Front Matter

A Glorious place called Greece

A collection of essays

Risto Stefov

A Glorious place called Greece

A collection of essays

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September 12, 2019

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Translated and Edited by Risto Stefov

“Every nation must think of its own history, being based on truth…” Dionysios Solomos 1847.

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Recently an unexpected video clip, at least for us Macedonians, suddenly appeared on Facebook which shocked the entire population of Greece. The clip was about the creation of the modern Greek state; a result of the 1821 Greek Revolution. There would have been nothing unusual about it had it been based on what is known about ancient history and the historical processes familiar to people. But it was not like that. The reason it was shocking and disastrous for the Greek public was because this video clip revealed the lies and untruths upon which the rotten foundations of today’s so-called “democratic” Greece was built, which has nothing to do with the ancient City States or the ancient Athenian culture, the centre of science on which today’s Western civilization is based.

The video clip is a documentary which reveals the atrocities the Greek clergy had committed since the inception of the Greek state and continue to commit to this day; especially against the national minorities living in Greece, including the Macedonian people.

The facts that are boiling in this video clip are delivered by many participants, including by the Greek scientific elite, who are educated in higher learning institutions worldwide.

The video clip which I am discussing in this article was delivered in part in the Greek language but mostly in English. I believe many Macedonians, especially those in the Diaspora, had an opportunity to view this important document and follow its content without much difficulty. But there are also those who had difficulty understanding the English language, which is why I took the opportunity to present the clip’s theme in the Macedonian language… as best I could.

Now let us begin with the story that describes the creation and development of today’s modern Greek state, one of Macedonia’s supposedly “good” neighbours. Let us have a look at how Greece was truly created and how Greece treats the Macedonian people. Allow us to also remind the reader that no good could come from negativity; bad for bad, from which no one benefits and only leads to more harm. And even though this information comes too late for us Macedonians, the truth is slowly revealing itself and justice will surely prevail.

The conscience of honest people should not be underestimated, as can be seen from the professionals who themselves are representatives of the Greek scientific environment and who are important for the future development of good neighbourly relations between the Greek and Macedonian people.

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Let us begin:

“On September 27, 1831 Ioannis Kapodistrias, the new Greek state’s first president, was murdered on the main road to Naphplion (port city and first Greek capital). With his assassination the country hit a new cycle of civil war. It soon became clear that all the effort made by the Greek president to create a new functionally independent and virile state was fruitless. It came to light that the Greek people were incapable of having a state, let alone governing it successfully.”

These were words spoken by the host of the Greek TV program “Sky”, referring to historical events that led to the formation of today’s Greek state, formed for the first time under the name “Greece”. He continued:

“Trapped in the Ottoman Empire they were unable to look the future in the eye. They made enormous efforts to keep the privileges which they had enjoyed until then, stubbornly opposing any changes in their status, which undoubtedly would have come with the new Greek state, in which the rule of law, order and justice would prevail.”

“Being particular about what was happening in that part of the world, the European powers were able to find a simple cure for the Greeks. All they needed now was to find a leader and an ideology to unite them. It was time to bring a monarchy and form the first Greek Kingdom. The cards were thrown on the table and the game began…”

FORMATION OF THE FIRST NATIONAL MYTH

In 1832 the Greek royal crown was not something that was desired, its necessity was imposed from the outside. After continuous unrest and ruthless destruction, the country had nothing better to offer. Much more important than the formation of any new state was the idea that would link the present with the past; link the present people with the ancient Greek culture, (dead in this region for many centuries). This idea was manufactured in the heads of the people in the present.

The Bavarian monarch Ludwig I, one of the great supporters of philhellenism, took this project even further. His comprehensive support of the Greek Revolution for independence and the formation of the Greek kingdom, headed by his still adolescent son Otto, was not a random act.

At the time when the English were stealing the marble legacies from the Parthenon and moving them to museums and private collections, most “distinguished” by Lord Elgin, Ludwig I carefully made copies

of them and placed them in prominent places in the German state. With that he created a new Athens in Munich, in the heart of Bavaria, whose beauty is present to this day, far from present-day Greece, as a perpetual memorial to his love of Hellenism and its values.

During Ludwig I’s time, the educational system of this tiny German state introduced the Greek language as an obligatory subject, together with the literary and scientific legacy of the learned people of ancient Greece. Thus in 1830 Bavaria became the centre of the lovers of Hellenism and Munich looked more Greek than Athens. Many Bavarian artists, supported by Ludwig I himself, often traveled through the Greek lands and were inspired by the classical past of that country and the deep romanticism of the time.

Peter Von Ness, one of those Bavarian artists, received a special assignment. His task was to perpetuate the 1821 revolution by recording all important events with portraits and drawings. These portraits, especially those of prominent heroes and important events, remained the most important works of art in Greek history to this day.

According to William St. Clair from the centre of History at the University of Cambridge, in 1830 Greece was the first independent nation state in Europe, largely thanks to the “star” qualities of Ancient Greece. So according to the traditional views of the monarchic governments of that time, a free Greece meant the resurgence of the ancient civilization that was appreciated and respected all around the world.

“And so the dream of Bavarian monarch Ludwig I, the great lover of Hellenism, began to unfold. On the morning of February 6, 1833 Ludwig’s 17 year-old son Otto arrived in Naphplion, and soon after that he landed in Athens; the new capital of the new Greek state. But of course the new king did not arrive alone. He arrived with more than 3,500 military and administrative instructors in order to establish an administrative model in the image of Bavaria. Despite those, young king Otto and his staff had other, more important objectives to accomplish. They needed to conquer and annex the

various separate parts of the Greek territory and unify them under the new Greek state and ultimately create a new national identity.”

“The new government that was hastily installed met with many difficulties and ran into various obstacles. It found itself in a divided society with a non-existent economy. Its priorities were not only to bring peace and order to the country but, above all, it was charged with the task of creating a new Greek national identity: an identity capable of uniting a society and bringing change to the traditional understanding of identity. In other words create an identity for a modern nation.”

In his presentation Pashalis Kitromilidis, a political science professor at the University of Athens, explains.

There were valid and specific reasons for choosing Athens as the capital of the new Greek Kingdom. One of those reasons, highlighted as a key reason, was the international recognition of Ancient Greece. This was the basis or starting point for the recognition of the new Greece. This idea was brought to life at the very beginning when Ludwig I initiated the Greek project to place his young son Otto on its throne. At that time the state bore the name Hellas and not Greece.

In their projects regarding the new Greek kingdom, the Bavarians had many other surprises; - To remove every trace and memory of the Ottoman past in Athens and beyond, thereby restoring all ancient monuments in the city and, amazingly, following the Munich model. But all this was not totally unexpected; the top priority of the new state and beyond was to recognize the Greek originality.

The first thing that Otto did after landing on Greek soil was to put public finances in order and restore the old drachma from 2,000 years ago, thus lifting the Phoenix which assassinated Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first Greek president elected in 1831. After that the new monarch renamed all the streets in Athens and gave them the names of ancient philosophers, ancient playwrights and the names of the heroes of the 1821 uprising. So everything was linked to ancient Greece, which became the symbol of the new state overnight.

The Bavarians introduced the official Greek language of the time with great sensitivity and love, confident that they spoke ancient Greek. And so the idealization of the Greek language became a foundation for the Greek intelligentsia. If that did not happen, today’s Greeks would still be speaking “Arvanitika” (Albanian), as the vast majority did in those days in that part of the world.

Cooperation in the Greek kingdom was not an easy job. Greeks were constantly in conflict with each other and could not find common ground, not even for the most elementary needs of their society. Politically they existed amid lingering discords and it was simply impossible for their political parties to coexist. National unity among the Greeks could only be achieved by mixing fantasy with history. They could only manage to draw the necessary energy for their survival from their alignment with myths.

In this kind of chaotic situation, while composing the new Greek society, it was necessary to invoke the assistance of legends in order to coexist and move forward. A new identity was needed that would unify all the subjects of the realm. But where could one begin in the case of the new “Greeks”? Of course the first thing to do was to “reduce” history in which facts that held no water were deleted.

It may sound a little strange when one talks about “reducing” historical “facts”, but this practice did not start in Greece. In fact it began in Munich, in the new Athens in Ludwig’s neo-classical Kingdom. In attempting to “reduce” Greek history by building memorials and neoclassical monuments in his own capital in Munich, Ludwig in fact reduced his own history. One such building that Ludwig I raised in his capital was the Propylaia. To honour the 1821 Greek Revolution, Ludwig built a grand monument in the centre of Munich and on it he ordered all the names of those who participated in the Revolution, as well as the names of all those who played a significant role in the creation of the new Greek state, to be written in large Greek letters. Besides the names already mentioned, here he also wrote the names of all those who played an important role in the political, social, ideological and ecclesiastical importance in the liberation of Greece. Included side by side, the names Rigas Fereos and Patriarch Gregory were written even though they were ideological opponents. Other names included Ioannis Kapodistrias,

Adamantiou Kora and many other “heroes” of the revolution who, on several occasions, fought each other and even shot at one another. But they were historical figures and contributed to the liberation of the new Greek state for which they were respected.

The Bavarian monument clearly shows the logic, the path and the way that the history of the 1821 Revolution would have to be written. This was the so-called “myth” of 1821. This also shows that the nation can be regenerated, renewed and live well despite all the types and sizes of tragedies experienced, despite the various acts of crimes committed and criminal organizations involved whose activities included various executions organized by senior government, army and church officials. This is how the legend of 1821 was created and based on something… in order to justify the evil done as something desirable and necessary for the “greater good”. However, all legends have a beginning and do not appear out of thin air like random events. This was the road and means to construct a platform for the unification of the Greek state and its ideology, which on the one hand confounded historians and on the other spread a sense of community and security to a people needing to survive.

After all that was said and done there was still discontent in the kingdom that would create problems in the future, but a powerful amalgam was be found that would adequately give the masses peace and tranquility. This was the Greek Orthodox Church which, among other things, played a major role in the unification of Rumelia and the Peloponnesus and, despite the irony, helped the Greek nation connect with ancient times.

Realizing the power of the Church, the Bavarians in 1833 created an autocephalous (independent) Greek church and then placed it in the service of the crown.

It was said that during the Revolution, the Church stood aside undecided. It did not want to take sides for fear of losing its acquired rights. Now it was put in a position to provide some recognition and thus began its story of the oversimplification of its former role. If the church did not support the revolution and its goals, it was said, it was because of some “tactical” reasons. Its dignitaries, it was said,

were like-minded supporters of the struggle against the Ottomans from the start of the revolution, which in reality was not true.

When Patriarch Gregory V withdrew from the Revolution he cursed its leader Alexander Ypsilantis. Gregory did not do that for tactical reasons, as some would like to claim. He did that for more interesting reasons, noting ostensibly Church principles, claiming that the Church prohibits all violence and injustice; a fact that had never before preoccupied the minds of most clergy.

By cursing the Revolution, continued the documentary announcer on Sky TV, Gregory saved many Ottoman lives, a fatal mistake which church dignitaries never managed to understand. His move only inspired the other side to take part in the mass actions of the military revolution and come out as winners at the cost of enormous damage to the country as well as the many crimes committed against the innocent, unarmed Turkish population.

The degenerate role played by the Greek Orthodox Church during the most critical times in the formation of the new Greek state was very different from its glorified supposed role of being “the guardian of the national treasury and protector of the people since their enslavement, when heroes lit the fire of national ideals and raised the masses to rebuild the Fatherland”.

Linking the Church with nationality corrupted modern nationalism and so did the national myths, of which the most famous was the myth of a secret school. The most important part of this myth is the suffering and “great sacrifice” priests had to make in order to disseminate the Greek language among the people, especially among children despite the ban by the Turkish authorities. This myth was perpetuated in the works of painter Nikolaus Gisis under the name “Secret School” released in 1886. Gisis belonged to the Munich School of art, which continued the Philhellenic Bavarian tradition of Hellenic painters projecting events from the 1821 Greek Revolution.

From a historical point of view, the “Secret School” message was totally false. No such school had ever existed. This was a false projection of the events of those times, created to provide a pleasing atmosphere. It was a strong message which read: “This is how it was

then children! Even you, in your early youth, need to do everything for our country to be free again…”

The “Secret School” was an afterthought, a creation of the state, created in 1886 for specific reasons – to further consolidate religion and make it important, give it a place in the education of the country, as one of the State defense mechanisms.

The myth regarding the role of the Greek Orthodox Church in the new Greek society did not end there. It continues even today with much arrogance and brutality.

“After strengthening the newly established Greek state on the foundations of the 1821 Revolution, it was decided to find an active place for the Church in it. Of course, as is in many popular uprisings, some priests did take part in the Greek Revolution. This, however, does not entitle the official church hierarchy to appropriate their courage and patriotism and claim things that are not theirs to claim. The Greek Orthodox Church in those days did not support and was not part of the Revolution. In fact, the Greek Orthodox Church was both spiritually and practically against the Revolution. Its material interests were against the interests of the people”. Wrote one of the participants and continued.

“I don’t think that the Turks were too concerned about what language the subjects of the Empire spoke, whether it was Greek or Slav. They only cared about their own people speaking the language of Islam. Whatever language the Christians spoke it was the same to the Turks. They did not care about anything other than keeping the peace in the Empire. I am confident that the language was not a major concern. Everything that was said outside of that was a fable for the children.”

Speaking about languages, the truth is that when Greece was under Ottoman rule, the so-called Greek Church played an important role in the spread of the Greek language among the people ensuring its survival. A century before the Revolution took place the middle class fought for the right to be educated in its mother tongue. Schools were opened in cities with a Greek majority and lectures were held in Greek, mostly about ancient Greek science. Little by

little this renaissance began to proliferate everywhere in the cities of the Ottoman territory where traditionally Greek schools existed. Included among these cities were Ioannina, Smyrna (Izmir), Kidonis and later Istanbul. Such educational centres also existed in the Peloponnesus in which children and adults were educated and later employed around cities with Greek schools. The revival also initiated other social and intellectual changes, which aided the country during the Revolution.