enemy Serbia, in the period
before the collapse of the empire in 1918. Separate
chapters are devoted to summaries of the writings
on the question by Marx and Engels, Karl Kautsky,
Karl Renner, Otto Bauer, and Viktor Adler. All of
these, of course, are more readily available to most
scholars in the original. Fhe summaryof theirviews
is no doubt very useful to Yugoslav readers and
would be a convenient point of departure for non-
Yugoslav scholars interested in a study of the na-
tional question.
Ideas such as Bauer's notion of "historical" as
opposed to "unhistorical" peoples, which led to
considerable heated polemics at the time, can now
be dismissed as historical curiosities. For scholars
interestedin the study of multinationalstates today,
however, a review of the ideas of "cultural" or
"personal" autonomy mightbe fruitful.TFheAustro-
Marxistsconsidered the possibilityof arranging the
management of social and political affairs so that
mattersof interestto one nation-with each person
declaring for himselfhis national affiliation-should
be dealt withby representativesof that nation, while
mattersof interestcommon to more than one nation
should be handled by a common administration.