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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE MECHANICS, IMMEDIATE ANTECEDENTS AND IMMEDIATE CONSEquences of the coup d'état of 21 April 1967 in Greece are sufficiently known. By contrast, a defiaitive study of the officers’ plot must await the provision of answers to a number of debated questions (for example, as to the exact extent of the involvement of King Constantine or of members of his personal entourage). Meanwhile, however, it may be possible to try to set the coup, the military regime and the opposition to it which has emerged in the general perspective of recent Greek politics.
1 In Les Forces Politiques en Grice, Lausanne, 1965, p. 41. The author of the present article is deeply indebted to Professor Meynaud's lucid and comprehensive survey.
2 Cf. Meynaud, op. cit., p. 25.
3 Cf. Meynaud: op. cit., pp. 26–7, 42–3, 309. An exception might appear to be provided by regional party loyalties, but here too personal adherence may be a major determining factor (cf. Venizelos and the strong liberal tradition in Crete).
4 The high water mark was the 1950 election, when no fewer than 44 parties are recorded as participating (though not all presented separate candidates).
5 For example, of former prime ministers, Mr Kanellopoulos has resolutely condemned the present regime, while Mr Pipinelis declared in favour of it and became its Foreign Minister.
6 Details of this are discussed in the present author's ‘Greece: Grapes of Wrath’ in The World Today, June 1967.
7 Interview published in Unità), 21 July 1965.
8 Th. Tsatsos: ‘König und Regierung in der griechischer Verfassungsordnung’ in Zeitschrift für ausldndisches öffentliches Recht and Völkerrecht, 26/3–4 (December 1966), p. 681.
9 An observer has remarked that, to the sponsors of Greek parties, these parties ‘are a form of investment against the economic reforms which sooner or later some government will have to introduce if there is not to be a new revolution’. (N.C.: ‘Political Changes in Greece’ in The World Today, January 1952.)
10 On this, as on the whole question of ‘intervention’ since Greece's accession to NATO, see Couloumbis, Theodore A., Greek Political Reaction to American and Nato Influences, New Haven and London, Yale U.P., 1966.Google Scholar
11 See Hammond, Peter, The Waters of Marab, London, Rockliff, 1956, pp. 31–32, 147.Google Scholar
12 At the time of writing, it is not clear whether the junta had any positive policy on Cyprus. According to persistent statements by Greek communist leaders and commentators in the USSR, the Athens coup was designed by its American and NATO ‘sponsors’ to be followed quickly by a further coup (designated the ‘Astrapi plan’) in Cyprus, which was to have resulted in termination of the independence of the Cypriot state, forcible Enosis and the offer to the Turks ‐ as a sop ‐ of a base on the island. This was seen as part of a wider US Near East strategy and related to ‘instigation’ of the June war between Israel and the Arab states. Cf. A. Grozos (Chairman of the KKE) in Pravda of 28 April 1967; K. Koliyiannis (First Secretary of the KKE) in Pravda of 9 September; articles in New Times (Moscow), 1967, Nos. 27, 29, 32, 49, etc. From the outcome of the Cyprus crisis, however, it would seem that the ‘Astrapi plan’, if it really existed, misfired badly.
13 As reported by The Times, 6 October 1967.
14 In 1936, however, this was in a sense much more real than in 1967, because of an electoral stalemate which could have given the KKE the power to black‐mail one or other of the two major parties.
15 Reports have appeared also of a willingness on the part of East European Socialist bloc states to trade with and even to invest in Greece (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 1 March 1968; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 March 1968).
16 It has been suggested by critics that the drafters drew their inspiration for this item from Article 18 of the Federal German Constitution, which, however, was devised as a safeguard against abuse of freedom of the expression of opinion by neo‐Nazi groups.
17 Mr Kanellopoulos has protested that the proposed referendum will itself be illegal in so far as it is conducted by a government not enjoying the confidence of a majority of the electorate (Le Monde, 20 March 1968).
18 On these bodies, see articles by Cedric Thornberry in The Guardian, 24 November and 15 December 1967; and, from a communist point of view, by Jan Pražsky in World Marxist Review, 1968, No. 2.
19 In an interview published in Pravda, 9 September 1967.
20 As published in Pravda of 19 February 1968.
21 This station has enjoyed the use of facilities in Bucharest (the headquarters of the KKE since it was outlawed) and also in Leipzig.
22 Interviewed in Pravda, 29 February 1968.
23 Partsalidhis has once already weathered a similar storm, when he was denounced for his part, as Secretary of the Central Committee of EAM, in bungling the December 1944 communist rising. Cf. George, D. Kousoulas: Revolution and Defeat ‐ The Story of the Greek Communist Party, London, O.U.P., 1965, p. 208.Google Scholar
24 The veteran EDA (and former Socialist Party) leader John Passalidhis died early in 1968. The EDA Managing Committee for Western Europe has come out in support of the KKE ‘anti‐party group’, according to Le Monde, 29 February 1968.
25 Summarized in Meynaud: op. cit., pp. 288–91.
26 This summary is based largely on semi‐programmatic articles in Vima of 26, 28 June 1966 and 23, 24 August 1966 and on an address delivered to the Foreign Press Association on 1 March 1967.
27 Koliyiannis has stated that the KKE approve Andrews's stand against the Athens regime but that collaboration with him would be possible only on a basis of equality, independence and unanimity in decisions on joint action.
28 Cf. the semi‐public letter addressed by Andrews's American wife to Drew Pearson and the wives of President Johnson and Vice‐President Humphrey analysing the atmosphere as one generating suspicion of any ‘liberal’ measures as tainted (published in Couloumbis: op. cit., pp. 233–7).