In the provinces, vacationers left the beaches to snatch up newspapers while mystified tourists wondered what was going on. In the platias and tavernas as well as on trains, buses, boats and airplanes, a spirit of camaraderie reigned as people swapped their Ta Nea for someone else’s Avgi or their Kathimerini for someone else’s Eleftherotipia. In the interests of objectivity, others determinedly tracked down copies of Eleftheros Kosmos and Estia, the two most right-wing newspapers. All this news consumption, unusual even in a nation of compulsive newspaper readers, is easily explained: it was the Summer of the Trials. The details of the legal proceedings against the Junta in its various forms were exhaustively covered by all the papers, and were ‘required summer reading’.
The first trial to open was that of the Februarists, those who attempted a military coup earlier this year against the present government which had been elected by a landslide a few months earlier. It reiterated the bitter truth that the arrogance of some members of the military not only ‘never dies’ but refuses to ‘fade away’. A week later the most important began, the trial of Papadopoulos and Company, the twenty protagonists accused of plotting and executing the April 21, 1967 coup. Three days later the most dramatic trial of all, the trial of The Torturers, opened.
There was some confusion in following all of these court cases simultaneously, but one thing was crystal clear: at the trials, called collectively by some ‘the Greek Nuremberg’, it was Fascism that was in the dock and, more specifically, fascism in the military.
Even though much had already been known about the tortures, the documentation of the vicious psychological and physical treatment dealt by the accused members of the Military Police (ESA) stunned the nation. As victim after victim placed his experiences on the public record, the effect became numbing. A picture emerges of sadism run wild and turned loose on the citizens.
On August 4, in a ludicrous footnote to these events, the leaders of the Junta complained that they were being tortured at their trial—by the hard, wooden seats on which they were sitting. They were duly provided with cushions and the case continued.
The opening of the trial of Papadopoulos and Company on July 28 was covered on nationwide television. As the ringleaders of the coup which toppled democracy in Greece in 1967 faced the court and provided, computer-fashion, their basic statistics (name, address, occupation…) they shrivelled before the eyes of the public. The ritual of the legal proceedings reduced them to non-entities, divesting them of any awesomeness that might still have clung to them.
Nor was there anything remarkable about their success in effecting the coup. They saw an opportunity and seized it, or, as it was succinctly put by one observer, ‘they gave the door a push and it swung open’. The events that occurred on April 21, 1967, it transpired, could have happened at any other time in the last quarter century and very nearly did on several occasions.
The trio of Papadopoulos, Pattakos and Makarezos was found guilty of treason and revolt and condemned to death. Most of the others received life sentences and, a few, lighter ones. Two were found not guilty as charged. The government immediately indicated its intention to request the President of the Republic to commute the death sentences.
Those who do not believe in capital punishment find themselves in a quandary. It is unsettling to think that the leaders of the Junta even in prison may continue to be a source of inspiration to other members of the lunatic fringe. In this age, however, mankind has come to regard execution as barbaric even when it is in accordance with justice, and world public opinion has supported the government’s position. There has nevertheless been considerable controversy largely because of the haste with which the government acted. (One Cypriot wit suggested that the issue could have been avoided if the condemned had been provided with bus fare from Korydallos Prison, set free and, without bodyguards, of course, left to make their own way home through the crowds.)
The truth of the matter is that regardless of whether former putschists are executed or not, the best deterrent to dictatorship is development. Fascists may successfully carry out coups; they may hamper progress but they cannot halt it. Retribution for the Junta may well be, as one young man suggested, to live to a ripe old age and to witness the evolutionary changes and the enlightenment that are to them anathema.
They’re Back
IN MID-June many organizations and business concerns were alarmed by the slow rise in summer tourism. The political crisis with Turkey and the rise in the cost of petrol and airline rates all seemed to augur a depression in tourism. Rhodes was rumoured to be empty and other Aegean islands less than half full.
The first sign of a complete change in the situation came about a month later when the Tourist Police announced that the sudden influx of tourists was so great that more officials were desperately needed at Evzoni, the port of entry at the Yugoslav border. A few days later it was announced that the hotels of Halkidiki were full, and soon warnings were coming over the radio: ‘The hotels of Kefalonia are full’, ‘there is no bed to be found on Spetses’, ‘the car ferries to Skyros are fully booked.’ Greece was jumping with vacationers who filled hotels and pensions and even competed for squatters’ rights on the beaches at night.
To meet the demands of those who wanted to get away from the madding crowd, agencies and periodicals began digging up the most recondite spots: islands such as Piperi, Arkilias, Antikeros, Alimnia — assuming you could find them on the map and having done that, you could get there. To reach Gavdos, we were informed, one might have to wait an entire week for a caique and to reach others we were advised to hire our own!
The truth of the matter was, however, that the most peaceful place to have been in mid-August was the centre of Athens. It was absolutely deserted!
Americans at Home and Abroad
WHEN we heard that Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, one of the staunchest supporters of an American arms embargo against Turkey, was giving a press conference at the United States Information Service offices in The Tameion Building, we decided to attend: we were curious to see how the Senator from Missouri was faring after a year of living cheek-by-jowl with the ‘Greek Lobby’ which suddenly materialized last summer after the Cyprus tragedy. From New York to California, and from the Canadian border to Tarpon Springs, Florida, Greek-Americans have mobilized their resources over the Cyprus issue. Communities which in the past seemed on the verge of a New World Peloponnesian War united and, joined by phalanxes of Ahepans, Daughters of Penelope, Sons of Pericles, Maids of Athens, Pan Arcadians, Pan Laconians, Pan Cretans, Pan Macedonians, to name only a few of the sisterhoods and brotherhoods, brought up their heavy artillery and bombarded the Congress and the American government with protests. (We are tempted to wonder where all of their efforts were expended in the years 1967-74, but we won’t quibble. We are impressed.)
When the Senator from Missouri appeared, we were reassured to see that he was none the worse for wear after a year of consorting with our brothers on the other side of the Atlantic, or even after what he discribed as ‘eyeball to eyeball encounters’ here in Athens with Prime Minister Karamanlis, Defense Minister Averoff, Foreign Minister Bitsios, Opposition leader Mavros, and the most prominent female member of Parliament, Virginia Tsouderou, all of whom, with the possible exception of Mr. Bitsios, are known for their ‘forthrightness’.
With the unassuming American manner that frequently appears guileless to foreigners, the Senator from Missouri disarmed his listeners by expressing his sorrow over the solicitude shown by his government to the dictatorship, ‘a serious mistake in American foreign policy’, which he assured us is now past. Although he acknowledged that the Greek lobby had been influential, he emphasized that those who had fought in Congress in favour of the Embargo had been largely guided by their conviction that the laws of the United States as they exist demand it. It is illegal for American aid to be used to invade another nation, and a bilateral agreement exists which specifically mentions Cyprus. The House of Representatives will vote again on the embargo in September. Whether or not it will be maintained and whether or not the President of the United States exerts his right to exercise a waiver remain uncertain. One thing, however, is clear: in the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate era, there are many Americans who perceive the role of their nation quite differently from an earlier generation, and are determined to uphold the ethics of their society.
Angry Men, Young and Old
DIMITRI Kollatos is an ambitious young man who has gained considerable publicity by being against just about everything. For some years he has lived in Paris where he has his own theatre, in which he produces and directs his own plays and his own cinema house, where he shows his own films.
In early August, his new play, A Greek Today (Enas Ellinas Simera) opened in Athens, causing a predictable furor. In this play, consisting of sketches in the form of a revue, Kollatos, with characteristic modesty, set out to give a sweeping panorama of Greek life since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Among the sketches there are depicted political tortures, priests carrying Junta banners, a Byzantine maiden offering her virtue to a passer-by, a shipowner strangling his wife, and a lesbian scene in which, for the first time on the Athens stage, two women and a man cavort about in the buff.
This rag-bag concoction which might be subtitled ‘Everything You Wanted to Know about Modern Greek History (But Never Dared Ask)’ caused a great sputtering among the critics.
K. Yorgousopoulos in To Vima was succinct: ‘It is the right of everyone in this country to ride a horse backwards (kavallaei to kalami; literally, to ride a bamboo cane), but when this becomes a spectacle costing one hundred and forty drachmas, I believe the spectator also has the right to bring, along with his
ticket, his tomatoes, his eggs and his cauliflowers!
Another critic suggested that the play be ‘given the cushion’. This was a reference to a common practice fifty years ago in the Athenian theatre when people expressed their disapproval of a play by throwing their seat cushions onto the stage. At the conclusion of a disastrous flop in those days, the stage was almost obliterated from view.
Others, however, have found the play refreshingly iconoclastic, an overdue clearing away of historical bogus and chauvinistic cobwebs.
It was no surprise that at the height of the controversy Bishop Augustinos, our Good Shepherd of Fiorina and Defender of the Nation’s Virtue, joined in the fracas. (The Bishop’s fans will be delighted or disappointed to know that while his Reverence has taken up the crusade against Sin, he recently announced that there are many good Christians among us.) His invitation to Kollatos to come up to Fiorina was accepted, and there they slugged it out, each with his tape recorder beside him.
The Bishop began mildly enough, saying, Ί hear that you come from a good family, my boy, and that your father was killed by the communists. But now you have committed a crime. You publicly show filth to make money, my child. For this the bones of your father will creak.’ This comforting tone did not last, however, and the Bishop was soon pounding the table and turning various shades of purple.
When it came to the allegation of homosexuality in the Church, Bishop Augustinos became indignant. On the evils of homosexuality he waxed eloquent, quoting Pascal on the greater purity of animals, concluding with the coup-de-grace, ‘The jackass never goes with a Jackass. Terma!’ The remainder of the conference was largely a monologue on the part of the Bishop.
Offense being the best defence, Augustinos stormed down to Athens the following week and in a television interview announced that Christians should start a political party of their own which, he hoped, might win thirty seats in Parliament (ten percent). The central plank of his platform would consist of bans on automatic divorce, adultery, premarital sexual relations, mixed bathing, mini-skirts, beauty contests and school girls doing athletics on Field Days.
Whatever the final verdict may be on A Greek Today, Kollatos certainly has a ready-made hero for his next play which we have every right to believe will be a masterpiece.
