The warmth of reconciliation is felt everywhere. In Athens a graceful bronze monument soars at the edge of Klafthmonos Square, called the Spirit of Reconciliation. In front of it politicians from ultra-violet right to infra-red left like to pose and have their pictures taken. That’s because its going to go down well in their constituencies.
In faraway Puerto Rico former communist MP Mikis Theodorakis and former ruler Constantine Gliicksburg a month ago had a friendly talk. Both were there for the 95th conference of the International Olympic Committee. The government has asked the composer to coordinate the cultural side of the Gold Olympiad should it be held here. Referring to the recent destruction of all individual political dossiers in Greece, the musician said to the monarch, with a twinkle in his eye, “They’ve burnt both our files.” (During the junta, Col. Papadopoulos disposed of the king and banned Theodorakis’ music in public places.) But perhaps it had been loudly whispered in Theodorakis’ ear that if the 1996 Olympiad was really to take place in Athens, it might be wise to chat up His Ex since he is a permanent member of the IOC.
Even in Athens’ First Cemetery ten days earlier reconciliation was in the air when Markos Vafiadis joined mourners at the funeral of General Thrasybulos Tsakalotos. The leading field commander of the National Army during the civil war, Tsakalotos directed Operation Torch C against communist forces on Mount Grammos. It was the anniversary of his VIII Division storming the Kamenik summit on 29 August
1949, ending five years of domestic strife, which was commemorated in parliament recently. Now 83, Markos, the humble tobacco laborer and refugee from Asia Minor, who rose to become commander-in-chief of the communist Democratic Army, laid on his mighty adversary’s coffin a single red carnation.
In a special two-hour evening session on 29 August, parliament held a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. That day a bill, passed unanimously, eliminated the consequences of the tragic struggle, calling for a change in terminology and pension benefits to survivors. The period from the withdrawal of Occupation forces in 1944 to the final communist defeat at Grammos in 1949 shall henceforth be known as the ‘Civil War Era’ and not the bandit war; and bandits – (andartes – shall from hence be called ‘members of the Democratic Army’.
The bill cancelled court decisions condemning acts related to the struggle, ruled that all punishments be struck from the record; provided compensation for citizens who had been injured or made ill as a result of armed clashes or jailings or held as hostages or exiled to lonely islands.
The real excitement of the whole reconciliation took place that morning with the burning of 17.5 million individual political files all over the country. That a nation of less than ten million people can produce so much data on so little is just one of those curious things that make this country interesting. For over half a century the File Controversy was a burning issue that never got consumed till now. In the late 1930s Metaxas set the trend for some nasty local habits of which spying on one’s neighbor – and worse, recording it and passing it on to the police – became a national pastime.
Government after government went on record saying that files were no longer being collected or added to – or said they should be destroyed, or were being destroyed or had been destroyed. A few years back PASOK made an effective poster of a burning file while actually adding to them.
There had been a healthy reversal of feelings about files lately, and PASOK, with its finger always on the populist pulse, reversed its policy saying now that these documents contained valuable material for historians as well as citizens. In burning these, ND has sought “to eliminate every trace of its anti-democratic and sinful past, to alter or erase history.”
As far as history is concerned, a passage from well over 17 million files must read like this: “G.P. was seen going into such-and-such a kafenion at a certain hour. He spoke to so-and-so and disappeared through a back door. Two minutes and 35 seconds later he came back hitching up his trousers, paid 20 lepta for something-or-other, and left.” The decision to keep only 2000 files on the well-known should be a relief to most historians.
Yet the spirit of reconciliation has given back to many Greeks a past for which they were once condemned, and in many cases can now be proud of. It was a historic sight to see young laborers in Eleusis trying to prevent trucks from dumping into incinerators documents whose very existence had worried their fathers for so many years. Civil war is a terribly personal thing.
This is what makes it bitter and why it takes such a long time for the pain to go away. Surely there are now a million Greeks, the most voluble of people, for whom there are events of the Civil War which are still unspeakable. What poli tics pull apart, people have to draw in breath and put together again. It is very right that this government acknowledge what the people it represents have de cided: la guerre estfini.
