THE 1821 REVOLUTION

THE 1821 REVOLUTION

Seven years after the Revolution ended, the European governments inquired of President Ioannis Kapodistrias as to how many Turks lived in the Peloponnesus. Kapodistrias gave them two numbers, one for 1821 and one for after the Revolution. The number for 1821 was 42,000 and the other number was 0. Today’s Greeks do not want to believe or refuse to believe that a sizable Turkish population lived in the Peloponnesus and disappeared without a trace. Turkish families lived everywhere on the Greek territory in small communities working in farms, as craftsmen, traders, employees of state institutions, etc. Those families had lived there for many generations; this was their home. They did not know of any other country and would not have moved, yet they disappeared without a trace in a short time. What happened to these people? It would appear that, regardless of sex or age, they were all killed a few weeks after 1821. All 42,000 Turks; men, women, children, old and young vanished from the face of the earth. They faced no court and none was proven to be guilty of anything… And yet no one took responsibility for their disappearance…

This mass slaughter was perpetrated during the “glorious” 1821 Greek Revolution from which the Greeks have distanced themselves, believing that they won their freedom through a “courageous” military struggle; yet another 1821 myth. To justify this dishonest barbaric act, some Greeks claim that “the Turks also committed such criminal acts” and that the slaughter was committed in retribution.

There are countless legends of events circulating in the schools, created to justify the terrible crimes committed against the innocent

Turkish population. But such crimes are not easy to explain or to forget because they have left deep imprints in the souls, especially in the children. How can anyone explain to a child that his father, grandfather, or a close relative ruthlessly killed Turks? That they slaughtered innocent children along with their parents and then threw them into city wells? How could they explain the many items they had in their homes which had been stolen from the homes of those innocent people who no longer were alive to tell the truth about their untimely death? If they told their children the truth, they would have wondered what kind of people they themselves were and surely they would have asked: “Grandpa, how are we better than them? What is the difference between us and them? Where is our moral superiority?”

The island Chios rightfully became a true example of a heinous place which devoured thousands of innocent people. Chios became a heinous place of the Turkish tragedy during the Greek Revolution. Even though there are many other places where massacres were committed against innocent Turkish citizens by various regular and paramilitary formations, Chios remains the landmark of crimes and the most famous killing field in this world.

Violence in those days was a common event. It was not strange to enter some place and exterminate people as if they were not people. The bloodlust of the Greek gangs had no boundaries. The right to rule was gained by the blade and the bullet. Violence was a means of survival and a means to rule the weaker. Many well-meaning people today often wonder: “Is it true that heinous atrocities were committed in Tripolikas?” Yes indeed massacres were committed in Tripolikas, but didn’t the Turks also commit mischief and massacres in many places in their empire? But for the sake of the truth, of all the mass exterminations of unarmed Turkish civilians, according to existing documents, the worst and most heinous was the one in Tripolikas. There were 35,000 Turkish people living in that city when the Greeks conquered it. Of these, no one was left alive.

The devastation and carnage that took place during these military acts in Greece was captured in one of Dionysios Solomos’s poems of freedom. Forty years later Dionysios Solomos’s poetry was used to fashion the Greek national anthem. From his entire collection of

poems, totaling about 158 works, only a few stanzas are known. “If you read more than two stanzas,” said one of the Greek participants in this documentary, “you will find that our national anthem is not only a hymn to freedom, but also a testament to the atrocities committed against innocent people. This is a graphic view of terrible events: “Look how desperate hands pluck life. They cast off the feet, the hands and the heads of the dead victims. Swords and chains mixed with the gray brains knocked out on the ground. Cracked skulls and parts of the internal abdomen... Everything in one indescribable horror. Oh, oh! What is enough, enough!”

“The knowledge and memory of these crimes will last a long time. Our national anthem contains everything else and least of all words about freedom. It contains the horrors and violence of the revolution. I believe that Solomos was not as naïve as he leads us to believe. Reading his verses about freedom in our national anthem, one begins to discover, in poetic terms, the real truth about what happened during our Revolution. Our 1821 Revolution, like every revolution, was a bloody story. It is a testament to the expulsions, revenge, epidemics, famine, murder, robbery, violent migrations and bondage. Both the Greeks and the Turks insisted that these events be put behind and forgotten. If they could be forgotten! A new government had to be organized and function on the ruins of a Revolution, but how could it achieve that if the past was deleted and forgotten? Well, this was done with ideological patriotism based on the Bavarian model, where uncomfortable events were replaced with the “glorious” heritage of ancient Greece. Unfortunately reality is extremely difficult to change overnight. In Athens and everywhere in Greece, however, there were visible signs of hundreds and hundreds of crushed monuments that needed to be put back together; centuries old historical traces that were long gone. So the Greek state began to work to erase the existence of the Ottoman Empire and everything associated with it. All this work was done so that Greece could achieve complete purity and a continuous, long unbroken link with its ancient Greek culture.”

These invitations of the newly composed country can be considered invitations of people who lost their compass and common sense, who were funny and not serious, but mostly existing outside the norms of civilized behavior in historical science. As a matter of fact,

other emerging countries made the same mistakes, some more and some less, in order to deny parts of their past and create a favourable present and future in the eyes of their people and before their common community. Some historians are saying that other people from science, even from the other side, opponents of such an approach to history, are grabbing their heads in disbelief that something like this is even possible. “This kind of direct connection with an ancient old culture contributes to resurgence without interrupting historical trends”, say the proponents while patting themselves on their shoulders as if they are miracle workers.

The false path that the new Greek state took began with the arrival of its Bavarian rulers. The people were already disfuntional in every respect when the Bavarians arrived in Greece. There was poverty and despair everywhere in frightening proportions. Their disappointment was great when they did not find a people with the Hellenic spirit with which they were in love. They instead found street beggars who spoke Arvanitika (Albanian) in place of ancient Greek. Many of the philhellenes who came to Greece were asking: “How can someone be a Hellene when they are a poor and desperate street beggar in Athens speaking Arvanitika (Albanian)?” The fact was that there was no logical connection between any of this on the ground. What the Bavarians believed and what they saw after their arrival were two different things. Their discovery was disappointing and those who returned to Bavaria were inclined to say: “There is nothing we can do down there in Greece. No one can save this country. These are no connections and nothing in common between the modern Greeks and the ancient world.”

Even the Greek kingdom had difficulty standing on its feet. Fallmerayer, a Bavarian historian, came up with his own ideas, working against the theory that there was a continuous link between ancient and modern Greece.

What was Fallmerayer’s purpose in all this? The fans of Hellenism at home were responsible for the “tie of the pillar of shame” because of their crazy ideas.

Fallmerayer argued that the current Greeks, as a race, have nothing to do with the ancient Greeks. Of course his claims and theories

created great panic in the kingdom not just because he did not accept their desires to transform a lie into truth, but because he wanted to sabotage the promotions of legends favourable to the monarchist regime and the people in that country.

Fallmerayer bitterly blasted the philhellenes and their fans in Bavaria by taking another bold step; by producing evidence, solid evidence to show everyone that all the claims made by the current government, that there was a continuous link between the Greek kingdom and the ancient Greeks, was just fiction and completely false.

For his deeds Fallmerayer soon found himself in trouble. He was named the greatest enemy of the Greeks because he went too far. He took the subject much further than what was expected from his opponents and the circles of power in Greece and particularly in Bavaria. In doing so Fallmerayer brought evidence to light stretching back to Roman times, to the arrival of the Slavs in the Balkans in the sixth century and to the relocation of the Albanians to that part of the country in the 14th century.

So according to Fallmerayer the links that would link the present day Greeks with the Greeks from ancient times were invented, false and therefore did not exist. These links, according to Fallmerayer, were broken not once but three times. Therefore Fallmerayer rejected all links that would link today’s Greeks with the ancient Greeks, as false and non-existent and the continuity of Hellenism as a nation, as fiction.

This well-known German historian and keeper of historical truths who had risen to piety was now “Greece’s greatest enemy”.

Two names that surfaced in the constellation of forces opposing each other on the Greek stage of Greek history were: Spiridon Zabeli expert on Byzantine history and folklorist and historian Constantine Paparigopoulos.

According to what they wrote, the continuity of Hellenism in Greece was put in place before the 1850’s. They alleged that there was no interruption of continuity in history. “But it was possible to have

both unstable and stable periods, which their colleague Fallmerayer from Bavaria calls breaks or interruptions in continuity, which in fact are links.”

Therefore, according to Paparigolopoulos and Zabel, “the nation is restored and continuity is established. Unfortunately disagreements between historians remain unresolved, not only ideologically or historically, but also politically. And thus a multi-ethnic society like Greece needs to create a single unified Greek Nation.”

At this point they were thinking primarily of the Albanian minority being the most numerous, credited in many struggles for independence. The Albanians were a people divided into two groups; the Orthodox and Muslims or as some would call them Turko-Albanians. The most important leaders in the struggle for Greek independence in the 1821 Rebellion came from the ranks of Orthodox Albanians, who distinguished themselves with their great abilities and courage, especially those from the islands of Hydra, Ostriva and Spetses, as well as the Souliots who fought on land. It is not too much to mention the fact that the people of those times were quite educated and capable of intellectual work. Markos Botsaris compiled a Greek Albanian dictionary. A very interesting dictionary indeed! He knew both Greek and Albanian well and dared to engage in such linguistic adventures. I would say that Botsaris also knew the Turkish language and I can freely say that he served with Kolokotronis.

While praising the Albanians for their compatibility and suitable features for integration into the new Greek society, historian Paparigolopoulos, as a scientist, went a little too far praising only the Orthodox Albanians and completely neglecting the Muslim Albanians rendering them unacceptable strictly because of their religious inclinations.

Further on in his “scientific” debate, Paparigolopoulos deviated from the path of science and entered the muddy waters of racism and intolerance, making things even more confusing in his controversy with historian Fallmerayer.

Arguing about the qualities of the two peoples, the Greeks and the Albanians, and the idea of combining them into the new Greek nation, he said that the Greeks were more civilized and intellectually and culturally more advanced that the Albanians and that the Greek race will get vitality, strength and unity. The unity of these qualities, even today, confirms the “notable qualities” of the “modern” and “democratic” Greek state. In this context it is worthwhile to mention the fact that, the Albanians who integrated into Greek society feel more Greek than the Greek Cypriots, something that speaks for itself. This confirms Fallmerayer’s thesis of a fully extinct connection between today’s Greeks with those of many centuries ago.