IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsoctx/v3y2013i4p348-382d29701.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

From Labour to National Ideals: Ending the War in Asia Minor—Controlling Communism in Greece

Author

Listed:
  • Georgios Kritikos

    (Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1RF, UK
    Department of Geography, Harokopio University, Eleftheriou Venizelou 70, Kallithea 176 71, Athens, Greece)

Abstract

This paper will try to shed light on a very particular angle of Greek political geography after the end of the Asia Minor War. As a result of this conflict almost 1.3 million refugees fled to Greece and changed dramatically its political space. The traditional view among the scholars of the period promotes an “exceptionalism” of the Greek-Orthodox refugees who fled to Greece after 1922. It is argued that the Asia Minor workers did not largely espouse an a priori notion of class, since they had a bourgeoisie economic and social background. However, in the 1930s there was a sharp increase in the support of the Left. Accordingly, the Communist Party pulled 5.76% of the vote, which was the highest in the inter-war period. Although the percentage of the communist vote was not so high all over Greece, Communism had a real electorate appeal for urban refugees. This study will challenge the exceptionalist perspective and will investigate why the same people who voted for Liberals in the 1920s voted for Communists in the 1930s. It will also examine how the Greek political system managed to incorporate the left-wing vote by transforming the division of society from labour and political demands to national ones in the period under examination. The focus will be also on the interplay between Communism and refugees, which is undervalued by most research on the topic, even though the communist threat was used as a reason or pretext for the abolition of parliamentary democracy and the establishment of Ioannis Metaxas’ dictatorship in 1936.

Suggested Citation

  • Georgios Kritikos, 2013. "From Labour to National Ideals: Ending the War in Asia Minor—Controlling Communism in Greece," Societies, MDPI, vol. 3(4), pages 1-35, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:348-382:d:29701
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/348/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/3/4/348/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mazower, Mark, 1991. "Greece and the Inter-War Economic Crisis," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198202059.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grigoriadis, Theocharis N. & Moschos, Dimitrios, 2023. "Farewell Anatolia: Refugees & the rise of the Greek Left," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marcelo de Paiva Abreu & Pedro Carvalho Loureiro de Souza, 2011. ""Palatable Foreign Control": British money doctors and central banking in South America, 1924-1935," Textos para discussão 597, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    2. Adam Tooze & Martin Ivanov, 2011. "Disciplining the ‘black sheep of the Balkans’: financial supervision and sovereignty in Bulgaria, 1902–38," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(1), pages 30-51, February.
    3. Reinhart, Karmen & Rogoff, Kenneth, 2009. ""This time is different": panorama of eight centuries of financial crises," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 1, pages 77-114, March.
    4. Cheliotis, Leonidas, 2022. "Depression and repression: global capitalism, economic crisis and penal politics in interwar Greece," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111864, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Olga Christodoulaki & Haeran Cho & Piotr Fryzlewicz, 2011. "A Reflection of History: Fluctuations in Greek Sovereign Risk between 1914 and 1929," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 50, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    6. Matthias Morys & Martin Ivanov, 2015. "The emergence of a European region: business cycles in South-East Europe from political independence to World War II," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 19(4), pages 382-411.
    7. George Alogoskoufis, 2023. "The Twin Deficits, Monetary Instability and Debt Crises in the History of Modern Greece," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 189, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    8. Liagouras, George, 2018. "On the Edge of the South European Model: Familism, Business and State in Greece," OSF Preprints 8eqmb, Center for Open Science.
    9. Liagouras, George, 2018. "On the Edge of the South European Model: Familism, Business and State in Greece," OSF Preprints 8eqmb_v1, Center for Open Science.
    10. Christodoulaki, Olga & Cho, Haeran & Fryzlewicz, Piotr, 2011. "A reflection of history: fluctuations in Greek sovereign risk between 1914 and 1929," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 38378, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. repec:cuf:journl:y:2015:v:16:i:1:reinhart:rogoff is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Andreas Kakridis, 2021. "Nobody’s child: the Bank of Greece in the interwar years," Working Papers 290, Bank of Greece.
    13. Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, 2014. "This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(2), pages 215-268, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:348-382:d:29701. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.