Revolutionaries Organize Against Brutal Greek Dictatorship

Revolutionaries Organize Against Brutal Greek Dictatorship

From Bulletin Vol. 7 No. 3

After more than three years of repressive measures aimed at beheading the working class, Greece’s ruling clique of colonels still faces opposition at home and abroad—now replenished by young and undefeated militants. 

The Workers’ Internationalist League is building inside and outside Greece to provide the revolutionary leadership so urgently needed to combat the reformists and Stalinists: the main stumbling-blocks to a defeat of the right-wing junta. 

As one WIL, member told us in a recent interview: "We are trying to unite the working class on an all-Greece scale, our task being to overthrow the junta and establish a workers’ and peasants' government." 

An integral role in this fight is played by production of "Oratis Allagis" ("Time of Change"), a monthly newspaper; soon to be printed fortnightly. 

In Greece itself, many older militants have been jailed or are hamstrung by the repressive laws and the well-staffed special police who carry them out. 

The majority are also still under the politically pernicious influence of the Stalinists - though the Stalinist-controlled EDA movement is now banned. 

These same Stalinists were saying, until the day of dictatorship - April 21, 1967 - that a coup was impossible. And it was the EDA’s misleadership of the huge struggles for reform after the liberal Georges Papandreou was made Prime Minister in 1963 that paved the way for the colonels. 

Yet even on the eve of the coup, the Stalinist youth leaders were telling their branches - claiming 65,000 members - that dictatorship could not come.

The result was that the most militant members were caught by the police and asked to sign a declaration refuting communist ideology. The leadership held a neutral position on signing the declaration while secretly giving the word that youth sign. 

Vanguard elements of the youth movement agreed to betray each other so that the police would not arrest lesser-known members. 

There are still between 1,500 and 1,700 militants - young and old, arrested on the night of the coup - who are held without trial. Another 1,500 are under sentence. 

Because of a lack of revolutionary leadership, fighting against the dictatorship has been spasmodic. 

ARRESTS 

Plain-clothes special branch men and women mix with people at dances and football matches - especially where the youth congregate. Many arrests take place on the basis of secret information gained through police infiltration of groups. 

In every locality the police now have two headquarters - their own and the special branch office. 

In industry too, the special branch work as informers on the factory floor. 

The dictatorship had dissolved all trade unions, expropriated union funds and jailed many leaders. It became illegal to be a member of any organization. 

Now there are police - controlled unions, used to further suppress the working class. In many cases elected trade unionists were dismissed. 

The junta has organized the youth into a 20,000-strong military-style prototype of the wartime Hitler youth and Greek fascist youth. 

School pupils are forced to join this organization (the Alkimos) and dress up in uniforms for parades and manoeuvres. Before the coup, the Alkimos had only 1,600 members. 

The other side to this is the hatred of the oppressed youth for the junta. 

They played a big part in the nationwide reaction to the regime when 500,000 people held a spontaneous demonstration at the funeral of Papandreou on November 3, 1968.

Unemployment is extremely explosive. The National Bank of Greece held a competition for 200 posts, and 2,000 took part. 

UNIVERSITY 

To apply for a university place a prospective student has to sign a certificate of social beliefs. Even if an applicant’s parents participated in antigovernment action as far back as 1946, he is banned from a college education. 

Once in the college or university, the student comes under the ever-watchful eyes of the special-branch officers who operate there. 

Many sections of the youth have illusions that "parliamentary democracy" is a solution to ending the repression that leads many of their friends and parents to the police and military torture chambers. 

The majority of the younger people have not experienced the Papandreous of this world, and the Stalinists and revisionists exploit these illusions. 

Young people write slogans on walls and make Molotov cocktails, facing the danger of being shot by state forces. 

There is a difference, though, between what the youth and the liberals mean by "democracy." 

Papandreou was elected on the promise of new liberties. But these never came and the gigantic struggles of 1956 and 1966 took on a revolutionary form. They were misled and betrayed by the "peaceful road to socialism" policies of the EDA. 

It is the lessons of these struggles and the defeat of April 1967 which must be taught and learned in order to direct the revolutionary spirit and ingenuity of the Greek working class, and particularly the youth, behind the political leadership of the Workers’ Internationalist League: to completely unmask the Stalinists and reformists and to organize for the overthrow of the Greek torturers.