Page 28 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

tiko Komma Elladas, KKE) and its military
branch, the Greek Democratic Army, (in Greek
Dimocratikos Stratos Elladas, DSE) on the one
side and on the other the national army of the
Greek state, assisted initially by the British and
then the American army, as the two political op-
ponents claim to establish two different politi-
cal visions; one from a socialist perspective, as
the communists of that period understood so-
cialism end, on the other hand a conservative/
liberal, or the remaining of Greece in the west-
ern pole of influence. Greek civil war, is not only
28 part of a national (Greek) history, but of a Eu-
ropean one, as it is the first episode of the Cold
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2
War to be fought in Europe, involving Western ti
powers with those of the Eastern Bloc both geo-
graphically and politically.
Most of the military operations of the civil
war were conducted in the northern part of the ta
country and forced both DSE fighters and the
civilian population to flee the country through
neighbouring countries, i.e., Albania, Bulgaria,
and the former Yugoslavia. With the term ref- di
ugees, the Greek and foreign-language litera-
Figure 1: Athina M. in front of E.M.’s tomb in Těchonín, ture describes the DSE fighters and civilians, i.e.,
around 1958. (source: Personal archive of Savas) women, men, elderly, and children, both Greek
and Slavic speaking population who fled Greece
of formal recognition that ought to be attributed during the war. Even before the end of the civ-
to it in commemorative monuments. il war, the KKE had come to an understanding
Between 1950 and 1962, the military bar- with the fraternal communist parties of the so- here
racks in question, located in the village of called Est bloc asking them to host the refugees.
Těchonín, were converted into a place to live Thus, during the war and when the war was over,
and care for refugees from the Greek civil war in August 1949, the refugee population was dis-
(1946–1949) who were seriously injured, dis- tributed among the countries of the former east-
abled (blind, paraplegic, etc.) and/or unable to ern bloc, a small part remained in the former Yu-
work. During this period, they housed around goslavia, mostly Slavic-speaking refugees, and
600 of the almost 12,000 refugees who came a smaller part in Albania, unlike to Bulgaria
to Czechoslovakia. The latter were part of the which hosted almost 3 thousand people.
1
55,000 refugees scattered across Eastern Europe
following the Greek civil war and were accepted 1 The literature, from a historical point of view, on the Greek
Civil War is extremely rich. However, the issue of the refu-
as such by the People’s Democracies for a period gees of the civil war and their stay in the countries of east-
of almost thirty years (see table 1). ern Europe has been studied by anthropologists, histori- studiauniversitatis
ans and sociologists. Although the majority of the litera-
The Greek civil war that unfolded in 1946– ture is mostly in Greek, there are nevertheless English-lan-
1949 between two opponents, the Commu- guage sources, indicatively for the civil war, e.g.: Carabott
and Sfikas (2017); Panourgiá (2009); Baerentzen, Iatrides,
nist Party of Greece (in Greek Kommounis- and Smith (1987); Danforth and Van Boeschoten (2012).