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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 14, 3 April 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Intervention by the United States last week in the election results of Greece has brought Sophocles Venizelos to power as premier of that country. Venizelos, up to that moment, had agreed to form a coalition between his Liberal Party and two other democratic parties. But when the United States authorities decided otherwise, he dropped his coalition partners and became the premier.
Now to get support for his government he must rely mainly on the votes of the royalist and out-and-out fascist deputies in the parliament. Fifteen deputies of his own party have announced that they will vote against the Venizelos government.
For a clearer explanation of this confused and complicated picture it is necessary to go back to the elections of three weeks ago. The Populist (royalist) government suffered a terrific setback, receiving only 18 per cent of the total vote. It was the majority party up to election time, having obtained 55 per cent of the vote in the previous election. It was the party that had worked hand in glove with the United States and was responsible for all the policies in Greece since the 1946 elections.
Three center parties (National Progressive Union, Liberal Party, Social-Democratic Party) received more than twice as many votes as the Populist Party this time. It was these three parties that agreed to form a coalition government.
Of the three, the Liberal Party had participated in the recent regime in Greece. Its leaders had also worked with the United States government as closely as had the royalists. As a matter of fact, they were the front men in the Greek government, permitting the U.S. to claim that “democrats” were in power in Greece.
But among the center parties that received the most votes in this election was a new group, the National Progressive Union. This is what has surprised and shocked the old-line politicians, the correspondents of the N.Y. Times, and the U.S. intelligence agents.
The National Progressive Union is led by General Plastiras. His party’s program called for support of the Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine and for friendship with Washington and London. All the parties had that in their programs. But Plastiras had a few other points and that it why the people voted for his party.
The NPU called for improved relations with Yugoslavia and Greece’s other neighbors. It called for amnesty of all prisoners taken in the civil war who are now on the notorious prison islands. It. also called for a smaller army and asked that the policy of insulting Russia at every turn be stopped.
To the people this meant a chance for peace, the return of many of the soldiers and prisoners to their homes, and the end of the danger of Greece becoming an international battlefield for the big, powers.
Plastiras’ record in 1923 – as a colonel he headed the provisional government which drove King Constantine into exile for dragging Greece into war against Turkey – also served him in good stead in this election. The people saw in Plastiras a chance to get rid of the present regime, as he had done in the past. This is the reason for the overnight growth of his movement.
All the other parties had been screaming that a big vote for Plastiras would mean an end to Marshall aid and the Truman Doctrine; that many in the Plastiras party were Communists (the social-democratic New Leader in this country raised the same howl in its. lead article); that Plastiras would reopen the “royalty” question and bring civil war to Greece.
That this propaganda had some effect on some people who are tired of internal strife and frightened of enslavement by Russia, there is no doubt. Many df these people voted for the other center parties, which also claim to be democratic ,and some voted for the Populist Party, which represents alliance with the Western powers.
The rural area vote went mainly to the royalists. Here it was difficult to reach the people who were bombarded for the past four years with the most atrocious propaganda, in areas where no one dares breathe a word against the king, where the fascist gang’s rule still dominates.
The soldier vote came in long after the . other results had been announced. It was here (and in the rural areas) that the royalists found strength. Every observer claims that this vote was rigged and it is difficult to believe otherwise. There is no war on. and to believe that soldiers, no matter how patriotic, will vote for parties that will keep them in uniform indefinitely – this is to forget everything that man knows about man.
In addition to the rise of the Plastiras movement, the second significant development in this election was the big vote obtained by the Democratic Front. This group captured the vote in the big cities, the votes of the trade-unionists and the socialists. The Democratic Front, led by John Sofianopoulos and Alexander Svolos, is a peculiar conglomeration of honest people who consider themselves socialists, some revolutionary socialists and many Stalinist fellow-travelers.
The Democratic Front program put special emphasis on working-class rights, amnesty for the prisoners, and peace. The advanced workers who voted considered it the only party worth voting for. To these workers the Plastiras program was nothing more than just a few radical promises with many contradictions and no hope for fulfillment.
There were many other socialist and working-class parties in the election, but the Democratic Front was the only one with people who are known throughout the country as socialists and resistance leaders during the last war. The Democratic Front would have obtained more votes, votes that obviously went to Plastiras, but some of its leaders have yet to announce their position on the recent civil war.
The Communist Party, outlawed in Greece, informed its sympathizers through the “Free Greece Radio” (somewhere in the Balkans) to vote for the candidates of the Democratic Front – but NOT to vote for the leaders of the Democratic Front who are running as candidates.
When the elections were over, more than one and a half million votes had been cast. More than two-thirds of these votes had been cast for democratic parties. This is significant when one considers that the Populist (royalist) Party had received 55 per cent of all the votes in the 1946 elections.
The fact that the strength of the Populist Party has now been reduced to 18 per cent (and it would be much lower in an honest count) is even more significant when one considers that all the other reactionary and fascistic parties were almost wiped away completely.
As soon as the elections were over the democratic parties of the center issued a statement that they would form a coalition and name Plastiras, the head of the largest party, as premier. The leaders of the three parties, Plastiras, Venizelos and Papandreou, all signed the agreement. The Democratic Front, running a close fifth in the election, was not invited to participate.
But there was a hitch: the United States and Great Britain did not want Plastiras. Not that they have any big fears about Plastiras, but he and his party have some ideas about Greece handling her own affairs, and he may not always accept the advice of the U.S.
So the U.S. convinced Venizelos to break with the coalition and line with the royalists. Venizelos, who retains the leadership of the Liberal Party only because of his father’s famous name, is simply a bridge-playing egotist who will jump through the hoop whenever the State Department of the U.S. wants him to.
The people of Greece clearly voted to demand a government free of entanglements, free from . the death-grip of the royalist party. Now, the U.S. insists on shackling them again with a rightwing combination that is in no way different from the old one which was repudiated in the election.
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