Greece: World Revolution Manifesto

Contributed by: generaluser

The planet is under a state of siege from corporations. The people who own them (i.e. this neurotic, criminal minority) use tools such as the States in order to increase their monetary income to the maximum, to meet their desire for total authority and to maintain the postmodern industrial production apparatus called Planet Earth.

Planet Earth

27 Dec, 2008

A. The state of corporatism that we live in

The planet is under a state of siege from corporations. The people who own them (i.e. this neurotic, criminal minority) use tools such as the States in order to increase their monetary income to the maximum, to meet their desire for total authority and to maintain the postmodern industrial production apparatus called Planet Earth.

There is no doubt that it is the banks controlling the States (and not the other way round) since, as we passively observe at this moment, the masks in the birthplace state of capitalism have fallen: the US government supports the panicked moves of this Corporatist regime and prepares its army for a “possible social unrest in the face of an upcoming crisis”.

In turn, states hold the people in a divided and idle state so that they will compete with one another instead of rising up against the obvious enemy of humanity. Those in authority bring up individuals teaching them their differences to the person next to them; implanting them “values” such as the nation, gender, success, consumption, health, beauty and sanity of mind. These produce behaviours observed globally and are, more or less, known to us all: nationalism, racism, consumerism, sexism, ableism, ageism and lookism.

States would have been unable to mark our bodies with such rotten scars if it wasn’t for the Cops, the Medical Regime, the Educational Regime, the Establishment Media, Religions and Bureaucracy in all its forms.

Humans end up beings with a hyper-emphasised “ego” since they are a unique amalgan of heterogeneous identities. Proletarian and muslim. Respectable housewife and lesbian. Student and depressed. Sexist and communist. Successful yuppie and sensitive in ecological issues. Woman and nationalist. Shattered in thousands of small pieces, which prevent them from seeing who it is that enforces their repressed class status. Most importantly, they prevent them from understanding themselves as something more collective, such as the globalised neo-proletariat: all the humans of the planet, that is, who experience daily everything from the darkness and depression to the abjection and non-voluntary death. A proletariat of this type that, numerically only, prevails.

The plenitude of constructed identities creates a condition of “cultural war” in each of the planet’s societies (as well as trans-nationally) where identities compete with one another, often in favour of the Regime, as this will lead its respectable citizens to demand even tighter security.

The dictatorship of the Corporatist Bourgeois Democracy makes sure to repress all and any spontaneous resistance to the power: it sucks social nuclei of resistance into political parties, trade unions and other political formations that reek of death. It does not hesitate, only too often, to “democratise” locales of the planet, to repress liberating movements and to deny the right to self-determination (the US in Iraq; Israel in Palestine; Greece in Macedonia).

It does not hesitate to destroy the nature of Earth, exterminating whole eco-systems, altering the environment and disrupting our bodies with the quality of food we receive. All in the name of progress, science and civilisation.

The civilised world is an amalgam of all these authoritarian patterns which, over time, have convinced us of having a quality of life without which (ironically) humans lived much better in the past.

The rise of population and of the average life expectancy, with the blessings of the Medical Regime, simply increases the number of the waged slaves, shrinking, at the same time, the quality of their life to the absolute minimum.

Life in the city has distanced humans from the experience of living, observing and learning from natural phenomena; it has destroyed the experience of the physical space and has made them vulnerable in the face of experience that used to be commonplace (physical labour, outdoors survival etc).

B. The World Revolution must be against civilisation

- The catalyst of our organising is the world wide web: We call all the disgruntled and revolted to get their own voice on the web, either by sending contributions to counter-information media or setting up their own blogs, creating collective discussion boards or hacking established and capitalist websites.

- We call all workers around the world to discuss about self-organising in their workspaces and to make proposals in regard to exiting trade unions. We call them to occupy the places of production and to manage their units horizontally, in a self-organised manner, under the guidance of consensus.

- We call all high school and university students to occupy their buildings, shoving aside all political party henchmen; to co-form with tons of imagination and humour, ideas on theory and practice! To turn these buildings into nuclei of anarchist life and social outreach.

- We call all who have lived under the burden of Clinical Depression to come together, to reject the chemicals of the pharmaceutical corporations and to co-shape ideas for the destruction of the civilisation that slashed our brains.

- We call all migrants to join together their rage for the way in which the Establishment turned them into people without a place and to destroy the civilisation that alienated them.

- We call all scientists to resign from the Science Regime and to investigate autonomously and collectively how autonomous and inexhaustible energies can be provided – such as solar, wind and geothermal.

- We call all the people who have forgotten that the revolution can happen, to expropriate immediately all that belongs to them and to sabotage, to the maximum extent possible, the production line. We can hold – and it’s worth it!

- We call all bourgeois artists to stop wasting their imagination in bourgeois creations and to join in our struggle, pouring their imagination into the shaping of the World Revolution!

- We call all farmers and agricultural producers to collectivise their production and to stop over-producing for capital. To teach their co-humans techniques on how to live autonomously by farming.

- Meat production must seize immediately and all animals should be freed! Meat is murder!

We call all anarchists, communists and libertarians to not cease their actions of revolt and to continue with the counter-information, which is so important.

Sabotaging or self-organising the process of production, creating autonomous food production, expropriating existing supplies, creating autonomous zones in cities and planning for autonomous forms of energy, we can render money obsolete. We can create pockets of anarchist culture which, thanks to their existence, counter-information and the world wide web, will spread like the hot wind of freedom.

Any attempts by the states to stop us will be met with the revolted; the revolted of poverty, depression and exclusion. We’ll take time in our hands!

Let Athens’ December revolt become an organisational inspiration for revolutionaries across the world.

Humans of the world, unite!

For anarchy and libertarian communism!

For freedom!

For the absolute!

Long live World Revolution!

~ Infoshop News ~

2008: The Year Democracy Faltered

[Opinion] Looking back at a perilous year for our democracies

Michael Werbowski (minou)
28 Dec, 2008

There were so many moving events in 2008. But one which I think is most emblematic of what might come in 2009 is the popular and violent uprisings in Greece. And the place, Athens, says much about the ailing state of our democracies.

It's hard to overlook the paradox. Greece, "the cradle of democracy" is now ablaze and the political system fathered by Plato and Aristotle lies in ruins, amid the smoldering debris, scattered throughout the streets of the ancient city. Riots sparked by the police shooting of a male teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, 15, earlier this month, have continued almost unabated to this day. And like avenging furies the youths' rage seems insatiable.

As Athens Burns, the EU Looks on Aghast and Mute

Last year the country faced another tragedy: It was engulfed in wild fires and on the verge of ecological disaster. This year it's consumed in an urban conflagration, which threatens to topple the centre right government led by Kostas Karamanlis, and along with it, perhaps bring down the decrepit pillars on which Greek democracy rests upon.

But Greece like many "post democratic" ( by this I mean, states where legitimate representative government has been usurped by a ruling clique which only represents corporate and military interests at the expense of the general electorate) societies is really a timocracy (1).

So, not surprisingly the "600 euro generation" which symbolises their pitiful monthly earnings, are tired of the unbridled greed and nepotism from above, and have taken to streets to express their ire with the whole rotten system. But also, the rage is due apparently, to the current global financial crisis and growing unemployment in Europe.

These 20-something university graduates (for the most part) are fed up with poor job prospects and a rising cost of living. Lunging Molotov cocktails at riot police is one way (although not very conciliatory) to make your vote count and your voice heard so to speak perhaps. But as tear gas and the smoke recedes for now, the question needs to be posed: Are our so called "liberal democracies" withering away? They might be.

The danger is that after years of too much freedom and permissiveness which we enjoyed after the fall of the Berlin wall, the people, the politicians and above all the Wall Street financiers with their gambling games, have become "drunk" with freedom and excess to the point of recklessness. This undermines democracy. Plato argued in "The Republic" that this less than ideal polity may be replaced with despotism, to preserve the powerful ruling class.

Indeed, my greatest concern is that the tyranny of the marketplace, which we have witnessed until now, in the wake of the financial meltdown, might result in just tyranny taking over. And the ideological bankruptcy of western style capitalism if accompanied by shortages, increased crime, and street protests, governments may have no option but to resort to strong-arm tactics (emergency powers, curfews, arbitrary arrests etc.) to keep their people in line in order to avoid another Athens style uprising at home.

While Athens is ablaze, European capitals watch in sinister silence, as the urban warfare drags on. Foremost, on the minds of governing elites elsewhere might be, the dreaded thought: "Could this happen here, too?"

The answer might be: Don't be surprised if it does. The rage and exasperation on the streets, was best expressed by Panos Garganas, an urbane leftist, who thinks the civil unrest in his country may spread to other European states.

"The economic crisis is huge and Greece is showing, I think, the future for what will happen in other countries," he told the BBC in a recent interview.

Greece has imploded. This is mainly due to the neo liberal policies imposed on its citizens. These measures euphemistically called "structural adjustments" or known more ominously as IMF-EU- World Bank sponsored and orchestrated "reforms" have resulted in price deregulation, the elimination of state subsidies, spending cuts on health and education, privatisations en masse and limiting pension benefits and payments. All of these relentless reforms, have taken their toll on the Greeks.

What is most astonishing to me is this: In an EU member state , a 19th century like class struggle has emerged, as a result of this unrest, which recalls the bloody revolts of 1848 in the German states or the brief worker's takeover of the French capital known as the 'Paris commune' of 1871.

Is 2009 Going to be Like 1989 or 1939?

Almost 20 years ago, the oppressive communist regimes collapsed with the fall of the Berlin wall. In the 1990s, democracy seemed to be at its apogee back then. It spread all over the globe. Of course freedom came at a price: It was accompanied by free market principles or the dogma that the markets are absolute rulers over our little and expendable lives and only the stock markets can determine our destiny, or foster the well being of the society at large.

In Russia, greater personal liberties also meant huge sell offs of under priced state assets, such as natural resources, to "robber barons". But then as well, South African apartheid was finally dismantled in 1994, and much of Africa and Asia saw military regimes replaced by civilian rule.

However with the Bush presidency, we saw great setbacks in democracy on both the home and foreign front; illegal foreign occupations, state sponsored torture was justified, systematic surveillance on the ordinary citizen, extra judicial and territorial penal colonies were set up and so on. Furthermore, the war in Iraq although it was supposed to overthrow a tyrant ( and thankfully it did) yet ironically, it also saw, other despotic regimes, like Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and above all Iran tighten their grip on power by crushing local dissent.

In 2008, multibillion dollar, massive bank bail outs were almost decreed by the Bush administration, and railroaded through Congress, as if they were royal edicts. Americans whether they liked it or not, have indebted themselves for generations to come.

Established European democracies stumbled too. In the streets of Rome, martial law light was declared when troops were deployed to keep order and to intimidate illegal immigrants. In the US's neighbour, Canada, parliament was effectively shut down (and so was the democratic process) or prorogued by the Prime Minister, Stephan Harper. In Mexico, the military has been given extraordinary powers to fight the incessant drug war at the expense of human rights.

But let's get back to Greece, where democracy began. It may falter further, if the Greek government resorts to martial law to quell the revolts. Or it may be reborn, in a revolutionary form and preferably in a peaceful manner, if the will of the people prevails over oppressive outcomes. In that sense, 2009 might be like 1989 -- a year of democratic renewal. Or in the worst case scenario, events in the New Year can take us back to a darker period in time, like in 1939 and another world war. It's up to the free spirited citizens left among us, to decide the future course of events.

(1) In Plato's "The Republic," Socrates defines a timocracy as a government ruled by people who love honor and are selected according to the degree of honor they hold in society. Honor is often equated with wealth and possession so this kind of gilded government leads to the people valuing materialism above all things.

~ OHMY NEWS ~

"Nothing will ever be the same" in Greece

26 Dec, 2008

The Movements for the Generalisation of Revolt talk about the process of radicalisation that has gripped Greece following the killing of 15-year-old Alexis by police earlier this month

NOTHING ...

On 6 December, at nine in the evening, a man of the special police force stopped, took aim and shot dead a fifteen-year old kid in the neighbourhood of Exarchia, Athens. This murder is not a singular event of police violence. The morning of the same day, immigrants waiting to apply for asylum at the police station of Petrou Ralli avenue were attacked by riot police. A Pakistani man suffered traumatic brain injury and has been struggling for life ever since in the intensive care unit of Evangelismos hospital. These are just two of the dozens of similar cases over the past years.

The bullet that pierced Alexis’s heart was not a random bullet shot from a cop’s gun to the body of an ‘indocile’ kid. It was the choice of the state to violently impose submission and order to the milieus and movements that resist its decisions. A choice that meant to threaten everybody who wants to resist the new arrangements made by the bosses in work, social security, public health, education, etc: Whoever works must stretch herself too thin for a mere 600 euros monthly wage. She must work herself to exhaustion whenever the bosses need her, working overtime without pay, getting laid off whenever businesses are ‘in crisis’. And finally, she must get herself killed whenever the intensification of production demands it, just like those five dockers who died in the Perama shipyards five months ago. If she is an immigrant, and dares to demand a few euros more, she will be faced with a beating and a life of terror, just like the agricultural workers of both sexes in the strawberry hothouses of Nea Manolada in the western Peloponese.

... WILL EVER BE ...

Whoever is a pupil must spend her time in crummy school halls and intensive tutoring to ‘prepare’ herself for protracted, annual exam seasons. As a kid she has to forget about playing with others in the street and feeling carefree, in order to befuddle herself with reality shows on TV and electronic gaming, since free public spaces have become shopping malls, or there is no free time for hanging out.

Later on, as a university student, because such is the natural ‘evolution’ to success, she discovers that the alleged ‘scientific knowledge’ is in fact geared towards the needs of bosses. A student has to continuously adapt herself to new study curricula and gather as many ‘certificates’ as possible in order to be awarded in the end with a degree of equal value to loo-paper, but without its practical importance. A degree that ensures nothing more than a 700 euro monthly wage, often without national insurance or health cover. All this takes place in the midst of a crazy dance of millions landing in priestly businesses and doped-up Olympic athletes who are paid extravagantly to ‘glorify the homeland’. Money that ends up in the pockets of the moneyed and powerful. From bribes to ‘compadres’ and haggling of scandalous DVDs with corrupt journalists in order to cover-up government ‘scandals’. While dozens of lives are wasted in forest-fires to allow big capital to turn forests into tourist businesses and while worker deaths in construction sites and in the streets are dubbed ‘work accidents’. While the state gives money away to banks to aid them sink us deeper in a sea of debts and loans and raises direct tax for all workers. While the stupidity of heftily paid television stars becomes the gospel for an increasing number of exploited people.

The bullet that pierces Alexis’s heart was a bullet to the heart of exploitation and repression for an important part of this society who knows that it has nothing to lose apart from the illusion that things might get better. The events following the murder proved that for a large part of the exploited and oppressed have sank in this swamp up to their neck, and this swamp has just overflowed and threatens to drown bosses and politicians, parties and state institutions. It’s running its course to clean this dirty world that is based upon the exploitation of human by human and the power of few over the many. It filled our hearts with confidence and filled the hearts of bosses with fear.

The destruction of the temples of consumption, the reappropriation of goods, the ‘looting’ that is, of all these things that are taken from us, while they bombard us with advertisements, is the deep realisation that all this wealth is ours, because we produce it. ‘We’ in this case means all working people as a whole. This wealth does not belong to the shop-owners, or the bankers, this wealth is our sweat and blood. It is the time that bosses steal from us every day. It is our sickness when we start our pension. It is the arguments inside the bedroom and the inability to meet a couple of friends on a weekend night. It is the boredom and loneliness of Sunday afternoon and the choking feeling every Monday morning. As exploited and oppressed, immigrants or greek, as working people, as jobless, students or pupils, we are called now to answer back to the false dilemma posed by the media and the state: are we with the ‘hoodies’ or are we with the shop-owners. This is dilemma is only a decoy.

Because the real dilemma that the media do not want you to ask is: are you for the bosses or are you for the workers? Are you for the state or for the revolt? And this is the one reason that journalists need to do their best to defame the movement, talking about ‘hoodies’, ‘looters’ etc. The reason they want to spread fear among the oppressed is simple: the revolt makes their position - and that of their bosses - very precarious. Revolt turns against the reality they create, against the feeling of ‘all goes well’, against the separation between ‘rightfully sentimental revolt’ and ‘extremist elements’ and finally against the distinction between ‘outlaws’ and peaceful protesters. In this dilemma we have one answer: we are for the ‘hoodies’. We are the ‘hoodies’. Not because we want to hide our face, but because we want to make ourselves visible. We exist. We wear hoods not for the love of destruction but for the desire to take our life in our hands. To build upon the grave of commodities and powers a different society. A society where everybody will decide collectively in general meetings of schools, universities, workplaces and neighbourhoods, about everything that concerns us, without the need of political representatives, leaders or comissars. A society where we will all together guide our fortunes and where our needs and desires will be in our hands, and not those of every MP, mayor, boss, priest or cop.

The hope for this life was put back on the table by the barricades that were set up everywhere in Greece and in solidarity abroad. It remains to make this hope a reality. The possibility of such a life is now put to the test by public assemblies in occupied municipal buildings, trade union buildings and universities in Athens and elsewhere in Greece, where everybody can freely express her opinions and shape her action collectively, based on her desires and needs. The dream of this life has started taking shape.

... THE SAME ANYMORE.

What remains to do to see this dream realised?

We should organise in our places of study, work and habitation. In our workplaces we discuss our everyday problems and we create nuclei of resistance against the terror of the bosses. In our schools we contribute and support their occupations, we create counterinformation groups, we organise lectures and workshops, we question sovereign knowledge, we produce new knowledge geared to our needs and not those of capital. In neighbourhoods and housing blocks we talk to our neighbours, we create gatherings and committees, we share knowledge and skills, we decide collectively for actions. We take part in marches and protests, we stand by each other, we break the fear that is spread by the state, we help the pupils that are now bearing the brunt of the attack of the state. We stand in solidarity to those arrested in the revolt, both greeks and immigrants, in Greece and abroad, most of which are now prosecuted with every legal trick in the arsenal of counter-terrorism laws because they opposed the dictates of the state.

Everything begins now.

Everything is possible.

Movements for the generalisation of revolt

~ Actualité de l’Anarcho-syndicalisme ~

Potent mix of radicals at university in Athens

Early Saturday morning inside the gates of Athens Polytechnic, a dozen groggy young people in hooded sweatshirts slumped on folding chairs around a smoky fire. Others trickled in, holding cups of coffee. Gypsy children scampered around with wheelbarrows, collecting empty beer bottles. One child lit a cigarette.

But the young people were not recovering from a long night of drinking or studying. They were preparing for revolution.

Many of the violent protests that have rocked Athens in recent days, since a 15-year-old was killed by a police bullet on Dec. 6, have taken place in and around the school, driven by a group of anarchists who have often occupied the buildings here.

Come sundown on many nights, the Polytechnic, three graffiti-covered neoclassical buildings set amid pine trees, became an apocalyptic scene. Garbage fires burned in its front courtyard. On nearby streets, youths throwing gasoline bombs and rocks clashed with riot police officers armed with tear gas. The hulks of burned-out cars lay like carcasses in the streets.

Someone spray-painted “Don't blame us, the rocks ricocheted” on a wall — a reference to a statement by the lawyer for the policeman who killed the teenager, who said the bullet did not hit the boy directly.

The National Technical University of Athens, as the Polytechnic is officially called, is one of Greece's leading universities, training engineers, architects and scientists since 1836. It moved its main campus outside the city center in the 1980s, leaving its downtown buildings, which now house just the architecture and engineering departments and an auditorium, largely to the whims of protest groups.

The university administration has tended to view the demonstrators as uninvited houseguests who overstayed their welcome so long ago that they have become fixtures.

But these protests have been different. “In former times, a couple of years ago, there were only students protesting,” said Konstantinos Moutzouris, the rector of the Polytechnic. “This time there are all kinds of groups — this is difficult to control.”

Conversations with those inside the Polytechnic revealed a mix of students, older anarchists and immigrants protesting everything from police brutality to globalization to American imperialism. Some are simply thrill-seekers along for the ride. Mr. Moutzouris estimated that there were 50 protesters taking refuge inside the gates, joined by hundreds of others each evening.

Under an asylum law instituted after the police crushed a student rebellion at the Polytechnic against the military junta in 1973, the Greek police are not allowed on universities' property unless requested by administrators.

Tensions between the police and protesters are so high that Mr. Moutzouris said asking the police to intervene would cause even more disorder. “We're not in the mood of inviting them,” he said. “I think we would have damages and even some people hurt.”

~ more... ~

The international dimension of the Greek Civil War

 However, unaware of the secret Anglo-Soviet agreements concerning the Balkans, the Greek Communist leaders continued to hope that, once victory was within their grasp, the "Great Stalin" would not turn his back on them. Furthermore, the situation emerging in Greece's neighboring states also appeared to favor a Communist takeover in Greece. The newly established communist regimes in Yugoslavia and Albania-and then also in Bulgaria, in October 1944--gave every indication that they would support an attempt to bring Greece into the communist camp.

The official position of the United States regarding the situation in Greece during the years 1943-44 was at best ambivalent and confusing. Traditionally, the American government had regarded the Balkans as lying outside its area of immediate concern and had wanted to avoid at all costs any entanglements in that region. Soon after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill that Britain would remain responsible for military operations in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Accordingly, and in the interest of interallied harmony, American officials felt compelled to remain largely silent on Greek issues. Nevertheless, the State Department missed no opportunity to make clear its own view that Greek problems were for Greeks alone to settle.

The American Approach

Specifically, the department objected to what it perceived as British attempts to have King George return to Greece right after liberation. In this, the department's attitude echoed the sentiments of most Greek Americans, who were strongly antiroyalist. But it also represented the considered opinion of well-informed American officials, including Lincoln MacVeagh, the American ambassador in Athens since 1933 and a highly respected observer of Greek political affairs.

After leaving occupied Athens in June 1941, MacVeagh had informed his superiors that Greeks of every political persuasion had told him that King George, tainted by his collusion with the Metaxas dictatorship, could not go back to Greece prior to a properly conducted plebiscite and had begged him to urge the Roosevelt administration not to allow the British to reinstall him in Athens, whatever Churchill's personal attachment to the king. Indeed, MacVeagh predicted that, after the war, the Greeks would freely choose a republican form of government modeled after the American. [5]

In October 1944, while preparing to leave Cairo for recently liberated Athens, MacVeagh refused to accompany the newly formed "Government of National Unity" under Prime Minister George Papandreou because it was being escorted by British troops. The ambassador actually wrote Roosevelt to express his concern that the British were mishandling the Greek political situation. He quoted from a report of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) according to which EAM was leading a full-fledged social revolution that was too powerful to be suppressed. MacVeagh thought that the most that could be hoped for was a compromise settlement between EAM and its rivals.

In short, at the moment of liberation, American officials appeared willing to accept the fact that EAM was emerging as the dominant political force in Greece. Moreover, they saw no reason to be seriously alarmed by this development. Nonetheless, the Roosevelt administration would not take an official stand on this matter.

This ambivalence extended to the state of affairs prevailing in the Greek mountains. In their dealings with the Greek resistance, OSS officers loyally supported their British counterparts who, in any event, commanded the teams of the Allied Mission in occupied Greece. However, in their reports to their own superiors in Cairo, OSS officers often expressed strong criticism of British attempts to manipulate Greek developments. During the first phase of the civil war many OSS officers (as well as some among their British colleagues) had requested that they be withdrawn from Greece, arguing that the continuous fighting between resistance bands had made their work impossible.

Especially critical of the British were the reports of one intelligence-gathering OSS mission, code-named Pericles, that had sought to conceal from the British its presence in Greece and had recommended the creation of a network of direct American assistance to EAM/ELAS--in effect, bypassing the British--in exchange for EAM support of purely American intelligence operations. The idea was quietly dropped for fear that it would antagonize both the British and the Greek government-in-exile.

When, in May 1944, Churchill first proposed to Moscow a deal to divide responsibility in the Balkans--the Red Army was about to invade Romania--the Kremlin asked if the Americans had been consulted. This forced the British to raise the question in Washington. Secretary of State Cordell Hull rejected the proposal in the strongest terms and Roosevelt warned Churchill against creating "exclusive spheres." But as the Soviet advance into the Balkans continued, Churchill sent a personal appeal to Roosevelt arguing that an Anglo-Soviet understanding over the Balkans would prevent friction between the Allies in the critical period that lay ahead. He also pointedly reminded the president that Britain had raised no objections to American predominance in the Western Hemisphere. This time Roosevelt gave in. But at the insistence of Hull and of Harry Hopkins, the president's personal adviser, FDR limited American approval to the period of military operations and repeated American objections to the creation of "any postwar spheres of influence." [6]

This qualification was, of course, purely cosmetic. When Churchill met Stalin in Moscow in October 1944, nothing was said about American reservations concerning the proposed Anglo-Soviet agreement under which Greece would be in Britain's zone of responsibility and Romania and Bulgaria in the Soviet zone, while influence over Yugoslavia and Hungary would be divided equally between London and Moscow. On the contrary, when Stalin indicated that he assumed that Churchill was speaking for the Americans as well, Churchill's evasive response appeared to satisfy the Soviet leader on that crucial point. In short, the United States remained a passive observer during most of the First Round of the civil war. Although American officials remained unhappy with the British handling of the Greek situation, wartime priorities dictated that there be no open opposition to what was happening in Cairo, or in the Greek mountains, under British initiatives.

Without doubt, the most important external factor during this entire period was Britain's far-reaching involvement. Yet it is worth remembering that the ability of the British authorities to influence the situation in the Greek mountains was itself severely limited by the absence of a significant military force under actual British control.

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