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The Hellenic Society Prometheas
NewsletterSeptember 2005Mark your Calendar
The general program of Prometheas with planned activities for the next 12 months has been recently reviewed by the Board. The following events, scheduled for September and early October of 2005, have been substantially firmed up and are presented below:.
Speaker: Eugene G. Maurakis, Ph. D. Associate Professor, University of Richmond. Friday, September 9, 2005, St. George Greek Orthodox Church. [Click here for more info]
St. Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church.
For final confirmation, please look for related announcements to be circulated prior to the date of each event.
Misc. NewsBalkan Ghosts but Not Skeletons[1] By Nikolaos A. Stavrou, Ph.D.
Several books have been written since the collapse of the communist bloc by historians who specialize in what can be described as “ghost archeology”. One would have expected that the specialists who consider history writing and story telling as interchangeable concepts would have also shown minimal interest in digging up the skeletons left behind by elusive ghosts. But they carefully stayed away from such an enterprise. Apparently, historical accuracy interferes with grandiose schemes aimed at the revival of dead empires and the creation of what are casually defined as “tolerant” societies.
Whether we are talking about Robert Kaplan’s “Balkans Ghosts” or Mark Mazower’s “ Salonica: City of Ghosts”, or Bernard Lewis’ lamentations for the “Greek” crimes against Balkan Muslims, the theme remains the same: Greek nationalism is inherently evil but the nationalist fervor of everyone else affirms the glory of multi-ethnicity, the tolerance of Ottoman rulers and imperial benevolence that fostered a multi-ethnic paradise that reached its apogee in the pre-1912 Thessaloniki.
Nostalgia dictates, the story goes, that the Greeks and Serbs must be shamed to admit past errors, be compelled to repent for their sins and prove with deeds that they mean it. But the only proof that will do is the imposition of a Balkan security system that demolishes Greek identity and implements Tito’s and Trotsky’s vision of a Balkan peninsula controlled by non-indigenous elites and defended by imperial viceroys—all under the rubric of a “Near East” strategic architecture that finally empowers lovable blonde Muslims.
No wonder then that the “ghost archeologists” show no interest whatsoever in two seminal figures that left their imprint on Balkan politics, Trotsky and Tito. One would have expected that at least the ghost of Trotsky would hover along with the other ghosts of Thessaloniki but, I guess, it would have been a sensitive subject to be touched. No mater what the revisionists of Balkan history feel, the fact remains that Tito and Trotsky were the original instigators of Balkan turmoil and their ghosts, too, require exorcism.
Recently released Soviet archives show that Trotsky roamed the Balkans prior to, during and after the Balkan wars. He had made Thessaloniki his base of operations hiding among the city’s non-Greek elites and promoting the idea of making the Balkans the testing ground of proletarian internationalism. He had found refuge among the Jewish socialists in the city where he befriended and mentored the founder of the first ethnically exclusive “socialist” Federation, Abraham Benaroya.
On September 13, 1912, Trotsky was hired by the radical Kiev newspaper Kievskaya Mysl (Kiev Thought) and was instructed to rush to the Balkans from Vienna to cover the anticipated “explosive situation.” The timing was perfect: just one month before the war started. Trotsky send his dispatches to Kiev using alternatively two pseudonyms, Antid Oto and L. Yanov. His dispatches were guided by one principle: they would always favor the losing side, first the Ottomans and later the Bulgarians. His analyses of events were a cross between “news” and “advocacy” but ultimately he would always end up promoting a “unified state of all Balkan nationalities on democratic federative principles.”
Trotsky’s was the first seed of a Balkan Federation which, if achieved, would certainly reduce the Greek nation into a minority (pretty much like the pre-1912 Thessaloniki) and would place the “oppressed” in charge. It is worth noting that Trotsky’s Balkan ventures coincided with the rise of “Young Turks”, one of whom, Mustafa Kemal, was groomed as anti-capitalist “revolutionary” and who in 1920 would ask Trotsky (by then Lenin’s Commissar of Defense) to provide him with military advisors to “defeat the Greek imperialists.”
The idea of a Balkan Federation would be revived by Comintern and operationalized by its chief West European agent, Josip Broz Tito, a cipher of history whose ghost haunts Serbs and his Skopje creation torments Greeks. His fictitious portrait is tucked away by the falsifiers of history to be looked upon with nostalgia by its creators.
Tito was neither Croat, nor Catholic nor a lowly tin smith; and he certainly was not a Serb. Nevertheless, I leave it up to the Balkan historical revisionists to trace his ethnic origins. Here I shall provide a few facts, drawn from published but ignored accounts, hoping to spark further scholarly research in the life of a Balkan impostor whose experimentation with multi-ethnic social engineering is being resurrected.
Who Tito was is a murky issue, but who he was not is fairly clear: he was not just a Comintern in charge of western European affairs as history books have recorded. The British Intelligence for sure knows his pedigree and they must know that he was not a charismatic tin smith from a poor Croat village where no piano existed but he, somehow, learned to play flawlessly Brahms, Beethoven and List, a talent he would routinely display in close company in his many villas.
Tito was smuggled into Yugoslavia by the British Intelligence. He was traveling from Constantinople to Bari, Italy, on his way to Moscow to face Stalin’s inquisitors and “explain his errors” and above all his relationship with “the Bukharin- Zinovie-Trotsky Zionist deviation.” In Bari, Italy, he was provided with a fake Canadian Passport (No. 32829) and the name of Speredon Mekas, a dead Greek. One wonders, why the British MI5 would be so interested in “saving a Comintern agent who was supposedly committed to the overthrow of the Capitalist system? Did that charitable act have anything to do with the Tito-Stalin break in 1948? Perhaps these are questions of some interest for the “ghost archeologists”.
In the fall of 1941 Josip Broz –Tito made his debut as a “resistance leader” in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia, months after Draza Mikhailovic had spontaneously started the Serbian National resistance. It was about the time another Josip Broz was buried in the Zemun Cemetery. The latter’s tomb stone is still impeccably kept, the only alteration being the addition of the names Rudolph and Jelena (Broz). The first dead and buried, the second still reserving her place in the family grave when a photo was taken.
Nikolaos A. Stavrou is Professor (Emeritus) of International Affairs, Howard University and Editor of Mediterranean Quarterly, published by Duke University Press.
New Books and Book Reviews“Tsarouchis, The face of modern Greece” by Stathis Orphanos
Twenty years of work devoted to the work of Yannis Tsarouhis (1910-1989). Includes 36 mounted collates plates of major paintings and 26 eulogies from Greek, Amercian, English and French celebrities. Published in bilingual edition (English and Greek) by Sylvester & Orphanos in conjunction with Militos Editions. For info: sales@tsipouras.gr or Sylvanos@aol.com
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