In 1944, Greece was liberated from the Nazi yoke by the EAM and its armed wing, ELAS. On the 12th of October 1944, the last German soldiers withdrew from Athens, at a time when the Resistance forces across the country had liberated nine out of ten parts of Greek territory. A few days later, on the 18th of October, the political personnel of the Greek bourgeois class returned to the liberated homeland to reclaim the power they had abandoned when the Greek people were starving and at the same time fighting against the Occupier.
The problem for that political authority, however, was that Greece was no longer the country they had left behind—whether under the Metaxas dictatorship or at the start of the triple Occupation. In 1944, the armed army of the liberating partisans had the strength to redefine the History of the land, and the exercise of power over the heroic people, on behalf of the bourgeois class, was neither an easy nor a straightforward process.
The efforts to form a government of national unity, with the participation of all political forces, pending the normalization of democratic procedures and the holding of elections in now-liberated Greece, amounted in essence to a farce. For the bourgeois class, seeing the risk of losing its grip on governing the country, had launched a hunt against every fighter, against EAM itself, in order to break its strength.
Thus, on the 1st of December 1944, the EAM ministers—Al. Svolos, G. Zevgos, M. Porphyrogenis, N. Askoutsis, I. Tsirimokos, and A. Angelopoulos—withdrew from the formed government of “National Unity,” disagreeing with the government’s decision to proceed with the dissolution of EAM. The night before, the Central Committee of EAM had sent an ultimatum to the government of G. Papandreou, requesting that it appeal to the governments of its allies—Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the USA—and it called upon the people to participate in a strike on Saturday the 2nd of December and a rally on Sunday the 3rd of December. At the same time, it also reorganized the Central Committee of ELAS.
On the 2nd of December, the Saturday strike was a tremendous success, with entire shopfronts remaining shut. The government—which was by now “national unity” in name only, and not even formally—welcomed 6,000 British soldiers and two Greek fascist battalions from Egypt. That same evening, the Government declared the Sunday rally illegal.
But despite the ban, the people flooded the streets of central Athens. And against this swelling river of the people, the Government chose to open fire—resulting in 21 dead and 140 wounded on that day. The following day, during the general strike, the people were once again in the center of Athens, marching for their dead against the new tyrants—and at the head of the procession was the blood-stained banner that read: “WHEN THE PEOPLE ARE FACED WITH THE DANGER OF TYRANNY, THEY CHOOSE EITHER CHAINS OR ARMS.”
The procession, escorting the victims of Bloody Sunday to their burial at the cemetery, once again comes under armed attack by former Nazi collaborators—another 40 dead and 70 wounded fall in the streets of Athens. And on the following day, a further 30 dead and 100 wounded are added to the toll of victims from the popular movement that had liberated Greece.
In the aftermath, faced with the Greek authorities’ inability to control the situation, British General Ronald MacKenzie Scobie assumes responsibility for putting an end to it—effectively establishing a British dictatorship in Athens. During this period, the British army clashes with the armed forces of the partisans. The British proceed to purge the rebellious people using methods well-honed through their colonial experience.
Such an image—of the British tank rolling over the body of a young boy—was conveyed by the poet Yannis Ritsos, in his collection Neighborhoods of the World, published in 1957 and portraying the arc of Greek history during the heroic and critical decade of the 1940s.
But the hero of that poem is a footballer, a child who plays ball—just as the English played ball and carried it across the world, with their armies and their sailors. And if, as Galeano wrote of his own homeland, “Football had made a marvellous journey: it was first organized in the colleges and universities of England, and brought joy to the lives of South Americans who had never set foot in a school,” the same happened in Greece, where the same sport became the game “on the neighborhood fields among the wild mallows.” Ritsos himself, a footballer with the Atlas team of Thymarakia, reflected something of his own psyche in the childhood character of Pavlis.
Ritsos’ poem is a hymn—to the life of the people, to the story of joy in their lives, cut short by the events of the military history of imperialists. It is the seal of that contradiction, one that will cease to exist only when the very system that breeds contradictions in life and human well-being is shattered—erasing the privileges of masters and creating a free life for free peoples!
Did you see him, John, Pavlis? You must have seen him.
But even if you didn’t hear that “hurrah,”
even if you didn’t notice the flame in his eyes,
you must have felt it—you must have felt it—
as the treads rolled over Pavlis—
you must have felt it.
And it was as if I saw your tank jolt, John.
You know which Pavlis I mean,
that child—remember?
I mean Pavlis—what a noise—
that child who sold his shoes
when the Germans killed little Giorgakis.
That child who bought the ball,
what a racket your cannons make, Joe—how could you hear?
That child
who was on Giorgakis’ football team.
And don’t you, John, love football?
You play well—we saw it one night at the cinema,
chewing chickpeas and pumpkin seeds,
shouting “hurrah,” John, for your team.
Because your team—Arsenal—played so beautifully,
and we love beautiful things, John, and we value fairness,
and we applaud what is good—whatever it is,
and we can’t help but tell the truth—the right thing is right—
Arsenal played very beautifully.
You must love football too, John,
and Pavlis played beautifully too—though he was barefoot—
He had strong legs—a bit crooked, it’s true, from football,
very strong legs and lungs and smarts,
and strong bones, Joe—you must have felt it!
How beautifully Pavlis played—we dreamed, locals and strangers alike,
watching him in the afternoons,
playing in the neighborhood field
with the wild mallows,
we dreamed that the day after tomorrow he’d become
captain of the red football
of our People’s Republic!
Because Pavlis—though barefoot—played all positions, Joe,
so much that we were surprised, John, that he didn’t manage
in his final match to deliver a kick,
one of his famous ones,
and launch your tank, John, all the way to London,
straight to the forehead, John, of your Mr. Churchill.
But, you see, he was barefoot. What could he do?
I’m talking to you about Pavlis who had sold his shoes—
he never got the chance, John,
to put shoes on his feet again,
and so barefoot, Pavlis was killed that December.”
