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Historians at War: Greece, 1940-1950 From Armatolik to People's Rule: Investigation into the Collective Memory of Rural Greece, 1750-1949 by R. Van Boeschoten; The Greek Civil War, 1943-50: Studies of Polarization by D. H. Close; The Allied Military Mission and the Resistance in West Macedonia by N. G. L. Hammond; Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito's Partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia by F. Lindsay; Leilasia fronimation: To makedoniko zitima st ... Review by: Mark Mazower The Historical Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Jun., 1995), pp. 499-506 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639996 . Accessed: 08/02/2012 20:16 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Historical Journal. http://www.jstor.org

Historians at War

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The Greek Civil War and the controversial narratives of different historiographical schools. By Mark Mazower

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Page 1: Historians at War

Historians at War: Greece, 1940-1950From Armatolik to People's Rule: Investigation into the Collective Memory of Rural Greece,1750-1949 by R. Van Boeschoten; The Greek Civil War, 1943-50: Studies of Polarization byD. H. Close; The Allied Military Mission and the Resistance in West Macedonia by N. G. L.Hammond; Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito's Partisans in Wartime Yugoslaviaby F. Lindsay; Leilasia fronimation: To makedoniko zitima st ...Review by: Mark MazowerThe Historical Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Jun., 1995), pp. 499-506Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2639996 .Accessed: 08/02/2012 20:16

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Cambridge University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheHistorical Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

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The Historical J_ournal, 38, 2 (I995), pp. 499-506 Copyright ? 1995 Cambridge University Press

HISTORIANS AT WAR: GREECE, 1940-1950

From Armatolik to people's rule: investigation into the collective memory of rural Greece, I750-I949,

By R. Van Boeschoten. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 199I. Pp. vii + 433. 88 Swiss francs.

The Greek Civil War, I943-50: studies of polarization. Edited by D. H. Close. London and New York: Routledge, I993. Pp. Xiii+ 265. J30.

The allied military mission and the resistance in West Macedonia. By N. G. L. Hammond. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, I993. Pp. 214. No price given.

Beacons in the night: with the OSS and Tito's partisans in wartime Yugoslavia. By F. Lindsay. Stanford, Ca.: Stanford U.P., I993. Pp. xxiii+383. JI9.95.

Leilasiafronimaton: to makedoniko zitima stin katechomeni dytiki makedonia, I941-I944. By J. S. Koliopoulos. Thessaloniki: Vanias, I994. Pp. Xxiv + 284. 3I20 drs.

Apo tin itta stin exegersi: Ellada, anoixi ig4i-fthinoporo I943. By G. Margaritis. Athens: 0 Politis, I993. Pp. 2I4. 2,600 drs.

The British Labour Government and the Greek Civil War, I945-I949: the imzperialism of 'non- intervention'. By T. D. Sfikas. Keele, Staffs.: Ryburn Publishing, Keele U.P., I994. Pp.

308. (30.

Greek assignments: SOF I943-I948 UASCOB. By M. Ward. Athens: Lycabettus Press, I992. Pp- 343. J9.95'

Aegean adventures, I940-I943 and the end of Churchill's dream. By M. Woodbine Parish. Lewes: Book Guild, I993. Pp. 400. fI4.95.

Fifty years after the liberation of Greece, the story of the I 940S remains as controversial as ever. Former participants continue to publish accounts of their experiences while historians haggle over the responsibility for the outbreak of civil war. The ending of the cold war, however, has helped us move slowly into a new phase of understanding about these tragic events. This has coincided with the first fruits of the remarkable efflorescence of social, cultural and economic history which has taken place inside Greek universities and research institutes over the last ten years. At the same time, the rise of nationalism in the Balkans has created a new interest in ethnic realities of the I 940s, adding a third dimension to the historiography of these years. The books under consideration here reflect this unusually volatile intellectual environment, full of both potential and constraints of an order not easily appreciated outside the region.

One characteristic of the historiography of the war in Greece has been the enormous and (compared with other areas of historical enquiry) disproportionate influence exerted upon our understanding of events by memoirs and autobiographical accounts. The inaccessibility of archival sources - especially in Greece itself- has hindered serious scholarly research. Meanwhile, ever since Woodhouse's Apple of discord appeared in I 948, former protagonists have been marching into print. Some eye-witnesses have turned into historians, with variable results. It is, of course, entirely natural that such authors should seek to offer broad, strategic rationales for their actions. The balance between personal involvement and analysis is, however, hard to attain and few authors

499

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avoid the tendency to exaggerate the historical significance of their endeavours. Few, too, openly confront questions of memory and hindsight. To the historian, on the other hand, the very biases and silences of these first-person accounts offer the most valuable pointers towards a critical understanding of the subject.

Part Boy's Own adventure, part Jennifer's Diary of the British upper classes at war, Aegean adventures illustrates many of the limitations of the first-hand narrative of Balkan derring-do. The author, the back flap tells us, is 'a British patriot, who, when he is not being wounded, captured by the enemy, or escaping, enjoys to the full life in a society which numbers royalty, leading politicians and captains of industry among its [sic] friends'. As a young officer, Woodbine Parish was captured by the Germans on Crete, escaped to the Middle East, helped run MIg's caique routes across the Aegean from Smyrna and ultimately conceived of a daring, if impetuous, plan to force Churchill's hand in the Dodecanese by rushing there at the time of the Italian surrender in 1943 in order to claim the islands for the British. After coming close to success, he was captured and sent to a German POW canmp whence he was released early and returned to Britain.

A book one third the size would have sufficed for this story. But Parish cannot resist the temptation to bemoan what he sees as a wasted opportunity of immense proportions. Had the Allies taken the Dodecanese, he asserts, and then thrust north- wards through the Balkans, the Soviet advance in eastern Europe would have been forestalled and 'Britain and her Empire would still have been the most powerful on earth'. As grand strategy this is nonsense, as Michael Howard argued many years ago (even if Churchill himself was tempted by similar visions). But as an insight into the mentality of a conservative British officer, such remarks have a certain fascination. And when we learn that Parish's first marriage collapsed as a result of his Dodecanese escapade, much to his obvious distress, it becomes clearer that the author's obsession with British strategy in the eastern Aegean is a matter with intimate and personal overtones.

The pathos in this account is largely implicit. Parish's war oscillated alarmingly between dramatic escapade and intense partying. In Cairo 'I was able to circulate a lot .. seeing all my old friends in the regiment and having many happy lunches and parties at Shepheards Hotel and the Gezira Sporting Club.' The pages abound with 'housefuls of guests' and 'charming',' very distinguished' and 'kind' aristocrats. Even in hospital, the author meets up with chums from Eton. Such social attitudes were much in evidence in the Balkans, if not always in so pristine a form. Franklin Lindsay, in his admirable Beacons in the night, an account of his service with OSS in northern Yugoslavia, recalls that at Fitzroy Maclean's mess in Belgrade in I945 'these British officers ... seemed not only to have been together in early wartime operations but also to have had many close school and family ties'. What impact the intense class consciousness of the British made upon fiercely independent resistance fighters remains to be researched.

Lindsay's book is a superior example of the memoir genre. Why wartime Yugoslavia should be so well served by such books is not clear to me; Djilas's Wartime and Deakin's The embattled mountain both provide a blend of personal testimony and historical analysis which has raised them to classic status. Beacons in the night must now be ranked alongside them. Like them, this book offers profound insight into the nature of the partisan resistance. Like them it also describes the conflicting emotions of wartime life. Lindsay is well placed to discuss the differences between the Austrian and Slovene responses to Nazi rule, as well as the reasons for the lack of resistance to the Allies in the much-feared

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'Alpine redoubt'. The personalities of different partisan leaders are vividly rendered. What is most impressive is the author's cool and detached assessment of the political balance of power between Tito and Mihailovitch. Was it the Allies' relatively low strategic stake in Yugoslavia which enabled liaison officers there to attain an objectivity in estimating the nature of Tito's movement which eluded their contemporaries in Greece?

Whatever the reason, few eye-witness accounts of wartime Greece can match Lindsay for dispassionate yet sympathetic analysis. The vast majority of British accounts are more perceptive than Aegean adventures, yet most share Parish's obsession with communism. Even Greek assignments, a welcome new addition to the memoir literature, concludes with a rather unenlightening reference to the 'baleful communist conspiracy ... by a small minority' which nearly managed to destroy democracy in Greece. This, however, is more than counterbalanced by a very sensitive account of life in wartime and postwar Greece and some evocative new photos. The author touches on aspects of the war which seem to have passed by many other BLOs; he alludes, for example, to the presence ofJewish refugees in the hills, a dark reminder of one part of the Nazi occupation on which the British memoir literature in general is silent. More amusingly he also discusses the spate of marriages between Greek women and British soldiers at the end of the war - with an insight which may stem from the fact that his wife too is Greek. His vivid descriptions of peasant life in the villages of the Pindos, his careful contrast of living conditions in different parts of central Greece, will all prove indispensable to social historians of wartime.

Professor Nicholas Hammond has already written his memoirs of service in wartime Greece. Now he has edited a most valuable collection of SOE signals and other papers relating to the resistance in Western Macedonia. His own strong suspicions of the policy of the Greek communist party were displayed in Venture into Greece and remain in evidence here. He appears not to have altered his original assessment that the KKE was bent upon seizing power by force. Such views fail to take account of the substantial body of work upon communist policy which has accumulated in recent years (and of which some is discussed below). But they do little to detract from an exciting and illuminating collection of documents of considerable contemporary significance.

Western Macedonia was an area of unusually intense guerrilla activity and great ethnic complexity. Hammond, like Lindsay, brings out the considerable mistrust which existed between Allied liaison officers and local resistance groups. Like Lindsay he also highlights the key role played by the civilian population in supporting the resistance and in bearing the brunt of Axis reprisals. Much SOE time was spent on what amounted to welfare and relief activities or in hiring mules, drivers and guides to convey arms and men, in columns up to a mile long, across the mountains of northern Greece.

The ethnic dimension of the war in Greece, so far little discussed by historians, was of inescapable importance in Macedonia. The Wehrmacht units in northern Greece were a kaleidoscope of nationalities including Armenians, 'Turkestans' and others. Supplementing them were various more or less willing local militias. Hammond's book casts light on the virtual civil war between ELAS and the Turkish-speaking Orthodox refugees who had been settled in Greece after I922. Because their settlements lay along strategic routes, the Germans forced them to accept arms to keep out the andartes. As for the indigenous population, it was a melange of Greek- and Slavic-speakers. The latter, still bitterly resentful of the forcible hellenization policies of the Metaxas dictatorship, moved in a variety of directions - some accepting arms from the

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Bulgarians, others enlisting in EAM/ELAS and yet others forming a group of 'Independent Macedonians'. Ethnic and political boundaries were permeable and there was much slippage between these three groups. The SOE reports from the region are one of the most valuable sources of information we possess on the 'komitadji' villages, the Slavic resistance movement SNOF, and other aspects of the impact of the war upon the Macedonian question.1

This subject has now also attracted the attention of one of Greece's leading historians, John Koliopoulos. The author is not wanting in courage, for the current intellectual climate in Greece inhibits any scholarly discussion of this topic. As is customary in such situations, every term has become freighted with explosive implications: should one, for example, refer to 'Slavo-Macedonians', 'Macedonians' or - as Koliopoulos prefers - 'Slavophone Greeks'? Should one use the non-Greek place-names then in use for villages in the region, or their hellenized versions preferred by the Greek authorities? Koliopoulos employs the latter, but supplies the former in an appendix. (There is, unfortunately, no map.)

Written with Koliopoulos's customary clarity, Leilasiafroninatonz [a rough translation might be The Plundering of Allegiances] lays out the various political and military forces in the area, and analyses the processes by which people shifted allegiance from one group to another. In this respect it is a valuable study which supplements the pioneering research of Evangelos Kofos. On the other hand, it is not nearly as effective as Koliopoulos's earlier study of nineteenth-century brigandage in bringing the subject to life. This is partly because the author does not disguise his antipathy to the two main protagonists of his story, EAM/ELAS and the Slavic autonomist movement. But it is also because he has little to say [less indeed than Kofos] about crucial social and economic dimensions of the incipient ethnic civil war.2

Drawing upon a small range of very partisan or unreliable sources [mostly cold war memoirs of fiercely anti-communist Greek nationalists and reports of Greek war crimes trials from the civil war period] the work lacks the finely-balanced sympathy which allows a more measured critic like Lindsay to convey the emotions and ideals of the Left without necessarily sharing them. When it comes to the Slavic minority (or 'Slavic- speaking' element of the Greek ethnos), Koliopoulos again paints a basically unsympathetic and ultimately limited picture of their plight and actions. The autonomist movement is attributed to the activities either of foreign agents (Bulgarian, Italian and German) or of local 'opportunists'. It becomes easy to forget that the repressive policies of the prewar Greek state had offered some of these people ample grounds to transfer their allegiances elsewhere in the turbulence of the early I 940S.

Koliopoulos himself observes that most villagers did not take part in autonomist politics; yet the war is not really shown from the point of view of this apolitical majority. The social or cultural environment of the Slavic-speaking villagers remains relatively unexplored, apart from an important discussion of the land disputes before the war which were one of the causes of their alienation from the Greek state. The more the author insisted that these villagers did not have a separate ethnic consciousness, the more I wished to be able to hear their own words and have their world described as

1 For a valuable supplement see A. Rossos, 'The Macedoniains of Aegean Macedonia: a British officer's report, I 944', Slavonic and East Eutropean Review, LXIX, 2 (April I 99 I), 282-307.

2 Cf. J. Koliopoulos, Briganzds with a cauise: brigandage anzd irredenztismii in nmodernl Greece, I82I-I9I2 (Oxford, I987); E. Kofos's Nationzalism and communzism in Macedonia, originally published in I964, has recently been reprinted by Caratzas (New Rochelle, New York, I993) together with three more recent essays on the Macedonian question.

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they might have seen it. It will be hard, but certainly not impossible, to find the sources to permit this. In the meantime it seems that the 'nationally-minded' tradition of Greek historiography, if not as dominant as previously, exerts an influence over the discussion of ethnic dimensions of the war.

The vexed issue of communist intentions during the occupation and after has been the focus of historical debate since the early stages of the cold war. The old view was that there were 'three rounds' to the Greek civil war between October I943 and I 949 and that the Greek communist party was engaged over this period in attempting to seize power on the instructions of Moscow. Sfikas, in his well-researched study, argues spiritedly that it was this very view which underpinned British policy in these years and thereby contributed to the tragedy. His book is a contribution to the ongoing reassessment of Britain's role in the origins of the cold war. Frazier has argued that Bevin's determination helped trigger off the cold war at a time of American hesitancy; Sfikas pushes the argument one stage further, by insisting that even after the proclamation of the Truman doctrine, British influence remained a key consideration in Greece.3

One of the merits of Sfikas's work is the way he sets events in Greece into the broader framework of emerging strategic tensions in Europe and the Mediterranean. Like several other recent authors, Sfikas finds hesitancy and circumspection on the communist side - both in Greece and in Moscow.4 Stalin emerges as a cautious figure for much of the period, probing Western intentions but basically accepting British supremacy in Greece as part of the price to be paid for communist dominance elsewhere in eastern Europe. Sfikas guides the reader expei tly through the anguished debates within the KKE before and after liberation and emphasizes the lack of any clear decision to seize power in I 944-5. Above all, Sfikas stresses the importance of periodization: rather than seeing I 943-9 as part of a single process, we need to see how the choices facing the Left (and Right) change quite dramatically several times over that time. The view that Greek communists were bent unwaveringly upon a forcible seizure of power turns out to have been merely a working hypothesis which can no longer convincingly be sustained.

This leaves the question of who did start the civil war, and to this Sfikas offers two answers: one is the British, and the other is the Greek Right. Referring to the clash of December I 944, Sfikas remarks that 'nobody had desired a shoot-out except Churchill', and the British prime minister certainly emerges as the catalyst for the fighting, rejecting his own ambassador's suggestions for a political reshuffle of the Greek cabinet which might have averted the bloodshed, before ultimately making peace with the Left by conceding the one point on which he had remained intransigent - the need for a plebiscite on the monarchy. In Sfikas's account, though, the basic motor for British policy is strategic and there is therefore little change when Bevin takes over the reins in the summer of I945.

Obsessed with the spectre of Soviet involvement, the British found themselves unable to rein in the Greek Right which now plays an increasingly important part in Sfikas's

3 R. Frazier, Anglo-American relations with Greece: the coming of the cold war, I942-I947 (New York, I99I) and ibid. 'Did Britain start the cold war? Bevin and the Trumain doctrine', Historical Jozirnal, XXVII, 3 (i 984), 7 I 5-2 7.

4 See also P. Stavrakis, Moscow and Greek commutnismn, I944-I949 (Ithaka, NY, Cornell UP, I989) and H. Vlavianos, 'The Greek Communist party: in search of a revolution', in T.Judt (ed.), Resistance anzd revolutionz in Mlediterraneani Euirope, I939-I948 (London, I989), pp. I 57-2 I2.

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analysis. A 'white terror' and domestic political polarization led to an atmosphere of increasing violence in the provinces and the eventual reforming of leftwing bands. The KKE was reluctant to take to the hills a second time, but tried unsuccessfully to use the armed bands as a warning to the Athens government to moderate its anti-left policies.

This interpretation of the genesis of the civil war of 1946-9 is reinforced by the valuable collection of essays edited by David Close and particularly by his own contributions. The Greek Civil War, 1943-i95o succeeds in its aim of summarizing the fruits of the research of the last decade. Although some contributiolns offer us little new, the essays on domestic aspects of the subject - on KKE policy and the emergence of the Right - supplement Sfikas. Close's useful introduction highlights the wrenching demographic and ethnic changes which occurred in the I940S and also brings out certain peculiarities of the Greek civil war compared with other civil wars in modern Europe. He notes, for example, the relative unimportance of either class or ethnicity in triggering off the violence and comments on the relative mildness of the aftermath. He notes the differences between EAM/ELAS and the later Democratic Army and argues that though their aims were similar the public response was not, since the popular mood by the late I940S was tired and in favour of reconciliation rather than further mobilization and struggle.

Ole Smith's two essays insist upon the lack of connection between the internecine resistance feuding of I943-4 and the civil war of I946-9. In many ways this is the key to the emerging consensus on this period: political polarization in I945-6 rather than communist expansionism in I 943-4 has become the focus for historical research into the genesis of the civil war. This brings the rightwing violence which followed the I945 Varkiza agreement under the spotlight. As a result David Close's chapter on the reconstruction of a rightwing state is in many ways the key to the entire volume. Thanks to the existence of a British police mission to Greece, the British foreign office archives contain valuable material upon the reconstruction of the gendarmerie and the struggle to contain both left and right-wing violence after liberation. Close has made adroit use of this and other primary sources.

The interpretation advanced by both Sfikas and Close brings down the curtain on one set of concerns and opens up others. Both books suggest that diplomatic history has now taken us as far as it can (in the absence of a detailed examination of the archives in Moscow). On the other hand, they also indicate the need to probe more deeply in areas beyond the realm of high policy. The focus on the domestic rather than the international origins of the civil war suggests a need to look hard at several neglected aspects of life in Greece immediately before and after liberation: we need more social histories of the genesis of political polarization, we need in-depth local studies to gauge what was happening outside Athens, and we need to know more about the cultural and ideological issues subsumed for so long under the cold war rubric of communism versus anti-communism.

A number of pioneering works have recently pointed the way. George Margaritis's study of the birth of mass resistance during the occupation is in some ways the most exciting work of those discussed here. The author justifies focusing upon the neglected early period of the occupation by attacking scholars' tendency to start at the end (i.e. in this case the civil war) and then work backwards. This indeed is what almost all previous historians of the war have done. Margaritis also accuses leftist historians of being obsessed with the political activities of the KKE and EAM; as he rightly charges, this obsession with certain heroic political institutions has led them to neglect the dramatic social and economic changes which permitted EAM to grow.

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Margaritis's exciting, if programmatic, analysis has several components. Like Claudio Pavone's work on Italy, it is sensitive to the 'morality' of the resistance, showing how the experience of service on the Albanian front in particular bred feelings of iindependence, anger against authority, betrayal and comradeship which allowed many ex-servicemen to move naturally into r-esistance once the authority of the quisling government in Athens crumbled. He addresses the social and economic impact of food shortages, the blurred boundaries between official and unofficial markets, arid the collapse of state authority in the countryside. But it is his constant awareness of the interplay between personal experience and social change which marks out his work. Thus, for example, he notes that 'from April 194I, with ever increasing intensity, people lived the disintegration of the state'. The result is an analysis of resistance which for once does not impose anachronistic cold war concerns upon the protagonists. Politics emerges from social struggle and econiomic breakdown. Margaritis himself stresses the need for further research. His brief mention of Italian support of Vlacl autonomists offer a further reminder of the unexplored ethnic dimension of occupation. Overall, this is a highly original monograph which richly deserves translation.

No doubt one of the reasons why so much research into the I940S has been pursued through the British and American archives is the inaccessibility of Greek archival sources. The fifty-year rule, the lack of a modern building to house the national archives and the devastating indifference of the Greek state to the records of its own past (an indifference which culminated in the official destruction of secret police files in I989) have all pushed scholars of wartime Greece into the archives of foreign ministries in the West. One of the consequences has been an over-concentration upon diplomatic history and high politics and a neglect of social and cultural history and, in general, the experiences of ordinary Greeks. Margaritis attempts to solve this problem by using wartime Axis archives as well as the now voluminous memoir literature in Greek. Another strategy which a few historians are beginning to adopt is to work through oral testimonies. Given the rich anthropological literature on postwar Greece it is odd that historians have taken so long to recognize the possibilities of the spoken word. Now, however, the first studies of popular memory are starting to emerge and altering our understanding of the cultural and ideological climate of the war years and after.

Based on fieldwork carried out in a remote part of central Greece in I977-9, an article by Anna Collard, which appeared in I 990, explored 'the experience of civil war in the mountain villages of central Greece'.' Making fine use of oral testimonies, the author stressed the shattering impact of violence upon the villagers' traditional norms anld expectations. The sharp local focus raised several issues entirely unexplored by more conventional histories - the role of kinship in forging alliances or rivalries; social life in small communities once the fighting had ended; the impact of the war upon the traditional rural economy and its contribution to the rapid urbanization of Greece in the I950S. Together with the anthropologist Stanley Aschenbrenner, who examined the aftermath of the civil war in a small village in the southern Peloponnese, Collard may be said to have initiated an alternative approach to the history of the I940s. One may speculate whether from this perspective a history of provincial emotions - of love, marriage, hatred, revenge and weariness - may not in time come to supplement

5 A. Collard, 'The experielnce of civil war in the mountain- villages of cen-tral Greece', in M. Sarafis and M. Eve (eds.), Background to conitemiiporary G'reece (London, I990), pp. 223-54; see also her 'Investigating "social memory" in a Greek context', in E. Tolnkin, M. McDonald and M. Chapman (eds.) History anid ethnicity (Loindon, I989), pp. 89--I03.

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the more conventional history of strategic planning, political machinations and bureaucratic infighting in Athens, London, Washington and Moscow.6

Not only emotions, but popular values and ideology may also be illuminated in this way. Riki van Boeschoten's imaginative From Armatolik to people's rule is a major contribution to our understanding of the ideology of wartime resistance. The book is an extended comparison of the kleftika [songs referring to Greek resistance to the Ottomans] and the wartime andartika. The wartime guerrillas often likened themselves to the heroes of i82I. In fact, van Boeschoten has little difficulty showing certain fundamental differences between the two, notably the expression of a social ideology in the songs from the I940s, accompanied by a sense of linear history which is almost entirely absent from the more traditional ballads. In van Boeschoten's hands, the andartika become a means of penetrating beneath the official ideology propagated by the communist resistance leadership, and exploring the values and aspirations of the rank-and-file guerrillas. There turns out to be little ideological uniformity; insofar as one can discern certain prevalent concerns, they reflect the interests of the peasant smallholders who formed the backbone of the andartiko rather than the conventional communist principles of party activists.

The andartika hint at some important features of resistance life - the development of national feeling, the ambiguous attitude towards religion, the divergence between rank and file radicalism and the more moderate leadership. But after reading van Boeschoten's careful and sensitive analysis, some doubts still remain about the sources themselves: the glimpse they offer of resistance aspirations is, on occasions, both rosier and more precise than the scanty historical record suggests. Not surprisingly, villagers' attitudes towards the andartes were less unambiguously positive than the songs suggest. At the same time, the key resistance slogan of laokratia [people power], for example, was perhaps fuzzier than is depicted here.

Two conclusions may be drawn from a reading of this impressive work. The first is methodological: archival materials - for all their scarcity and inaccessibility - still reach parts that oral testimonies do not. The second is historiographical: now that the cold war has ended, we may be better placed than before to understand the confusions of the I940s. Van Boeschoten's analysis of the ideology of wartime resistance raises the question of how far the meaning of deliberately vague slogans and aspirations can be clarified. In the decades that followed the end of the civil war, historians imposed cold war certainties upon an era of exceptional flux. But about the only thing we can be sure of is that few people entered the resistance in the early I940S planning to fight the cold war. Now that the old certainties have been replaced by fresh anxieties, perhaps we will be able to turn to the I940S with a new sympathy.

UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX MARK MAZOWER

6 S. Aschenbrenner, 'The civil war from the perspective of a Messenian village', in L. Baerentzen, J. latrides and 0. Smith (eds.), Studies in the history of the Greek Civil War, I945-I949 (Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum Press, I987).