CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Detail of a portrait of Ioannes Kapodistrias, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. By Thomas Lawrence, 1818-1819. Public Domain.

Political history explains the steady decline of the 200-year old modern Greek state. In the 4th century, the Roman emperor Constantine ditched Greek and Roman civilization in favor of the Jewish heresy of Christianity. The Christianization of Hellas / Greece was catastrophic. In 1204, Western Christian crusaders occupied Constantinople, capital of medieval Greece. The crusaders slaughtered many inhabitants of Constantinople and destroyed valuable institutions of that giant metropolis. They burned its libraries. They inflicted long-lasting damage to the security of medieval Greece. They dismembered the country, thus weakening it, and opening the highways for later invaders. Moslems took advantage of this ferocious Western onslaught on medieval Greece. In 1453, Mongol Turks, armed with the war technology of Europe, occupied Greece.

Centuries of resistance, rebellions, unbroken ties with ancient Greek civilization and indirect diplomatic and military Russian support finally exploded in the Greek Revolution of 1821. Like the ancient Greeks, the revolutionaries of 1821 fought for freedom or death. The European powers (England, France, Russia, and Austria) had taken a holy oath against rebellious people. The French Revolution and Napoleon had embittered the monarchies of Europe. Yet they could not ignore the Greek Revolution of 1821. Nothing could stop it. The Greeks joined forces and fought a heroic, determined, and largely successful war of liberation against the abominable tyranny of the Turks.

Greek intellectuals kept reminding their fellow brothers and sisters they were the descendants of the ancient Greeks whose science and civilization made possible the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in Western Europe. This heroic struggle paid off. Greece became independent in late 1820s.

The ferocity and success of the Greek Revolution explain the Turkish evil in Greece. It is more than a huge embarrassment, that the most civilized, heroic, intelligent and philosophical people in Europe, the Greeks, were enslaved by the barbarian Mongol Turks. It is a psychological trauma etched on the Greek soul. Which is why it is taking a long time to heal. One can’t think of a greater tragedy than the Turkish factor overlaying so much of post-medieval Greek history.

And much more: Adamantios Koraes, 1748-1833, born in Turkish occupied Smyrna but educated in France, became the intellectual father of the Revolution. He said that you could not enter a Greek town / village without feeling a coldness in the heart. You would hear cries of desperation. You would sense immense sorrow, hopelessness, and fear of the inhabitants for their very lives. You would see the tears, dreadful poverty, and destitution of the inhabitants (Ελληνική Νομαρχία (Greek Rule of Law) 3.31-32). And the Greek novelist Andreas Karkavitsas, writing in the early twentieth century about the life of the Greek peasants in the prosperous land of Thessaly when Thessaly was under Turkish colonialism, says that the terror of the Greek peasants for their Turkish landlords was so pervasive, so ingrained, that, like robots, they continued to do obeisance to the Turks even after Thessaly was Greek (Ο Ζητιάνος (The Beggar, 1920, 14-15).

When, therefore, the Greek Revolution broke out, centuries of hatred and fear and loathing and hope and courage rushed to the field of battle for a final settlement. The trouble was that the Greek peasants, who did the fighting for a free Greece, had three enemies: the Turks, the Greek landed and ecclesiastical oligarchy that served the Turks, and the Phanariots, Greeks living in Constantinople / Istanbul who also served the Sultan.

But in the revolutionary chaos, civil wars started by the Phanariots and local pro-Turkish landlords, and foreign interventions, the social origins of the Greek Revolution were completely and deliberately erased from the revolutionary agenda of the managers of the emerging Greek state.

Kapodistrias and independent Greece

In 1827, the national assembly of the Greek revolutionaries elected Ioannes Kapodistrias President / Governor of Greece.

Ioannes Kapodistrias, 1776-1831, was a beneficiary of the spreading European Enlightenment, which continued the Hellenic work of the Renaissance. He became the first President of independent Greece. He was born in the Ionian island of Kerkyra, then under the rule of Venice. He studied medicine, law and philosophy at the University of Padua, Italy. He started his political career in the government of the Septinsular Republic, the first independent Greek state of the seven Ionian Islands. Tsar Alexander I of Russia was so impressed by the diplomatic genius of Kapodistrias, he sought his advice during the 1815 Congress of Vienna. In that capacity, Kapodistrias united Switzerland as a neutral state guaranteed by the great powers of Europe. He also prevented Austria from dismembering France.

Tsar Alexander I appointed him to head the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He served in that top diplomatic post from 1816 to 1822. Kapodistrias tried to convince the Tsar to support the Greek Revolution, but the Russian ruler had other priorities. Kapodistrias took a leave of absence and “retired” in Geneva. He founded the Philomusse Society to spread the news about the Greek Revolution to Philhellenes, and, otherwise, influence powerful Europeans who appreciated freedom and Hellenic culture. His reputation among European leaders and Philhellenes sufficed to boost his promotion of Philhellenism. The money he raised from Philhellenes went for the needs of the Greek revolutionaries. He was a patriotic Greek with exceptional political talent, ethics and wisdom. He governed Greece from 1828 to 1831.

In 1828, Kapodistrias arrived in Nauplion, the capital of the Greek state in Peloponnesos. Warships of France, Russia, and England brought Kapodistrias home.

Kapodistrias defended his country against the Turks. He established its first borders. He organized the Greek army and navy. He advanced education, and the establishment of courts for the administration and benefits of justice for all. He issued the country’s currency and established a national bank, postal service, and statistical service. He introduced the cultivation of the potato and supported farming and food self-sufficiency as the pillars of economy and society. He taxed the rich and earned the trust of the vast majority of the Greeks. He used his own funds (and donations from European Philhellenes) to pay the salaries of the army, navy,........

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