Kostis Kornetis

This text serves as an introduction to the dossier 50 years of Scholarship on
the Southern European Democratic Transitions: A Comparative Approach
which aims to compare and contrast these processes in Greece, Portugal
and Spain, as they unfolded during the 1970s and beyond. Our starting
point is that the three Transitions were conceptually linked from
the beginning as the vanguard of Huntington’s famous “third wave” of
democratic transitions, but there has been little substantive comparative
historical research, especially considering all three cases together. To
foster a more substantive comparative approach, the editors pursued a
strategy of co-authorship around common themes, hoping this would
facilitate deeper conversations across national divides and languages.
This introduction starts with a brief assessment of several generations
of historiography, considering the genealogy of the Southern European
“model” of transition, followed by an appraisal of several contributions
that have either endorsed or challenged this early model. It then offers a
description of the main arguments put forward by the contributors of the
dossier, followed by a survey of other relevant debates and promising new
directions. It concludes by encouraging further comparative research on
the three cases, either as a single unit or in conjunction with other cases.

Ever since the ground-breaking historical mini-series Holocaust (1978), television has proven to play a major role in structuring the collective memory about the past. This medium has, moreover, displayed a capacity to trigger a collective rendering of, and coming to terms with, painful, hidden or forgotten aspects of the past. Media specialist Garry R. Edgerton has even argued that ‘television is the principal means by which most people learn about history’. Even though such assertions might be tempered by today’s predominance of social media – especially in generational terms – an inquiry into the politics of memory in popular television is still relevant for the field of public history, as well as for memory studies. This is particularly pertinent when representing dictatorship in the European South. Alongside public history projects of all kinds (including museums, memorials, commemorative plaques and practices), filmic representations (be it for cinematic or television use) structure the collective imaginary about the recent past. This essay briefly discusses TV shows that deal with and shape public understandings of the dictatorships in Spain (the final phase of Francoism, post-1968), Greece (the Colonels’ dictatorship, post-1969) and Portugal (the final phase of the Estado Novo (New State), post-1968).

This article focuses on armed organizations of the extreme left
during and after the fall of Southern European dictatorships in the
mid-1970s. It explores the transnational connections between
revolutionary terrorist organizations of diverse background in
Spain, Portugal, and Greece, looking at the ways in which
political violence and its semantics ‘travelled’ across borders
and beyond national characteristics and specificities. The article
explores solidarity campaigns for so-called political prisoners of
said organizations and the transnational impact of certain key
texts, such as ‘Ogro’, the infamous record of the assassination of
Franco’s right-hand man Carrero Blanco by ETA in 1973. Looking
at how the latter’s translation was received in Greece and
Portugal, the article traces elements of transnational circulation
beyond borders, making a point about how the space of
revolutionary knowledge dissemination operated. By focusing
on both sympathizers and militants of groupings involved in
revolutionary violence and their perceptions, the article
attempts to highlight the existence of both imaginary and
actual transnational links between the three countries, and
the occasional lack thereof. While it demonstrates a lack of
direct transnational channels of communication, the article
argues that young people belonging to the far left across the
post-authoritarian European South in the mid-1970s imagined
themselves as parts of the same contour. In terms of actual
spaces, the very revolutionary situation Portugal was going
through, turned Lisbon into a very specific locus of both
imaginary and actual revolutionary potential, including
Spanish activists who finally crossed the border to militate.

The July 1974 invasion of Cyprus by Turkey caught the Greek Colonels (1967–74) off guard, as they proved entirely incapable of responding to the casus belli, partly provoked by their own actions. Greece remained technically in the state of military mobilisation for about four months and with the democratic transition well underway. This article catalogues the ways in which this conflict mobilised Greek civil society in unprecedented
ways. Using oral testimonies, press clippings and three major documentaries of the time (Nikos Koundouros’ The Songs of Fire, Michael Cacoyannis’ Attila 74, and Nikos Kavoukidis’ Testimonials), the article dissects the cultural resistances against the war in one of the most traumatic moments in contemporary Greek history. It analyses the gigantic concerts that took place in the largest stadiums of Athens to
protest the war, next to mass demonstrations and popular films protesting the invasion. It argues that these cultural events and artifacts re-enacted facets of the anti- Vietnam War movement and the respective countercultural scene in the US of the late 1960s. The article concludes that these modes of cultural and political resistance activated post-authoritarian Greek civil society, renegotiating the parameters of political participation and partly resetting the agenda of the country’s foreign policy following
popular demand.

Le présent article a pour but d’analyser pas tant les activités des étudiants grecs qui vécurent à Paris pendant la dictature (1967-1974) que celles de l’administration même de la Fondation Hellénique . En particulier, les archives récemment ouvertes au public  (les
Archives de la CIUP aux Archives nationales de France) nous aident à comprendre certaines des questions centrales qui ont préoccupé les autorités françaises au sujet des étudiants grecs gauchistes à Paris, les relations de ces derniers avec le mouvement français de Mai 68 et surtout la relation tendue entre le directeur de la Fondation et l’ambassade grecque

This article engages the argument that the 2008–2009 Great Recession forced a revisiting of the period of transitions in Spain, Greece, and Portugal as “political masterpieces,” especially among a younger generation of activists. It argues that this radical reevaluation turned the conflicting generational recollections of the past into pivotal components of present political contestation. Moreover, it shows how the redeeming power of the transitions animates the political, cultural, and public discourse of young politicized people who, although (or precisely because) they have not experienced these events directly, keep returning to them to make sense of contemporary politics. The complex relations between past and present are analyzed using oral histories with the so-called Generation 2 of the transitions, namely people who have only “projective memories” of these events during the 1970. Especially relevant is the effects of their participation in the 2011 indignados movements.

Le cinéma politique a été reçu d’une façon particulière par la jeune génération « cinéphile » des militants de gauche, en Grèce et en Espagne, pendant les « longues années 1960 ». En considérant à la fois l’impact des films sur la radicalisation politique et le rôle des mouvements sociaux au cinéma, l’article recense les principaux ressorts du cinéma politique commercial mais aussi du cinéma militant, en évaluant leur influence sur les étudiants de ces deux pays, sous régime autoritaire. Malgré la barrière de la censure, l’esprit de 1968 s’est répandu et s’est exprimé à travers l’invention de nouvelles formes d’expression politique, souvent elliptiques et cryptiques, comme cela fut le cas, par exemple, dans les fims de Theo Angelopoulos et Carlos Saura.

Este artículo se centra en cómo la juventud ha sido considerada
un poderoso elemento dentro de la cultura política griega desde los
años setenta. Contempla, en particular, cómo el papel de los jóvenes
ha sido ensalzado o demonizado visto, bien como una fuerza orientadora
(por ejemplo, el movimiento estudiantil de 1973), bien como puramente
destructivo para la sociedad griega (por ejemplo, durante las
revueltas de 2008). El artículo se concentra en las formas en que el ascenso al poder de Syriza en 2015 y su manejo de las negociaciones con
la troika han sido vistas como una muestra paradigmática del conjunto
de Grecia actuando como los niños mimados de Europa.

This volume brings together scholars from the fields of history, political science, political economy, historical sociology and cultural studies, to comment on the theoretical and empirical unsettling of democratic transitions at the time of the economic crisis. The volume links together transitions in time and space, reappraising the democratic processes in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s, the post-1989 transformations in Eastern Europe, the effects of Southern Cone democratisations and the 2011 revolts in the Arab worlds, resisting both temporal particularities and national exceptionalisms. It further showcases how even supposed model transitions came under attack during the current economic crisis, thus highlighting the incloncusive nature of these events and the strong interconnections between past and present.

This article addresses the ways in which the Third World emerged as a new referent in
Greece and Spain in the ‘long 1960s’. It shows how ‘Thirdworldism’ emerged out of
growing dissatisfaction with the Old Left’s defeatism and the ways in which, by way of the
Cuban and Vietnamese example, radicals started to conceive their countries as US
colonies. It also compares the ways in which Greek and Iberian Jacobins – some of
whom came together in Paris after May ‘68 – formed a radical student diaspora.
Examining the impact of extra-European anti-imperialist violence on the discourse and
action of the most radical organizations that espoused the ‘armed struggle’ in both
countries, the article shows that whereas Greek militants used violence only symbolically,
their counterparts in Spain went all the way. The article finishes with the espousal of
thirdworldist rhetoric by a new student generation in Greece leading to the mass uprising
of November 1973, and a brief look at the afterlives of ETA and PAK, two of the most
vocal exponents of this tendency, after the demise of the respective authoritarian regimes

This article examines how youth cultures and their memories evolved in Southern Europe, through dialogue. The co-authors, belonging to different generations, provide distinct standpoints on the ways in which various cohorts, born from 1940 to the late 1970s, experienced crucial  moments in the past and remember it today. Using a biographical and autobiographical approach, the two interlocutors explore these 'restless' generations politically, socially and culturally, whereby current concerns inform understanding of the past.

The transitions to democracy in Spain and Greece have been hailed for quite some time as the ultimate success stories. Ever since the early 2000s, however, and especially with the onset of the economic crisis in 2008, both began to be strongly challenged by the so-called new social movements that sprang out of the crisis and by intellectuals close to them, who directly undermined these celebratory narratives. This chapter concentrates on how the public memory of the transition events in the two countries has changed over the past forty years. 1 It explores the mnemohistory of transitions, by tracing the dominant political, scholarly and popular narratives and their transformations over time. In so doing, and following the pattern laid out by Jan Assmann, it poses the question of which are the persistent issues of memory but not of history, and which of history but not of memory?

Το πέρασμα του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ από τη διαμαρτυρία στη διακυβέρνηση τον καθιστά μια εμβλη-ματική περίπτωση μελέτης. Είναι ένα κόμμα εν κινήσει, που ήδη πριν την κρίση επανε-πινοεί ριζικά τον εαυτό του και μέσα στην κρίση επαναπροσδιορίζεται διαρκώς, περ-νώντας από τη φάση της εκτόξευσης στην προετοιμασία για τη διακυβέρνηση και τέλος στην άσκηση της εξουσίας. Βασική επιδίωξη του τόμου αυτού είναι να προσεγγιστεί η πολυπαραγοντική και παρά-δοξη ανάδυση του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, χωρίς η ανάλυση να εγκλωβίζεται στο πρίσμα της δικαίωσης ή της προδοσίας, της λύτρωσης ή της δημαγωγικής παραπλάνησης. Το εγχείρημα συ-νίσταται σε μια σειρά προσεγγίσεις που αφορούν την εκλογική κοινωνιολογία, την κομ-ματική οργάνωση και στρατηγική, τα κοινωνικά κινήματα, τον πολιτικό λόγο και την ιδε-ολογία, την ιστορία, το κράτος και τις δημόσιες πολιτικές, τον κομματικό ανταγωνισμό, τη συγκριτική πολιτική. Εάν κάτι τις συνέχει, δεν είναι αναγκαστικά ένα κοινό συμπέ-ρασμα όσο μια κοινή διερώτηση: πώς θα μπορούσαμε να εννοιολογήσουμε το πολιτι-κό πρόταγμα που εκλεκτικιστικά συνθέτει ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, αλλά και να διατυπώσουμε ορι-σμένες υποθέσεις ερμηνείας της ανθεκτικότητας που δείχνει να έχει, καθώς ακριβώς διά της ιδεολογικής (του) αμφισημίας εγκαθίσταται πλέον ως βασικός πόλος της ελλη-νικής πολιτικής ζωής. Υπάρχουν συνέχειες μέσα στην αλλαγή; Τι είδους φυσιογνωμία συνθέτουν οι προσαρ-μογές, οι μετασχηματισμοί και οι μεταμορφώσεις του; Παραμένει ανοιχτό το ερώτημα αν πρόκειται για ένα νέο παράδειγμα αριστερής πολιτικής ή για το πέρασμα στην άλλη όχθη, ενός σοσιαλδημοκρατικού κόμματος εξουσίας-ή για έναν «πειραματισμό» σε μια εποχή όπου οι πολιτικές ταυτότητες μοιάζουν πιο ρευστές από ποτέ, επιτρέποντας να αναδύονται μορφολογίες ακατάτακτες.

Until recently Greece held a marginal position in social movement literature, both abroad and at home. It wasn't until the unprecedented urban riots of 2008 that the country came to the forefront, not only in terms of social activism—as it was positioned to become the prototype for contentious pol-itics—but also for generating a paradigmatic shift in terms of theory. One of the primary objectives of this chapter is to identify the origins and features of this fundamental rift. Was this shift brought about by the so-called 'new December' events and the protests that followed the eruption of the economic crisis? Or was it facilitated by theoretical research on movements, and to what extent was this triggered by the greater contact of the Greek public with the existing theory? Th e present chapter traces the state of the art of social movements in Greece in the post-1974 period, pointing in two directions. On the one hand it attempts to tackle the thorny issue of what social movement discipline can tell us about contemporary Greek society, in terms of its socio-political development and positioning within the global confi guration of contentious politics over the past forty years. On the other, it aims to address the issue of what the Greek example can tell us about the research area of social movements as a whole. By adopting this holistic approach, we do not seek to present a comprehensive account of recent social movements in Greece, but rather to delineate the parallel progression of theory and action, and the extent to which each was fed and inseminated by the other over the years.

In the mid-and late 1970s Spain and Greece began experiencing a post-authoritarian politics and significant social change. The transition to democracy from dictatorship – Franco's regime (1939–75) and the Colonels' rule (1967–74), respectively, was the last chapter of the long post-civil war periods. In both cases, transfer of power to the politicians was engineered and implemented from 'above' , by the elites. Spanish and Greek political life in the transitional years was anything but peaceful or elite-dominated, however, as both processes took place against a background of intense mobilization. Worker activity and industrial conflict experienced an upsurge. Violence was pervasive too: police shootings ripped through the fabric of Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Greek political life, with a death toll outstripping that of revolutionary Portugal. Numerous assassinations and kidnappings by the Basque separatist ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) went hand-in-hand with government reprisals. Similarly, though for different reasons, the Greek leftist terrorist group 17 November belied peaceful transition, aiming at destabilization and jeopardizing the shaky democratic edifice. Organizations of the extreme left like GRAPO and FRAP in Spain, and ELA in Greece killed policemen and former torturers, and were largely seen as avengers for past repression. They capitalized on political disenchantment at the 'pacted' transitions, shuttering hopes for retroactive justice in Spain, and the entirely unsatisfactory trials of the torturers in Greece. Extreme right-wing violence was present too, especially in Spain with the brutal murder of communist lawyers in the Calle Atocha in 1977 and the firebombing of the queer hub 'Vaquería'. 2 Similarly in Greece the following year a central Athenian cinema was attacked with explosives during the screening of a Soviet film. 3 At the same time, non-violent movements mushroomed in the mid-and late 1970s, experimenting with new, essentially post-authoritarian political forms. This new contentious politics sprang from a youth quite isolated under the dictatorships, and included 'second wave' feminism and homosexual militancy. 4 After years of social conservatism and political authoritarianism, the transitions to democracy were also reflected in cultural politics. In Greece, this was expressed in the occupations of the Athens University in 1979, the apogee of a May '68-like libertarianism. 5 In Spain, it was expressed through 'neighbourhood movements' reacting against rapid urbanization. 6

This edited collection explores the ways in which the 2008/2009 social and economic crisis in Southern Europe affected the interpretation of the transitional past in Spain, Greece and Portugal. Discussing topics such as public memory, Europeanism and uses of the past by grassroots movements, the volume showcases how the crisis challenged consolidated perceptions of the transitions as ‘success stories’. It revisits the dominant historical narratives around Southern European transitions to democracy more than forty years since the demise of authoritarian regimes, bringing together contributors from history, cultural studies, political science and sociology.

The Greek Case: Strasbourg 1969-Athens 2019
4 Δεκεμβρίου στις 12:19 μ.μ. ·

Here's our conference programme. Thoroughly multidisciplinary, it brings together participants from 14 countries: scholars and researchers from disciplines including history, international law, trauma and sound studies, as well as legal experts, torture survivors, witnesses at Strasbourg and activists of the time. We hope to see you there!

«Grece generale » ? Les frontieres entre le passe et le present et entre le local et le transnational dans les evenements grecs en decembre 2008 L’emeute de decembre 2008 – trois semaines de desobeissance civile et de manifestations violentes dans la Grece entiere apres le meurtre d’un etudiant par la police – refusait d’etre assimilee avec les contestations sociales du passe, tant en Grece qu’a l’exterieur. Neanmoins, les slogans, les graffitis, les debats dans la presse, le repertoire d’action et le langage utilises ont revele de nombreuses references et paralleles avec mai 68 a Paris et d’autres evenements. Bien qu’il ait beneficie des nouvelles technologies de la communication, le mouvement protestataire grec ne s’est jamais etendu en dehors des frontieres nationales. La contestation grecque etait ‘ glocale’ plutot que mondiale.