Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944–1949 (review)

Reviews 265 in 1947, not 1946 (p. 45 n.47), Papagos came into power in 1952, not 1951 (p. 19), and the supposed 22nd Congress of the KKE (p. 267) is presumably the 12th, held in 1987. Although some of these errors will be easily corrected by readers, others are more dangerous. The non-specialist reader, for example , will probably be unable to see the error when the author claims that the KKE advocated an anti-imperalist "New Democracy" in 1977. (The "New Democracy" concept was advanced in 1973 at the 9th Congress, before the fall of the junta, but for obvious reasons was not heard of again.) As these errors accumulate, the reader begins to lose confidence in Spourdalakis' scholarship. Last but not least are the astonishing number of typographical errors in this volume. The Greek tides fare the worst, quite aside from the singularly unfortunate and inconsistent transliteration system that is employed. Generally, the author's style often obscures his meaning, as in a locution like "the societal configurations of the Greek social configuration" (p. 68). The publisher should have insisted on a thorough revision of the text. Although there are some excellent observations in Spourdalakis' book, and although he obviously has collected and used a large body of source material, his work is sadly disappointing. Ole L. Smith University of Gothenburg Peter J. Stavrakis, Moscow and Greek Communism, 1944—1949. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1989. Pp. xviii + 243. $28.95. Professor Stavrakis' contribution is that of having produced the first detailed analysis of Soviet involvement in the Greek civil wars of 1944-49. His book is based primarily on the revelations of Greek communists after they were allowed to return home from foreign exile in the mid-1970s. Works in English and Russian are also important to his interpretation, however. In August 1944, the KKE suddenly reversed itself and joined George Papandreou's new government of national unity, formed in the Lebanon, and on Papandreou's terms. The Greek communist leaders did this at a time when EAM-ELAS controlled most of the Greek mainland and had formed a national government of its own "on the mountain." This basic change in policy, it now turns out, was ordered by Stalin, who had gotten Churchill's consent to a free Soviet hand in Romania in exchange for granting a free British hand in Greece. In this fashion the KKE forfeited a great opportunity: that of seizing power during the German withdrawal from mainland Greece before British troops could bring Papandreou and his new government to Athens. Stavrakis contends that the KKE should have decided for civil war by March 1945. The ELAS rising at the turn of 1944-45 had pretty well ruined the Party's political prospects. Most cadres favored a new appeal to Mars in 266 Reviews any case. This crucial decision was postponed, however, because Stalin did not want a civil war in Greece; he hoped instead for a British withdrawal, a weak government in Athens and a politically influential Communist Party. The explanation for his views is simple. The Soviet dictator did not wish to give his quondam Western allies any excuse for intervention in the East European states newly made communist. Stalin therefore ordered the Greek Party to participate in the election scheduled for 31 March 1946. The Party refused, however, and prepared to take the field instead. Without communist participation, the returns of the March election installed a government more to the political right, a shift which led to an efficient purge of Party sleepers throughout the state apparatus and the army. This goes far to explain why so few of the Party's urban assets could be mobilized for the final struggle. Unable to prevent a "third round," Stalin undertook to assist the Democratic Army, which now took the place of ELAS. He did so in order to limit the heavy dependence of the DA on Tito, who hoped to break the log-jam over the future of Macedonia by extending his proposed Balkan Federation southward. (The assigned objective of the DA was the liberation of Greek Macedonia and its conversion into a sovereign state with Thessaloniki as its capital.) But...