Alexandros (Alekos) Panagoulis ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΠΑΝΑΓΟΥΛΗΣ
Born in Athens 1939 Died in Athens 1976
Section One, Number 236A
Political life in Greece has often been violent. During a 10 minute stroll in the First Cemetery, I can easily pass the graves of 8 people who were murdered for political reasons. (1)
The slab-like grave of Alexandros (Alekos) Panagoulis juts out awkwardly into an aisle of Section Number One, almost as if it shouldn’t be there at all. Its message is a stark one:
Alekos Panagoulis
Fighter
Murdered on May 1, 1976
36 years old.
Alekos’ life ended in a car crash on Leoforos Vouliagmenis at two o’clock in the morning of May First 1976 when he swerved to avoid a car which had braked suddenly. It was officially called an accident. At the time he was a member of parliament and scheduled to make some damning revelations about persons whom he believed had collaborated with the 1967 military dictatorship. His family suspected foul play, if not on the part of the conservative government of Constantinos Karamanlis, at least on the part of the ‘deep state’ (παρακράτος) apparatus that so many on the left were convinced still existed. His death was almost instantly linked to that of Gregoris Lambrakis who had been bludgeoned to death 13 years earlier in Thessaloniki by right wing thugs. Not even the implosion of a 7 year dictatorship in 1974 and the restoration of democracy had managed to heal the profound distrust between the liberal left and the conservative government in power at the time of his death.
During that dictatorship Panagoulis had attempted to kill its leader, Georgos Papadopoulos. As a result he spent four and a half excruciating years in a military prison. His defiance both in action and in his poetry collections became symbolic of the junta’s oppression and the desire of many citizens for a more liberal society.
It is a very Greek story.
His Life
Alekos was born in Athens in 1939. He was the second son of Vassilios Panagoulis, an officer in the Greek Army and his wife Athena. His father came from Divri (todays’ Lampeia) in the heart of the Peloponnese; she hailed from Sivri, a small village in the Ionian island of Lefkada. Alekos’ brother Georgios, a year older, would also become an officer in the Greek army. A much younger brother Efstathios completed the family whose political roots were Venizelist, that is to say, liberal and republican, a point of view that would have been regarded as suspect during the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas which began in 1936 and ended in 1941 when the Germans invaded.
Alekos spent the years of the Axis occupation in Lefkada before moving with his family to Athens, first to Kypseli and then to Glyfada. Some of his earliest memories would have been of the occupation and the civil war which rocked Greece until 1949 when he would have been 10 years old. According to all accounts of his childhood friends, Alekos and his brothers were athletic, lively, and sometimes the scandal of his neighbourhood in Glyfada.
In the 1950s, when Alekos was a teenager very few people were politically neutral. Conservative Constantinos Karamanlis was prime minister. One historian put it this way: although democratic, his government had the aura of a semi-police state, a situation tolerated by his supporters because of fears of a renewed civil war. That ‘aura’ had a certain inevitability given Greece’s recent history. The continued presence of National Guard Defence Battalions which had been formed during the war did not help either because of their fascist roots (2). The Karamanlis government had continued the detention of communist prisoners during the 50s and refused to repatriate former fighters of EAM-ELAS who had fled abroad when the civil war ended. Any Demonstrations or rallies for more civil liberties became suspect and protestors’ names were recorded as a matter of course. This was the social backdrop for Alekos’ liberal activism as a teenager and young man. A police file was started on him as early as 1957; it grew even larger in the early sixties.
At first his family’s connection to the army made him suspect with some of his more radical friends, but he proved his credentials in many a demonstration. And yet, he was never a radical in the sense that the term is understood today. His first career choice had been the Navy, but, when he was not accepted, he opted for Electrical Engineering at the National Technical School of Athens.
In 1961 Georgios Papandreou, a long time social democratic politician started the new Centre Union Party (EK) in an attempt to prevent a third term by Karamanlis’ National Radical Union (ERE). Alekos became an enthusiastic and vocal member of its youth movement.
The Centre Union
The Centre Union consisted of members of Venizelist liberals, social democrats and some dissatisfied conservatives. The banned communist party preferred EDA, the United Democratic Left which, although it attracted a lot of workers and influential intellectuals, only managed to get a significant number of votes (15%) in 1961. It was the less radical social democratic Centre Union that Alekos supported.
The 1961 Elections and the Relentless Struggle
In the 1961 election, the significant gains of Papandreou’s new Centre Union party along with EDA votes were still not enough to topple Karamanlis but were enough for Papandreou to call the election rigged. He announced a policy of ‘relentless struggle’ (ανένδοτος αγών) against Karamanlis’ ERE party and what he termed the deep state of the right. This, of course, did nothing to heal the already frayed political fabric.
The strategy paid off in the November 1963 elections when the centre Union managed to beat the conservatives by a tiny margin. The atmosphere surrounding this election was electric and full of mutual hostilities. The fact that Grigoris Lambrakis, a prominent member of parliament for EDA had been murdered that May and that Karamanlis had resigned because of a dispute with the king had helped the Centre Union to win.
New elections in 1964 proved even more successful for the Centre Union. Papandreou won decisively with 174 seats, to ERE’s 98 and Eda’s 22.
1964-1967: and the lead up to Disaster
What should have been the pinnacle of victory for the political centre got lost in the miasma of Greek politics. The still entrenched conservative faction were fuming at their defeat and the Palace had always favoured the conservatives. The army, ever an explosive factor in Greek politics were restive because liberal elements were always purged when the conservatives held sway and conservative elements were purged under more liberal governments. The resulting job insecurity almost guaranteed plots and counter plots within the military.
Georgios Papandreou had some problems of his own: he was 78 and had been in politics a long time. Some have suggested that he became more focused on settling old scores than on creating a new social democratic order. Factions in his own party, one of them led by his son Andreas, were after far more radical changes than their leader. Georgios was not close to his firebrand son. He had abandoned his first wife for the actress Givelli when Andreas was a baby. There was a lot of unfinished business there. Nonetheless (or perhaps because of this history), Papandreou père had personally put his son forward in his own party apparatus and was certainly regretting it by December of 1966 when the New York Times reported that he had been driven to rebuke his son publically.
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During this period, army officers suspected that a left wing plot led by Andreas was brewing in their ranks.(3) Things came to a head when Georgios Papandreou asked the king to grant him the Defence Portfolio. Many considered this an attempt to shield his son from the consequences of the supposed plot. In any case, King Constantine refused to co-operate. Then Papandreou made the mistake of offering his resignation. The king accepted so quickly that many felt it had all been part of a plan.
Political instability ensued and new elections for 1967 were agreed upon, elections that many on the right were convinced that the Centre Union could only win (horror of horrors) with the help of communist tainted EDA.
The Coup
Before that happened, an ambitious group of colonels decided that yet another military coup was necessary to cure Greece’s political and social maladies and get rid of the ‘communist threat’ once and for all. On April 21, 1967, a coup détat was led by this group of unimaginative nonentities who would ban miniskirts, long hair, and the music of Mikis Theodorakis. (4)
Bumblers they may have been, but they had all of the instruments of repression from the dictator’s playbook at the ready: arrest, house arrest, torture, and execution.
The Dictatorship and Panagoulis’ Arrest
Opposition was hampered by the fact that so many inside the country supported the coup and that many foreign governments, such as the U.S. and Britain had developed a half hearted wait and see policy. But the reaction of the Panagoulis family was immediate. Alekos’ brother, a career officer resigned and Alekos, who was in the army at the time deserted, founded the National Resistance Organization, and went into self exile in Cyprus to consider his options.
(Παραλίγο Τυραννοκτόνος) The Almost Tyrant Killer (5)
The result of his planning was a failed assassination attempt (a near miss bombing) against Georgos Papadopoulos on the 13th of August 1968 near Varkiza, a suburb of Athens.
Panagoulis was arrested as the perpetrator shortly afterwards and tried in a military court in November of the same year just days after Georgios Papandreou’s funeral had caused a huge anti-junta demonstration in the centre of Athens. The junta were not in a forgiving mood. He was sentenced to death and sent to Aegina for execution.
It never happened.
The Junta found itself under intense political pressure to commute his sentence. In his book Britain, Greece, and the Colonels: Between Pragmatism and Human Rights Constantinos Maraghou offers some insight the British reaction to the death sentence. Many Labour MPs wanted to hold public demonstrations and raise the question of the verdict in parliament, but the Secretary of State wanted to opt for ‘private channels’. His rationale was that a public outcry would just encourage the junta to carry out the sentence. Is it more important to save Panagoulis’ life or to make a big song and dance about the sentence? (6)
The private pressure worked but Panagoulis was left to face the music in the Boyiati Military Prison near Athens for four and one half years of almost daily torture and psychological pressure. He never revealed the names of his accomplices. According to Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci who took up his cause and became his lover: he met his regular torturers with curses and defiance.
Alekos attempted to escape many times and managed once briefly in June of 1969. Another attempt in the summer of 1971 involved some well known names including Amelia Fleming. He was then chained to his bed in a tiny cell partially submerged in the ground. It measured three metres by one and a half, scarcely bigger than his grave in the First Cemetery. The horror of that incarceration is recorded in his poetry:
Tied to the bedpost,
chains
keeping the body still
Crows flying around me
seek to feast on me
tyrant’s slaves
with human form
...
The deserters say I deserted
The traitors say I betrayed.
Those who will be spat upon tomorrow
Spit on me today.
And
The Paint
I gave life to the walls
a voice I gave them
more friendly so that
they would become my company
and the guard asked
to know where they could find the paint.
The walls of the cell kept the secret
and the mercenaries searched everywhere
but paint they could not find
because they did not think for a moment
that they should search into my veins.
By 1974, the brutality of the junta was well known in foreign diplomatic circles and opposition, in the Greek diaspora and among the many prominent artists and politicians who had been exiled was reaching critical mass. Papadopoulos seems to have understood this and, in an attempt to either liberalize his regime or appear to liberalize it, he freed all political prisoners including Panagoulis. Panagoulis went into exile in Italy and continued his resistance from abroad.
Theodorakis and Panagoulis Meet
In the months after his release and before the Junta self imploded, Panagoulis and Mikis Theodorakis, who had himself suffered so much from right wing oppression, were together in Stockholm discussing how culture could create a milieu in which freedom could blossom in Greece.(7) They discussed the possible formation of Greek cultural clubs in the diaspora and were careful to specify that they should be clear of all party affiliations. Even after their harrowing tortures, they wanted a return to some kind of national unity. Theodorakis had himself come up with the proposal that Karamanlis would be the best person to initiate this government of national unity before elections were called, an idea that did bear fruit and one that shows a certain greatness of soul on the part of both men.
The End
When the junta ended with a whimper over the invasion of Cyprus, Panagoulis became the secretary general of the Hellenic Democratic Youth movement under the aegis of the Centre Union. He did not join PASOK, Andreas Papandreou’s new socialist party, but instead ran for a seat in parliament under the liberal Centre Union- New Forces party.(8) Of course, once parliamentary democracy was restored and political parties were formed, the Utopian ideal of cultural entities with no party affiliations got lost in the rhetoric. Panagoulis himself repudiated his own party because of perceived ties of some members to the Junta and was an independent member of parliament when he died.
Was it Murder?
There have been many songs, books and plays written about Alekos Panagoulis. His life and death have assumed mythical proportions. A recent book, entitled Rehearsals for Death seems, in retrospect, almost prophetic.
The Grave
The Map
Footnotes
(1) 1 is Spiros Petroulis, 2 is Grigoris Lambrakis, 3 is Elene Papadaki, 4 is Alexandros Panagoulis, 5 is Odysseos Androutsos, 6 is Kitsis Maltezos, 7, is Theodoros Deligiannis, and 8 is Ion Dragoumis.
(2) The aura of police state comment comes from page 5 of The breakdown of Parliamentary Democracy in Greece 1965-67 by Charles C. Moskos Jr.
The National Guard Defence Battalions (Τάγματα Εθνοφυλακής Αμύνης) were formed in September 1948, during the Greek Civil War by the army general staff. It enlisted men with proven "anticommunist" credentials. This meant that many from the infamous security battalions formed by the Nazis during the German occupation continued as part of the state apparatus in the 50s and 60s. It was not disbanded until 1982 when PASOK leader Andreas Papandreou was in power.
(3) The left wing plot, named Aspida was never proved, nor was its counterpart, the so called Pericles Plan of the army’s right wing faction in 1961. There were a lot of plots at the time. The army was a hotbed of intrigue because every change in the political climate could mean either advancement or retirement, or worse.
(4) Greece has undergone so many coups in its short history that one can google coups in Greece and get a helpful and long list.
(5) The word Τυραννοκτόνος has had a positive spin since ancient times. It loses something in the translation. In an interview held after his liberation, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci quoted Panagoulis as saying: I didn’t want to kill a man. I’m not capable of killing a man. I wanted to kill a tyrant
(6) Page 89 of Britain, Greece, and the Colonels: Between Pragmatism and Human Rights by Constantinos A Maraghou. The tendency of foreign governments is to try secret diplomacy, some of it pretty half-hearted. That was the despair of those Greeks opposing the junta. Countries like Sweden just called it what it was – illegal and wrong.
(7) Because of his fame and ill health, Theodorakis who had first been imprisoned by the Junta, was released in 1970, and went abroad to aid the resistance with speeches and musical concerts.
(8) Greek political parties change their names with startling regularity. In 1974 ERE became New Democracy, the Centre Union became the Centre Union New Force and Pasok was newly minted that year. It would be safe to say New Democracy represented the conservative element, the Centre Union New Force the social democratic element, and Pasok, by its founder’s own definition, socialists. In that election, New Democracy got 220 seats, The Centre Union New Force 60, and PASOK 12. Those numbers would change dramatically in a few short years!
Sources
https://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/ekke/article/download/7139/6858/0 An American view by a Greek and really good on background.
https://books.google.gr/books?id=94F-Y6PKLfwC&pg=PA138&lpg=PA138&dq=Panagoulis+Poems+by+theodorakis&source=bl&ots=qTvYI02ZpO&sig=ACfU3U2_7Yow-aI7qt_KxzhFoTruf4O4iQ&hl=el&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilte3E9fD4AhV0if0HHdzmCVEQ6AF6BAgvEAM#v=onepage&q=Panagoulis%20Poems%20by%20theodorakis&f=false from the Book Mikis Theodorakis – the Greek soul by George Logothetis
Η ΔΙΚΗ ΤΩΝ ΒΑΣΑΝΙΣΤΩΝ-ΕΑΤ ΕΣΑ 1967-1974, μια ταινία του Θεοδόση Θεοδοσόπουλου on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnQS7J--wzE
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