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  • Παράταιροι εταίροι: ελληνική δικτατορία, κομμουνιστικά καθεστώτα και Βαλκάνια, 1967–1974 (Unseemly Partners: Greek Dictatorship, Communist Régimes and the Balkans, 1967–1974)
  • Alexandros Nafpliotis
Sotiris Walldén. Σωτήρης Βαλντέν, Παράταιροι εταίροι: ελληνική δικτατορία, κομμουνιστικά καθεστώτα και Βαλκάνια, 1967–1974 (Unseemly Partners: Greek Dictatorship, Communist Régimes and the Balkans, 1967–1974). Athens: Polis. 2009. Pp. 794. €34.20.

Sotiris Walldén's book is a significant contribution to our understanding of the foreign policy making mechanism of not only the Greek junta, but also of the communist regimes with which the Colonels were trying to cultivate relations. This voluminous book encompasses a plethora of data that harmoniously complements the analysis, thus providing the scientific evidence necessary for academic work. Despite the fact, though, that this is the first thorough attempt to evaluate the regime's relations with communist countries (mostly from the Balkans), this publication's high degree of uniqueness also owes a lot to the identity of the author. Walldén is that rare scholar who possesses the experiences and qualities of academics involved with the government while having proven anti-dictatorial credentials. Consequently, he appears, at first sight, to be the ideal author of a study like this; and the good news is that he does not disappoint.

It is made clear early in the book that the countries analyzed here are the USSR, China, and the eight communist European countries (German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Yugoslavia), with greater emphasis put clearly on the Balkan entourage of Greece. The viewpoint of the analysis of the relations of the junta with these countries is that of political and, to a large extent, economic relations, and the main primary archival collection is that of the Diplomatic and Historical Archive of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Walldén, nevertheless, decided not to rely exclusively on this admittedly important source, and this is another factor that makes his book unique; he makes sure he uses all the available archival resources without having to visit the sites where the documents are kept. Providing a free course in historical research and the utilization of published archival material, the author presents excerpts from the British archives taken from works of other scholars (mostly Rizas), uses the published sources of American state authorities (FRUS) and of the communist party of the Soviet Union, and makes extensive use of electronic resources, as well as newspapers of the period—thus studying sources in 13(!) languages.

The structure of the book consists of a combination of chronological and thematic approaches. The author provides (also in order to justify the title) an account of the regime's relations with Eastern countries (which takes up approximately 170 pages) in an effort to explain the junta's (although "limited in extent and depth") "opening to the East," and the reaction of the Balkan countries to that. The far more extensive second part of the study (313–740) is dedicated to a comprehensive examination of relations with Balkan countries, with separate chapters on Greek-Yugoslav and Greek-Bulgarian relations, a chapter on relations with Romania and Albania, a chapter on multilateral Balkan cooperation, and, finally, an extensive chapter on economic cooperation.

Walldén states in the introduction that a sober investigation of events has started only recently, following the gradual dissolution of the "fictionalization/suppression [End Page 142] mixture" concerning the period that was prevalent until now. His affirmation regarding another myth around the role of foreign powers in the coming of the dictatorship is clearly expressed:

The image of the junta as a body—foreign to Greek society and imposed from abroad—with the people and the political world resisting en masse, is extremely simplistic and, to a great extent, untrue; it obscures the fact that the military regime was a byproduct of domestic political conflicts, born and raised by the Right of the time and the "deep" post–Civil War state.

(44–45)

Moreover, the author of Unseemly Partners comments on one more myth, claiming that "active resistance, with only exceptions the students after 1972 and the Navy's attempt in 1973, was quite limited" (45, note 7—emphasis added).

Despite the above, the author does not condone the regime. The dictatorship's foreign policy is discredited as amateurish and grotesque...

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