National Reconciliation After Civil War: The Case of Greece
| Author | Peter Siani-Davies,Stefanos Katsikas |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343309334611 |
| Published date | 01 July 2009 |
| Date | 01 July 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
559
© The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav,
vol. 46, no. 4, 2009, pp. 559 –575
Sage Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC) http://jpr.sagepub.com
DOI 10.1177/0022343309334611
National Reconciliation After Civil War:
The Case of Greece*
PETER SIANI-DAVIES
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London
STEFANOS KATSIKAS
Department of History, Goldsmiths College, University of London, and
Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, University of Nottingham
This article discusses post-conflict reconciliation in Greece following the divisive civil war of the 1940s.
Focusing on the elite political discourse and the relationship between reconciliation and democratiza-
tion, its chief argument is that in Greece continuing disagreement about the civil war did not inhibit
a process of reconciliation because it was voiced within a normative framework in which violence had
been repudiated as a political tool. Particularly since the fall of the Colonels’ dictatorship in 1974,
reconciliation has been linked to a number of distinct political projects, some of which were as divisive
as conciliatory in their effect. In each case, reconciliation meant different things to differing shades of
political opinion, but the widespread adoption of the term by both the governing and opposition elites,
as well as society as a whole, gradually entrapped politicians of all persuasions into accepting that a
process of reconciliation had occurred. Reconciliation in Greece has therefore rested not on the estab-
lishment of a single agreed narrative representing the truth about the past, but rather on the righting
of perceived injustices and the free articulation of differing interpretations of that past by both left and
right within a democratic environment.
struggled to overcome legacies of conflict
and totalitarian terror. Yet, how the people
of the Balkans are expected to come to terms
with the traumas of the past and heal the
wounds of division and conflict remains far
from clear. It has been suggested that the
passage of time is a necessary precondition,
and the recent nature of the wars in the for-
mer Yugoslavia and the protracted transi-
tions from communism in Albania, Bulgaria
and Romania may explain why the literature
on the subject is still in its infancy (Hayner,
1999; Rigby, 2001). To examine how post-
conflict reconciliation has been effected in a
Balkan context, this article therefore turns to
the aftermath of an earlier but equally bitter
Introduction
Reconciliation cannot be total if it encourages
forgetting because of the risk of the uncon-
trollable return of the past in the oblique and
devious way which only history knows best.
We need more memory, speech, dialogue and
perhaps more irony. In this case silence is not
golden but mercurial. (Tsoukalas, 1999: 30)
Reconciliation has emerged as one of the key
narratives of the post-communist Balkans as
individuals and entire national groups have
* The authors would like to thank Mary Siani-Davies for
her help in preparing this article, as well as Andrew Rigby
and Nikos Maratzidis for their incisive and pertinent com-
ments. Correspondence: petersianidavies@hotmail.com;
s.katsikas@gold.ac.uk.
journal of PEACE RESEARCH volume 46 / number 4 / july 2009
560
and divisive civil war that beset Greece in the
years immediately after World War II. This
complex and multifaceted conflict, which on
the ground was often driven by local issues as
much as the national ideological cleavage, left
the country split along lines which are none-
theless usually voiced in terms of left and
right (Van Boeschoten, 1997, 2000). Victory
for the right kept Greece on the Western side
of the Cold War divide, and this meant that,
as has been the case with the post-communist
states of South-Eastern Europe, reconcilia-
tion was shaped within a protracted and at
times faltering democratizing environment.
Thus, while there are important differences
between what has happened in Greece and
events within the former Yugoslavia and the
other South-Eastern European states, recon-
ciliation within Greece also took place in the
context of integration into wider European
structures and the precursors of today’s EU.
However, despite these interesting simi-
larities, and indeed the importance of the
subject itself, post-conflict reconciliation in
Greece has previously been neglected in the
literature and never placed within a Balkan
context.1
Reconciliation and Democratization
Reconciliation and democratization are
closely intertwined. Within the context of
the Chilean process, Alejandro Gonzalez has
even defined reconciliation as ‘respecting
the rules of the democratic game’ (Hayner,
2001: 159). On the one hand, without rec-
onciliation, effective democratization and
the consolidation of democracy would seem
to be all but impossible. Part of society will
almost inevitably remain outside the politi-
cal mainstream leaving unresolved tensions
that might once again ignite conflict. In
a reconciled consolidated democracy, the
conflicting parties may continue to disagree,
but the issues which previously divided
will no longer be seen in existential terms.
Instead, interaction and communication will
occur peacefully within a generally accepted
normative framework that recognizes that
all have the right to legitimately participate
in the political arena (Gloppen, 2002). On
the other hand, democratization is nearly
essential for opening a genuine peace process
(Arnson, 1999b). Reconciliation can be seen
as ‘a mutually conciliatory accommodation
between antagonistic or formerly antagonis-
tic persons or groups’ (Kriesberg, 2002: 184).
Pluralism facilitates this by establishing an
environment in which the losers from previ-
ous conflicts are able to express their griev-
ances with greater openness, and disputes are
more likely to be settled through peaceful,
if not necessarily fully reciprocated, political
bargaining. Yet, prior to its consolidation,
democratization may bring instability, espe-
cially if new elites mobilize support through
symbolic discourses rooted in past conflicts
(Snyder, 2000).
As with democratization, it is better to see
reconciliation as an evolving process which
stretches from nonviolent coexistence to an
integrated society sharing a common vision
of the future. When the process begins is dif-
ficult to judge, but it does seem to need the
onset of peace and the ending of conflict. In
Greece, the picture was complicated by the
fact that the civil war was also part of the wider
Cold War. Domestic reconciliation was,
therefore, closely aligned to the international
environment, and it is telling that a key point
in the process in Greece was reached in 1989
just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Rec-
onciliation in Greece, therefore, has meant
the mastering of a particularly complex triple
legacy of civil and Cold Wars, as well as the
Colonels’ dictatorship of 1967–74.
Democratization impacts on all aspects of
reconciliation which, it has been suggested,
involves some mixture of peace, justice, truth
1 The exceptions include Close (2004). For the literature
on the Greek Civil War in general, see Sfikas (1996),
Liakos (2001) and Marantzidis & Antoniou (2004).
To continue reading
Request your trial