090050 VO The Greek Civil War and its consequences, 1944-1974 (2021W)

The Greek Civil War started as a late episode of the Second World War, a conflict between resistance and collaboration, and ended as a prelude to the Cold War, a battle of the "Free World" vs. Communism, thus providing a demonstration of the fact that, as Jan Patocka wrote, "the Second World War did not end, mutating instead into something peculiar which looks neither quite like war nor quite like peace". The toll it took on human lives, material damages and collective suffering makes the Civil War of 1944-1949 the most deadly and traumatic event in contemporary Greek history.

The military conflict ended in 1949, but the shadow it cast on the political, social and cultural life of the country proved heavy and enduring. For a whole quarter of the century, until the fall of the colonels' junta in 1974, a "para-constitution" of special laws remained in force as the legal framework for the implementation of state censorship, surveillance and repression against the pro-communist Left. As a result of the political ban, the memory of the collective trauma was first repressed and/or silenced, but it did not take long to find its means of expression to literature, poetry, theatre and/or popular music.

Making use of primary sources (literature, poetry, movies, popular music) and discussion of the recent research on the period in political and cultural history, anthropology and literary studies, this course aims to provide (a) an overview of the political, cultural, ideological and social consequences of the Greek Civil War and (b) an understanding of the flaws and limits of democracy in Greece within the broader Cold War context.