Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Forced Settlement of Refugees 1922-1930 (Oxford Historical Monographs)

Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1922–1930

ELISABETH KONTOGIORGI

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS Editors R . J . W. E VA N S J. HARRIS J . RO B E RT S O N J. MADDICOT T P. A . S L A C K R . S E RV I C E B . WA R D - P E R K I N S

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Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1922–1930 ELISABETH KONTOGIORGI

CL ARENDON PRESS

●

OXFORD

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Elisabeth Kontogiorgi 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–927896–2

978–0–19–927896–1

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

To Theodossios and Demetrios

Acknowledgements I COULD never have completed this study, which is based on my doctoral thesis (University of Oxford, 1997), without the extensive help and support of many individuals and institutions. First of all I owe a special debt of gratitude to Dr John Campbell and Professor Richard Clogg who patiently supervised my thesis. I am deeply grateful for their constant support, interest, understanding, and tolerance. Dr John Campbell, even after his retirement, continued to show his interest in my work and guided its metamorphosis into book form. During the whole period of my research he has been a great source of inspiration and encouragement and I owe him a debt it is difficult to express. I am most grateful to Professor Mark Mazower, who read my thesis, made most valuable criticisms and suggestions, provided books, and helped me to improve my work. My indebtedness to his works, as well as those of George Mavrogordatos, should be mentioned here. I am particularly grateful to Professor Ioannis Chassiotis for suggesting to me that I investigate the history of Macedonia during the inter-war period, and together with Professor Ioannis Koliopoulos and Professor Christos Patrinellis provided valuable assistance during the various stages of my work, and have been a source of inspiration and help to me in securing financial support for my studies. Professor Antonis Liakos, who was in England when I commenced my studies at Oxford, first encouraged my interest in this particular subject. I am indebted to him for his advice and for bibliography. I would also like to thank the Directors and the personnel of the following institutions for their help during the course of my research: the Public Record Office, London; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the Refugee Studies Programme, Oxford, and its Director Dr Barbara Harrell-Bond; the British Library; St Antony’s College, Oxford; the London School of Economics, and King’s College, London; the Archive of the League of Nations in Geneva. In Greece, I owe thanks to the Director of the Archives of the Greek Foreign Ministry, Professor Domna Donta, and her successor F. Konstantopoulou, and to the Directors and personnel of the Historical Archives of Macedonia, Thessaloniki. I would particularly like to thank Professor Nikos Karapidakis, who was Director of the General State Archives (GAK)

Acknowledgements

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during the period I was seconded to this institution, for his assistance in uncovering the material on Greek refugees and rural Macedonia and facilitating my research. Special thanks are extended to the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, its Director Professor Paschalis Kitromilides, its scholars, and the entire staff of the Centre for facilitating my access to its invaluable archives, collection of photographs, maps and books; the Greek Literary and Historical Archive and in particular Mr M. Charitatos and Dr D. Portolos; the personnel of the Gennadion Library; the Greek National Library, and the Library of the Greek Parliament. I wish also to thank Professor W. Van Gemert, who sent me the unpublished thesis of C. P. Trachanas. I am particularly indebted to Dr Helen Belia, Director of the Research Centre of Modern Greek History, Academy of Athens, and to Dr Helen Gardikas-Katsiadakis for their encouragement and advice. I wish to express my sincere thanks to the editors of the Oxford University Press for their care and suggestions which have led to material improvements. Finally, I am indebted to the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki and to the Macedonian Society of Great Britain for funding my studies at Oxford. I am also grateful to the Cyril Foster and related Funds, University of Oxford, and to the British Council of Thessaloniki for helping to finance my research at the Archives of the League of Nations in Geneva and the Public Record Office in London. I am extremely thankful to Dr Dimitrios Portolos, Byron Alevritis, Ioannis Mpoutaris, and Mr Chaitoglou for financial support. I express my deep gratitude to the Greek Orthodox Centre of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Geneva for their generous hospitality. Many thanks are due to Aristeidis Karavarsamis and his wife Barbara for their constant encouragement and friendship. Without doubt the greatest burden of support was carried by members of my family. My warm thanks and appreciation are due to all of them. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my husband, Michael Fardis, for his patience and understanding over many years.

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Contents List of Tables Abbreviations Note on the Calendar

xi xii xiv

Introduction

1

PART I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: THE RECEIVING REGION AND THE ORIGINS OF THE GREEK REFUGEE PROBLEM 1. Macedonia 1870–1922 2. The Refugees

11 41

PART II. REFUGEE RESET TLEMENT IN MACEDONIA 3. Establishment of the Refugee Settlement Commission: Settlement Policies in Macedonia 4. The Land Issue before and during the Refugee Resettlement 5. Agricultural Resettlement and Land Distribution

73 111 141

PART III. THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ETHNOLOGICAL IMPACT 6. The Social and Political Impact 7. The Ethnological Impact 8. Geographical Distribution of the Refugees

165 193 253

x

Contents PART IV. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE

9. Infrastructure Development 10. The Impact of Refugee Resettlement on Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Epilogue Bibliography Index

265 297 330 339 365

List of Tables 1.1 3.1 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 7.1 7.2 7.3

Jewish population in Macedonia, 1880–1908 Cultivated land and population in Macedonia, 1920 Lands assigned to the RSC by December 1924 Refugees’ occupations in Macedonia, summer 1924 Surveyed and distributed lands up to 1931 Distribution to refugee settlements Number of estates distributed permanently, 1927–1937 Marriages and births in Macedonia from June to December 1924 Muslims transported from Macedonia to Turkey, 1923–4 Minority groups in Macedonia, 1924 (number of families) Non-Greek-speaking native inhabitants and refugees in Macedonia, 1924 (in families) 7.4 Greek and Muslim population movements in Mixed villages in western Macedonia 7.5 Muslims from central and western Macedonia exchanged from the port of Thessaloniki 7.6 Population of the Greek administrative districts (nomoi) of Greek Macedonia, 1916 7.7 Population of the cities of Greek Macedonia, 1916 7.8 Ethnological composition of the population of Macedonia, 1924 7.9 Ethnological composition of the population of Macedonia, 1925 7.10 Population of the region Florina/Kastoria, 1925 7.11 Population of the region Florina/Kastoria, 1930 9.1 Medical supervision of villagers by the RSC, 1926–1929 9.2 Dispensaries in rural settlements in Macedonia, April 1929 9.3 Deaths from malaria and births in Langadas, 1933–1935

23 109 135 145 148 156 156 159 199 210 211 221 245 246 247 248 250 252 252 274 275 277

Abbreviations AKDK AP APD ATE AYE

DCM DKMS ELIA ESV ETE FO/PRO GAK GFM GDCM GGACMT

GGM GGWM HAM IEE IMRO

Archive of K. D. Karavidas, Gennadion Library, Athens Agrarian Party Archive of Philippos Dragoumis, Gennadion Library, Athens Agrotiki Trapeza tis Ellados (Agricultural Bank of Greece) Istorikon Archeion Ypourgeiou Exoterikon (Greek Foreign Ministry Archives), KY—Kentriki Ypiresia (Central Department), KtE: Koinonia ton Ethnon (League of Nations) Department of the Colonization of Macedonia Deltion Kentrou Mikrasiatikon Spoudon, Athens (Bulletin of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies) Elliniko Logotechniko kai Istoriko Archeio (Archive of Greek Literature and History) Efimeris ton Syzitiseon tis Voulis (Parliamentary Gazette) Ethniki Trapeza tis Ellados (National Bank of Greece) British Foreign Office Archives, Public Record Office, London Genika Archeia tou Kratous (General State Archives) Elliniko Ypourgeio Exoterikon, Athens (Greek Foreign Ministry) Geniki Dieythynsis Epoikismou Makedonias (General Directorate of Colonization of Macedonia) Geniki Dioikisis Georgias kai Epoikismou Makedonias kai Thrakis (Governorship-General of Agriculture and Colonization of Macedonia and Thrace) Geniki Dioikisis Makedonias (Governorship-General of Macedonia), Thessaloniki Geniki Dioikisis Dytikis Makedonias (Governorship General of Western Macedonia), Thessaloniki Istorikon Archeion Makedonias (Historical Archive of Macedonia), Thessaloniki Istoria tou Ellinikou Ethnous (History of the Greek Nation series) Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization

Abbreviations KKE LN LNA LNFC PSV RSC SEGMT str. TYYG USNA

xiii

Kommounistiko Komma Ellados (Greek Communist Party) League of Nations League of Nations Archive, Geneva League of Nations Financial Committee Praktika ton Synedriaseon tis Voulis (Minutes of the Debates at the Greek Parliament) Refugee Settlement Commission Syllogos Ellinon Geoponon Makedonias kai Thrakis (Association of Greek Agriculturists of Macedonia and Thrace) stremma/stremmata Topografiki Ypiresia Ypourgeiou Georgias (Department of Cadastral Register of the Ministry of Agriculture) US State Department Files, National Archives, Washington, DC

Note on the Calendar AS Greece adopted the Gregorian calendar on 1 March 1923, the chronology of most events is reported in this book according to this calendar. The Julian calendar previously in force differs from the Gregorian one by thirteen days; for example 1 March 1923 (Gregorian) was 16 February 1923 (Julian). For earlier events of that date, the chronology is reported as it was originally cited or commonly referred to in the sources. On some occasions, however, both dates are listed. Where New Calendar dates for laws are given in the form 17/24 July 1924, the law was passed in Parliament on 17 July and was published in the government Gazette on 24 July.

Introduction The quite often violent, mass uprooting and displacement of peoples is by no means a new phenomenon. Indeed, as a preventive measure against possible insurrection and as a strategy for the effective consolidation of political control in general, it is as old as recorded history. It was most probably in the sixteenth century when displaced or expelled peoples were first called refugees. In this first application the term referred to minorities expelled because of religious incompatibility. In the eighteenth century the term was used to describe expelled political dissidents.¹ With the advent of nationalism in the nineteenth century, governments had a considerable interest in ‘bonding together the disparate sections of restless peoples’ and the most effective way of achieving this was to ‘unite them against outsiders’. In the period from 1880 to 1914 the greatest ever mass migrations took place, within and between states. All these underlined the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’.² But whatever the grounds propounded for displacements, whether creed, politics, language or tradition, at the dawning of the twentieth century the common underlying motive for the expulsion of certain groups of citizens came to be conceived in terms of the security that homogeneity of a polity provides for the state. This idea was an integral part of the doctrine of nationalism in Western Europe. As Claude has pointed out, ‘Nationalism, while consolidating its dominant position in Western Europe and beginning its global sweep, injected into politics a profoundly significant idea: the principle that national and state boundaries should coincide—i.e. that the state should be nationally homogeneous, and the nation should be politically united.’³ Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a proposal by the Ottomans for a mutual exchange of populations with Bulgaria was flatly rejected.⁴ But by the ¹ Aristide R. Zolberg, Astri Suhrke, and Sergio Aguayo, ‘International Factors in the Formation of Refugee Movements’, International Migration Review, 20/2 (summer 1986), 151–69 (161–3); H. B. Talal and S. A. Khan, Refugees: The Dynamics of Displacement (London, 1986), 85. ² E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), 91. ³ Inis L. Claude, Jr., National Minorities: An International Problem (Cambridge, 1955), 1. ⁴ Mark Mazower, The Balkans (London, 2000), 105.

2

Introduction

early twentieth century, with the triumph of nationalism, the flight, and finally the organized ‘exchange of populations’ became the distinguishing feature in the disintegration of the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman empires and the consolidation of national states.⁵ Hosts of civilians were forced to flee before the hostilities, in Europe, the Balkans and Asia Minor, and the displacement of populations became integral to the collapse of the old empires and the ensuing fervour of emerging national states.⁶ The First World War brought about the disintegration of autocratic regimes in Europe and paved the way for the establishment of constitutional governments and the consolidation of nationalism. On the basis of the Fourteen Points proposed by Woodrow Wilson for a just peace settlement at the termination of the First World War, a mono-national formula was devised for the creation of the thirty new nation-states which issued from the collapse of the three multi-ethnic empires of the Russians, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans. As effective a solution as it was, the adoption of this formula proved by no means to be a panacea. The treaties signed on the conclusion of the war proved incapable of realizing the right to self-determination for each and every national group. Although the Versailles Treaties did provide over two-thirds of the 85 million peoples affected with a ‘state of their own’, about 25 million people were rendered ‘unclassifiable’ by such lines as were drawn.⁷ These constituted the ‘minorities’ who had to be integrated or assimilated into the newly created states. In the Balkans, the concept of ‘ethnicity’ on which nationalism was developed was not so easily definable, as ethnicity overlaps with such concepts as race, class, religion, and language. These were so variously intertwined in the ethnic mosaic of the Ottoman Empire that it was never quite clear where to draw the line. Apart from having shared a common fate of coexistence in subjugation for generations, many of the Christian Ottoman subjects also had languages, religions, traditions, and other cultural traits in common—but to varying degrees and in a variety of combinations. Consequently, the transformations into nation-states aspired to proved to be no simple matter of ‘reshuffling’ and ‘redistributing’ ⁵ Mark Mazower, The Balkans (London, 2000), 105. ⁶ Aristide R. Zolberg, ‘The Formation of New States as a Refugee-Generating Process’, in The Global Refugee Problem: U.S. and World Response. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 467 (May 1983), 24–38. ⁷ Joseph B. Schechtman, European Population Transfers 1939–1945, (New York, 1946), 3–6; Eugene. M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–1947 (New York, 1948), 18–23.

Introduction

3

the heterogeneous multitudes into homogeneous entities. The cultivation of a common national consciousness became paramount to this process of re-piecing the diverse fragments into a number of homogeneous national states sharing a stable coexistence. Indeed, many of the peoples, and in particular those inhabiting Macedonia, identified themselves more readily ‘regionally’ than ‘ethnically’. For the Greek element in the region it was relatively easier to identify themselves ethnically, since the Greek Orthodox Church had provided them with a mainstay tradition through the long centuries of Ottoman suzerainty. But for most of the simple, illiterate peasant populations, who comprised the majority and were primarily concerned with the daily struggle for survival and acquiesced in their hardships, the concept of nationality and self-determination was incomprehensible. Their reluctant or coerced participation in national conflicts in the region was encouraged rather by the prospect of ownership of the lands on which they had toiled for generations. After the First World War, in the context of liberal theory, the nationstate aimed at consolidating majoritarian ethnic rule through assimilation of minorities while being expected to provide guarantees of the fundamental rights of the individual. But this was a difficult and unrealistic goal, as national identities had already developed in Europe’s post-imperial states. Understandably, the minorities were reluctant to renounce their own cultures for by so doing they relinquished their right to self-determination. On the other hand, the nation-states were bent on achieving national homogeneity, to which end the minorities were an encumbrance. By hosting ‘minorities’, a nation-state defeats its own aspirations of achieving homogeneity. The only option was assimilation into the ideology of the nation-state. Similar means of conversion, assimilation, and even coercion were employed by all states to the same end, with the collapsing empires resorting to extreme measures, often culminating in unprecedented atrocities.⁸ The tensions generated by this conflict of interests characterized interwar European politics and the pursuit of ‘national purification’ led to discrimination or to population transfers.⁹ In Anatolia the Turks resorted to the expulsion of minorities and, wherever this was not expedient, as was ⁸ Mark Mazower, Dark Continent (London, 1998), 51–63. ⁹ As Hannah Arendt remarked after the war and owing to the incompatibility between the nation-state formula and the social realities in the geographical area of the multi-ethnic empires being dismantled, two victim groups emerged: the minorities, and the refugees and stateless. H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, rev. edn. (New York, 1973), 268, 290.

4

Introduction

the case with the Armenians and the Pontics, to mass extermination.¹⁰ After the Asia Minor catastrophe, Greece adopted the solution of exchanging minorities. The cost in human lives of the attempt to create homogeneous polities from the multifarious assortment of peoples occupying Central and Eastern Europe showed it to be little short of delusion with deplorably horrendous results.¹¹ The immediate by-product of the dissolution of the three multinational empires was a refugee problem of unprecedented proportions, and the resettlement of refugees in the Balkans became part of the nationbuilding process. The successful integration of refugees became a target of state policies designed by modernizing political élites, and the Balkan states aspired to establishing themselves as socially functional and ethnically homogeneous polities. In Turkey the Muslim refugees from Greece were established mainly in western Anatolia (Asia Minor) and helped the government to turn the former ‘infidel’ Smyrna, a cosmopolitan city where the Greeks outnumbered any other ethnic group, into a Turkish port. In Bulgaria more than half of the refugees were settled in the district of Burgas, on the Black Sea coast, where the majority of the communities were peopled by Greeks, thus precipitating the departure of the latter. The remainder were established in villages in the north and north-eastern regions, where the departure of the former Turkish inhabitants made their accommodation easier, in the Struma valley, and the basins in southern central Bulgaria.¹² In Greece, half of the refugees were established as agriculturalists in the northern regions, Macedonia, Epirus, and western Thrace. Refugee resettlement was linked to the security problems of the nation-states, and governments, under the pressures created by the presence of the refugees, tried to balance political, economic, and national security with humanitarian aims. Therefore one of the most durable assumptions about the implementation of the aims of the liberal policy-makers was that solutions had to be found by establishing viable ¹⁰ With regard to the image of a homogeneous society (with the exception of the Kurds) projected today by the National Turkish State, it should be mentioned that it was the result of the compulsory exchange of all Greeks from Asia Minor and eastern Thrace in 1923, and the uprooting of the Greek minority of Constantinople and of the islands of Imbros and Tenedos following the violent anti-Greek campaign in 1955. ¹¹ E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘The End of Empires’, in Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (eds.), After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building (Oxford, 1997), 12–16; Mazower, Dark Continent, 40–2. ¹² Sir John Hope Simpson, Refugees: Preliminary Report of a Survey (issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs), July 1938, pp. 14–16.

Introduction

5

rural communities along the national borders, in relatively thinly populated areas and in parts where linguistic or religious minorities had remained. For Greek policy-makers the concentration of refugees in urban centres was politically unsettling, particularly in the revolutionary climate of the post-war era, while capital accumulation and modernization were achievable within a liberal democratic framework by giving priority to agriculture over industry.¹³ Refugee integration was on a par with the nation-building process including the territorial and cultural integration of the ‘New Lands’¹⁴ subsumed under the sovereignty of the Greek state. The Greek government sought to integrate the refugees within its polity on the basis of common religion, language, and national consciousness. The nature of this landmark in the history of the region and its consequences for the ethnological composition of the population, and the political, social, demographic, and economic implications, is the subject of this book. It focuses mainly on the settlement of refugees in rural areas of Greek Macedonia and on the role of the Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC), which, under the auspices of the League of Nations, supervised the project of refugee resettlement. Rural settlements, most of which were established in Macedonia, absorbed the greatest part of the funds and energy provided for the economic and social integration of the refugees in Greece. The abrupt disruption of life and activity of the Greek communities in the Ottoman provinces where Hellenism had existed over a period of three millennia, despite the turbulent history of the area, involved the first compulsory exchange of ‘minority’ populations negotiated, ratified, and supervised by an international body, the League of Nations. The uprooting of the Ottoman Greeks and their resettlement particularly in the northern provinces of the Greek state merits special attention for a number of reasons: 1. It provides a pivotal case study of resettlement and integration in both rural and urban districts. 2. It affords insights into the ways by which an international organization attempted and managed to solve successfully an extremely critical situation which had been created in the Balkans as a result ¹³ M. Mazower, ‘The Refugees, the Economic Crisis and the Collapse of Venizelist Hegemony, 1929–1932’, DKMS, 9 (1992), 119–20. ¹⁴ The term ‘New Lands’ has been widely used by historians in order to refer to the provinces acquired by Greece after the Balkan Wars.

6

Introduction of conflicting nationalisms. Over 2 million people were involved in the exchange of populations which took place in the 1920s in the Balkans, and almost a million and a half destitute refugees (approximately a quarter of Greece’s total population) had to be settled and assimilated by the Greek state. 3. It provides an example of the way in which the Greek state, which had not yet managed to integrate its New Lands and assimilate their people, with international assistance coped with the challenge of absorbing into the economically disrupted society of Macedonia almost 800,000 destitute refugees. 4. Understanding social life in areas of rural Macedonia inhabited by non-Greek-speaking populations, such as Slavophones and Vlach-speakers, during the process of resettlement could help us to appreciate the choices of these populations pertaining to the issue of national identity during this period.

The relevance to the present of the events presented in this study is highlighted by the critical situation of displaced people in the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and many other areas of the world today, as well as by the Cyprus Question, which has lasted some thirty years. The present study draws heavily on unpublished archival material, makes use of the existing literature, and attempts to provide answers to a number of questions: Was the resettlement scheme well thought out, or was it a spontaneous solution to the immediate problems of the Asia Minor catastrophe? Was it a universal scheme whose steps were followed as planned or was it adapted to meet situations as they arose? Was the Greek state able to formulate a uniform resettlement policy in rural Macedonia as regards the integration of the refugee population in the existing social structure? In other words, was the policy of each successive inter-war government acting in accordance with a preconceived initial plan or was it dictated by prevailing circumstances? What was the role of the RSC in the formulation of the resettlement policy in Macedonia? Were the problems and the shortcomings of the resettlement project in rural Macedonia due to the socio-economic backwardness of the host region, or to the inertia of the authorities responsible and to inconsistencies within the resettlement programme itself ? Which forces within Macedonian society shaped the ideologies and political attitudes (or choices) of the peasantry, both refugee and native, in the inter-War period? Did these forces lead to political convergence or polarization? In Macedonia, however, the refugee question during the inter-War period was inextricably interwoven with national and social questions in

Introduction

7

the Balkans. The existing relationships between the Balkan states, their attitudes towards their ethnic minorities, as well as the policies of the League of Nations, and in particular of Britain, in the broader Balkan region are therefore presented briefly in order to achieve an understanding of the resettlement policy. The chronological parameters of this work, 1922–30, were chosen for both substantive and practical reasons. In the first place, these dates coincide with the period when the RSC operated in Greece and, more importantly, these are the years which constitute a clearly distinct period in the history of Macedonia. The year 1922 is an obvious starting-point, as it was then that consecutive waves of refugees began to flood the region. The RSC was confronted with the formidable task of carrying out a resettlement programme unprecedented in both kind and magnitude in a period and region of the world characterized by demographic reshuffling, social dislocation, and economic disruption. By 1930 the constitutional framework in which the resettlement in rural Macedonia was effected and the basic infrastructure for major works in the region had been established. Although the RSC was liquidated in 1930, it left much of its proposed task unfinished, with a condition that the Greek government would undertake its completion. For this reason, coupled with the fact that there were major changes in the political scene of Greece and in the world economy, it has sometimes been necessary to refer to events beyond 1930.

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PART I THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The Receiving Region and the Origins of the Greek Refugee Problem

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1 Macedonia 1870–1922 THE REGIONAL CONTEXT The area denoted by the term Macedonia has changed in both meaning and use at different periods. Ethnic claims coupled with historical, political, economic, and diplomatic considerations have rendered its exact delineation impossible. In modern times it has never been a definite geographical unit and has never formed an ethnic, linguistic, or administrative entity. The term, as it is used today, was introduced by European travellers and diplomats in the nineteenth century. The frontiers variously assigned to describe Macedonia referred to Lakes Ochrid and Prespa in the west, the Shar and Rhodope mountains to the north, the river Nestos (Mesta) to the east, and the Aegean Sea, Mount Olympus and the Pindus range to the south.¹ The difficulty of delineating the boundaries of the region is closely related to the creation of the ‘Macedonian Question’ and is one of its dimensions. At the beginning of the twentieth century, when the ‘Macedonian Question’ began to attract the serious concern of the European Powers, the term denoted the three Ottoman administrative units (vilayets) with Salonica, Monastir, and Skopje (Kosovo) as their seats of government. These comprised the central and largest part of ¹ In this introductory chapter the term ‘Macedonia’ denotes the wider geographical area which consisted of the three Ottoman vilayets of Salonica, Monastir, and Kosovo; it does not refer to any political, ethnic, cultural or state unit. For the geographical definition of Macedonia see R. H. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics: A Review of the Ethnographic Cartography of Macedonia (Liverpool, 1951); Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle in Macedonia: 1897–1913 (Thessaloniki, 1966), 3. In all other chapters of this book the term Macedonia refers strictly to the area assigned to Greece according to the Treaty of Bucharest (Aug. 1913), by which the three Ottoman vilayets or provinces of Salonica, Monastir, and Kosovo were partitioned among the three Balkan states. The part of Ottoman Macedonia which came into Greek possession included most of the vilayets of Salonica and Monastir, with the exception of some provinces which today lie within the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Bulgarian Macedonia.

12

The Historical Background

Turkey in Europe as it existed before the territorial changes of 1912–13.² However, this definition of the term was accepted only by the Europeans. The Turks did not use it to designate the region, while for the Balkan peoples, even the geographical definition was—and is still—an issue that remains unsettled.³ The area encompassed within the three Ottoman provinces is not a ‘natural’ region in the generally accepted sense of the term, because of the diversity of altitude and climate found within it.⁴ Moreover, is characterized by a very fragmented relief with certain features that are repeated constantly. The region is an agglomeration of mountain ranges, lakes, and river basins. Barren mountains and wooded areas are interspersed with plateaux of farming land but the greater part of the area consists of mountains which form the northern, eastern, and western rims. They seldom rise above 6,500 ft, and are usually under 2,500 ft. While much of the Macedonian mountain terrain is craggy and steep, it also includes pasture land used by shepherds and their flocks in winter months. In the eastern part, a mountain range (Mt Falakron and Mt Menoikion) forming an extension of the Rhodope traverses the area, while in the south-west of the Drama valley is Mt Pangaion, known from ancient times for its mineral resources (gold). In the north and central part is Mt Kerkini (Belles) which goes southwards and merges into Mt Kroussia, Mt Vertiskos and Mt Kerdylion. North-west of the Axios is Mt Paikon in the eparchy of Paionia. The region is dotted with lakes, crossed by rivers and streams, and intersected by gorges. From west to east four wide but unnavigable rivers, the Haliakmon (Vistritsa), the Axios (Vardar), the Strymon (Kara- Shu/Struma), and the Nestos (Mesta), with their many tributaries, flow through the region. The valleys of these rivers contain a large number of enclosed plains. Large tracts of land in low-lying areas around the lakes and rivers, but even in semi-mountainous regions, were prone to seasonal flooding due to climatic and topographical conditions. Permanent marshes surrounded the lake of Yiannitsa, which was the most extensive ² It is worth mentioning here that the territory encompassed by the three Ottoman vilayets did not coincide with the ancient Greek kingdom of the Macedonians, which extended to the southern part of the Ottoman Macedonia and never as far north as Skopje, which in ancient times was under the control of the Dardans, a people of Illyrian descent and hostile to the Macedonians. See M. B. Sakellariou, ‘Introduction’ in M. B. Sakellariou (ed.), Macedonia: 4000 Years of Greek History and Civilization (Athens, 1988), 10–11; also pp. 44–63. ³ E. Barker, Macedonia: Its Place in Balkan Power Politics, Royal Institute of International Affairs (London, 1950), 9–10; E. Kofos, Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia (Thessaloniki, 1964), 1–4. ⁴ Wilkinson, Maps and Politics, 1–3.

Macedonia

13

marshland in the valley of the Axios, and the lakes of Agios Vasileios, Lantsa, and Mavrovon in central Macedonia. In the Serres valley, extensive marshlands around Lake Tachinos or Achinos were permanent breeding-grounds for mosquitoes. Local marshes were also to be found in Chalkidiki and even in the mountainous region of Florina and around the lake of Kastoria.⁵ The river basins provide routes leading from Central Europe to the Eastern Mediterranean. The most important of these rivers, the Axios (Vardar), makes its way down to the Aegean Sea from north to south through a deep and fertile valley, cutting the area in two. At its delta on the coast of the Aegean Sea lies Salonica, the largest city and commercial centre, and the most important harbour of the whole region. The plain of Salonica is over 40 miles long from east to west and 20 miles deep from north to south, and is very fertile. The plains of the Strymon and Nestos in the eastern part of the area are also agriculturally productive, especially suitable for growing tobacco, and contain Serres, an important commercial and administrative centre, Drama, and the city of Kavala, the other principal harbour of Macedonia. These two natural harbours, Salonica and Kavala, provide access to the interior of the peninsula for most commercial and military operations. Its western part, where the largest towns were Florina, Kastoria, Kozani, and Grevena, is hemmed in by high mountains: The Pindus and Grammos in the west, Bernon (Vitsi), Barnus (Peristeri), and Boras (Kaimaktsalan) in the north, Olympus, Kambounia, and Chassia in the south, and Bermion in the east. In the western part of this region is the upper part of the basin of the Haliakmon river, which communicates with the plain of Viglista in Albania and is the easiest land route into Greece from the north-west. The rest of the region is predominantly mountainous, interspersed with narrow valleys. Internal communication within Macedonia was difficult because of the structure of the relief. As Sivignon puts it, ‘Except for short distances, the valleys are never very wide; gorges are frequently encountered, which the road must avoid at the cost of long detours. The mountain massifs frequently terminate in steep escarpments, so much so that it is necessary to skirt them, because it is impossible to go over them easily.’⁶ The communications infrastructure was generally limited to rough tracks, which—since they were narrow, rock-strewn, and often very steep in mountainous areas, and had a tendency to turn into muddy morasses ⁵ M. Sivignon, ‘The Geographical Setting of Macedonia’, in M. Sakellariou, Macedonia: 4000 Years of Greek History and Civilization (Athens, 1988), 12–26. ⁶ Ibid. 14.

14

The Historical Background

in the plains—were in the main suitable only for pack-animals. The arterial routes connecting the area’s urban centres varied considerably in quality; none was good along its whole length, few were good for any significant distance, and many of even the main routes were poor from start to finish. Several key routes radiated outwards from Salonica, the regional capital; there were two important cross roads in the Strymon valley; and to the east, a further main road led from Kavala, to Nevrokop via Drama. The region acquired a rail network in the 1890s, when Western firms were attracted to the area by the major concessions on offer there from the Ottoman authorities. The lines served economic as well as military interests, and all three radiated out of Salonica: to Monastir in the west, Nish-Belgrade and Central Europe to the north, and Constantinople to the east.⁷ In the plain of Salonica the climate is the regular Mediterranean type, hot and dry in summer and temperate in winter. In spring and autumn the rains are heavy. The enclosed plains of Serres and Kavala have a similar climate. The mountains in eastern Macedonia have a Central European climate: deep snow in winter and a relatively temperate summer. Western Macedonia has a rather modified Mediterranean climate, being cold and with snow in winter, paricularly in the uplands, and not so dry as in the plain of Salonica in summer.⁸ Macedonia is situated at the crossroads of the Balkan peninsula and occupies a most important economic and strategic position in south-eastern Europe. Through it cross two great routes of communication: the west to east route from the Adriatic Sea to Constantinople—in ancient times the Via Egnatia—and the north to south route which, through the Morava and Vardar valleys, connects Central Europe with Salonica, the gateway to the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean. The Great Powers had been interested indeed in these key trade routes between Europe and the Middle East since the eighteenth century, when holding sway in the Vardar valley was crucial for a state’s commercial and political interests, since the only alternative to the Macedonian route available to Central European merchants was to cross the Balkan mountain ranges.⁹ ⁷ Macedonia, Handbooks issued by the Foreign Office [UK], 21 (London, 1920), 40–50; B. C. Gounaris, Steam over Macedonia, 1870–1912: Socioeconomic Change and the Railway Factor (New York, 1993), 42–58. ⁸ Macedonia, Handbooks, 1–10. ⁹ Duncan Perry, The Politics of Terror (London, 1988), 9–11; Barker, Macedonia, 9–10; Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804–1999 (New York, 2000), 156.

Macedonia

15

THE ECONOMY: A BRIEF ACCOUNT In the late nineteenth century Macedonia possessed extensive underdeveloped agricultural and mineral resources. All the natural conditions favourable for the development of an agricultural economy could be found there. There were fertile valleys and basins with an abundant water supply and a temperate climate suitable for the cultivation of a wide variety of crops and fruit. The region also had extensive areas of pasture and woodland. Under Ottoman rule this natural wealth was exploited to a limited extent; only one-tenth of the potential agricultural land was systematically cultivated. The land tenure system and the nature of the subsistence agriculture limited the commercial exploitation of these natural advantages and delayed the introduction of a cash crop economy.¹⁰ At the beginning of the twentieth century the large mineral deposits in Macedonia attracted the attention of Western mining companies willing to invest in their exploitation. The most important minerals which had been discovered, and in some cases exploited, were chrome, antimony, asbestos, marble, gold, silver, and slate. Although agreements between the companies and the authorities had been signed and concessions granted, the very high extraction expenses due to technical deficiencies, the lack of a properly developed system of communications and transport, and heavy taxes and dues imposed by the authorities, had in many cases led to the temporary or complete abandonment of their exploitation.¹¹ The economy of Macedonia was heavily dependent on revenues from agricultural exports. In the late nineteenth century and until the Balkan Wars (1912–13) economic development followed an uncertain course. When agricultural returns declined, the economy suffered greatly. The main agricultural exports were cereals, tobacco, opium, cotton, and silk-cocoons. The majority of the population was engaged in agriculture. Manufacturing, which mainly consisted of small factories and artisan workshops, was little developed. During the second half of the nineteenth century Macedonia, particularly the southern regions, was integrated into the world market, because of the construction of railways and the improvement of port facilities. ¹⁰ Wilkinson, Maps and Politics, 1–6; M. I. Newbigin, Southern Europe, London 1932, pp. 286–293; Gounaris, Steam, 15–24. ¹¹ Macedonia, Handbooks, 69–75; G. N. Kofinas, Ta oikonomika tis Makedonias (The Economy of Macedonia) (Athens, 1914), 179.

16

The Historical Background

Commercial links were established between Macedonia, other Ottoman provinces, and a large number of European economic centres. The main problem for the modernization of agriculture was the system of land tenure. Approximately one-half of the arable land in Macedonia was divided into chiftliks or freehold estates, held in virtual perpetuity mainly by Muslim landlords, although at the turn of the century Greek landowners also possessed large estates in the kazas (provinces) of Serres, Drama, and Salonica.¹² Agriculture on these estates was diversified, with wheat, barley, maize, and cotton being the main crops raised. Cultivation of the chiftliks was left to Christian sharecroppers or tenants, who constituted approximately 85 per cent of the total rural population.¹³ Tenants who held their plot for a year on a precarious tenure of the metayer type generally worked under very unfavourable conditions. This system did not encourage the growth of agricultural exports because the absentee proprietors of the large estates lacked both the will and the knowledge to modernize crop cultivation and respond to export opportunities. Free Muslim peasants, Turks and Albanians, possessed small holdings, accounting for less than 10 per cent of the agricultural land.¹⁴ There were also Christian peasants who held small plots, mainly in mountainous regions, often called kefalochoria. Both groups were inadequately equipped, used traditional methods of cultivation, and were sometimes more vulnerable to bad harvests than the tenant farmers. In the 1890s the situation for cereal producers worsened. Since prices were constantly falling, they had to resort to loans to meet their debts. Ownership of some estates at the end of the century passed from Muslim landowners to Christian and Jewish merchants who were engaged in moneylending.¹⁵ For the same reasons sharecroppers became landless workers. These changes, however, failed to stimulate the economy as might have been expected, and exports fell. The general depression of world prices of raw materials and agricultural products, from the late 1880s onwards, profoundly affected the Macedonian staples. As exports declined, it became evident that agricultural development could not proceed without the reconstruction of the region’s infrastructure. Measures such as the establishment of ¹² J. A. Lampe and M. R. Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 1550–1950 (Bloomington, Ind., 1982), 135, 283–4; Macedonia, Handbook 21 (1920), 66–8. ¹³ Draganoff (pseud.), Macedonia and Reforms (trans. from the French) (London, 1908); C. Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 1800–1914 (Chicago and London, 1980), 48–53; Perry, Politics of Terror. ¹⁴ Macedonia, Handbook 21 (1920), 67. ¹⁵ Lampe and Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 283.

Macedonia

17

agricultural schools and banks were taken, but these produced only moderate results.¹⁶ In the second half of the century, production, particularly in the regions of eastern Macedonia, shifted to the cultivation of more costeffective industrial crops, mainly tobacco. However, despite the commercialization and the improvement of the means for the transportation of agricultural products from the hinterland to the main ports and to European markets, exports either declined or remained stable. Surplus crops were consumed in the local urban centres. The failure to register any marked economic progress derived from a variety of causes: merchant or foreign capital was not applied to agriculture. Foreign investors in the Ottoman Empire were interested rather in large-scale infrastructure works, such as railway construction. European banks were interested in expanding commercial activities and were reluctant to put capital into the modernization of chiftlik cultivation or to encourage peasant sharecroppers to buy adequate smallholdings and shift to cash crops. The methods of cultivation had remained the same. The division of the land of the chiftliks into a series of non-consolidated plots of 5–10 hectares, cultivated by tenants who used primitive wooden ploughs, retarded development. The limited contribution of the agricultural banks to the modernization of agriculture was due to the corruption which characterized every sector of the Ottoman economy. Furthermore, the largest proportion of their income went on administrative expenditure instead of financing farmers. Loans were not available in the hinterland of Macedonia where they were really required. The obligation of the Ottoman state to pay excessive railway guarantees to the European powers necessitated the heavy taxation of farmers and caused a negative balance of payments in the Macedonian vilayets, even when public revenue was increasing.¹⁷ Christian peasants had little incentive to expand the cultivated area around their villages. The harsh conditions under which they worked the land, abuses by tax-collectors to which they were often exposed, the lack of credit facilities at a reasonable rate of interest, and public insecurity could not guarantee that any additional production was likely to improve their situation. Thus peasants, mainly from the western regions, started to emigrate to other Balkan countries and to the United States after 1890, and particularly after 1903. Emigration to the USA was the consequence not only of economic destitution but also of political upheaval in the Macedonian vilayets. The Ilinden rising in 1903 and the reprisals taken ¹⁶ Gounaris, Steam, 87–104.

¹⁷ Ibid. 118–30, 295–300.

18

The Historical Background

by the Turkish authorities resulted in the largest emigration movement to the West. According to the ‘American Commission General of Immigration’ the number of Ottoman subjects from the European Turkish provinces who arrived in the USA in 1903 was 1,529, and in 1904 4,344 persons.¹⁸ The local economy worked along simple lines: while representatives of Salonica-based traders purchased surplus produce from the peasants, small traders sold them manufactured goods and imported foodstuffs (rice, flour, coffee, and sugar). Local markets and fairs were held regularly, the main ones being in Serres, Kozani, and Prilip; and trade in the region’s towns and cities was firmly centred on local produce. Finally, several inland centres—such as Monastir, Skopje, and Kozani—acquired a significance on a par with that of the region’s ports, thanks to being advantageously positioned on important routes. These centres were of more than local significance and dealt with goods other than local produce.¹⁹ Growth was concentrated in traditional enterprises, such as flour and textile mills in the cities and craft workshops in towns. Textile industrialization occured in the Macedonian provinces—most prominently in the town of Naoussa—during the last decades of Ottoman rule. Although raw materials for industry, such as cotton, were produced in Macedonia, the producers could not respond to the local demand and most of these materials were imported, particularly from 1897 to 1910, when, after a series of below average harvests, the situation deteriorated.²⁰ Industrialization depended on foreign technology, fuel, and chemicals, and even on imported raw materials. Thus, although from 1888 to 1912 the establishment of banking institutions and railway construction supported manufacturing, its development remained limited. On the other hand, the improvement in the transport system and the absence of protectionist duties increased the imports of European manufactured goods and altered the balance of trade.²¹ ¹⁸ K. H. Karpat, ‘The Ottoman Emigration to America’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 17 (1985), 196; Lampe and Jackson, Balkan Economic History, 284, estimate that the total number of emigrants to the USA from 1890 to 1912 exceeded 10% of the population remaining in Macedonia by 1912. See also A. M. Andreadis (ed.), I Elliniki Metanastevsis (Greek Migration), Frontistirion Dimosias Economias kai Statistikis, (Seminar in Public Finances and Statistics), 12 (Athens, 1917), 321–58, for the migration of Slavophones from Giannitsa, Edessa, Kozani, and Anasselitsa; Kofinas, Ta oikonomika, 214, remarks that peasants from eastern Macedonia did not migrate because most were involved in the cultivation of tobacco and managed to earn their living because of its high price. ¹⁹ Macedonia, Handbooks, 78–9. ²⁰ Kofinas, Ta oikonomika, 174–5. During this period a shift from cotton to tobacco cultivation in the serres region made more uncertain cotton supplies produced locally. ²¹ Fikret Adanir, ‘The Macedonian Question: The Socio-Economic Reality and Problems of its Historiographic Interpretation’, International Journal of Turkish Studies,

Macedonia

19

Macedonia before the Balkan Wars had undergone some fundamental changes, and the economy had entered a ‘transitional period’. Improvement of the credit system, the establishment of agricultural banks in all important towns, construction of railways, the commercialization of agriculture, and urbanization were signs of change. Weak industrial development, however, and the dependence of the economy on agricultural exports, indicated that the region was destined to remain on the periphery for a considerable period of time.²² Moreover, economic growth was slowed down during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by the presence of bands of Greek and Bulgarian guerrilla groups in the area.

THE PEOPLES OF THE MACEDONIAN VIL AYETS By the nineteenth century and the advent of nationalism Macedonia had a remarkably mixed population in terms of religion, language, and culture. The region had been settled in medieval and early modern times by successive waves of invaders and migrants. As a result of centuries under the rule of the theocratic Ottoman Empire, local communities of different ethnic origin and religion had intermingled. At least five ethnic groups lived side by side and created a complex linguistic, cultural, and religious structure. Moreover, there were profound social and ideological differences within each ethnic community, which only served to make a situation complex by ethnic diversity even more complicated. In the cities and towns miltilingualism was undoubtedly the norm, but even peasants were able to use more than one language to communicate with members of different linguistic groups residing in the same locality. As Cowan remarks, ‘Individuals needed to know several languages not only to communicate with members of other communities, with whom contact was in many cases frequent and multifarious, but also to move between different domains of social life.’²³ 3 (1984–5), 55–6; Roger Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800–1914 (London and New York, 1981), 192. ²² Cyril E. Black, The Dynamics of Modernization (New York, 1966), 18; Adanir, ‘Macedonian Question’, 67–92. ²³ Jane K. Cowan, ‘Idioms of Belonging: Polyglot Articulations of Local Identity in a Greek Macedonian Town’, in P. Mackridge and E. Yannakakis (eds.), Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford and New York, 1997), 156.

20

The Historical Background

It is very difficult to estimate the number of the population living in the Macedonian vilayets. Most statistics are biased and unreliable. According to Ottoman statistics, which are considered to be closer to reality than the ones concocted by the various Balkan states, 2,505,503 people lived in Macedonia in 1895. This figure increased to 2,911,700 by 1904, but fell to 2,455,325 in 1906.²⁴ Much more difficult to estimate is the size of the various ethnic groups who comprised the mosaic of the Macedonian population. The credibility of the available statistics pertaining to the proportion of the different linguistic or ethnic groups of the region at the beginning of the twentieth century has continually perturbed historians because all interested Balkan states frequently used quantitative information to support their claims to Macedonian lands.²⁵ The Muslim Turks, who invaded the region in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, settled in Macedonia from Central Asia to dilute the Christian population and were to be found in every district, but mainly in the cities and along the river valleys and important routes. In the nineteenth century their number was augmented by their displaced co-religionists who had migrated from Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Serbia, regions effectively lost by the Ottomans to the newly established Christian states. The Turks resided in most towns and were mainly concentrated in three districts, in eastern Macedonia between the Nestos (Mesta) river and Drama, in the valley of the Strymon, and in the plain of Ostrovo and Sari Ghiol (Eordaia). In western Macedonia they lived mainly in the south-eastern part (in the Pelagonia plain). They were divided into two classes: the landlords, who, in many cases, were also government officials, and the peasants. They were also some artisans, but the majority were subsistence farmers, as were most of the Christians. Not all Muslims in Ottoman Macedonia were ethnic Turks. There were Muslim Albanians, who belonged to the Gheg branch, and lived in the Skopje area along the marches bordering the Albanian highlands. Members of another Albanian branch, the Tosks, lived in the area of the plain of Monastir and in the upper Vistritsa valley. Approximately one-sixth of the Tosks adhered to the Ecumenical Patriarchate; the rest were Muslims. Also to be found in western Macedonia, in a cluster of ²⁴ Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, ii (Cambridge, 1977), 208. ²⁵ For a comprehensive exposition of this problem see the classic work of H. R. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics. Also M. Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou, ‘Symboli stin erevna gia tin ethnologiki katastasi tis Makedonias prin apo tous Balkanikous Polemous’ (A Contribution to Research into the Ethnological Situation in Macedonia before the Balkan Wars), Dodoni, 20/1 (1994), 329–62.

Macedonia

21

villages near Anasselitsa, were Muslim converts, known as Valaades, who spoke Greek and little Turkish. In the 1880s the Muslims in Macedonia made up approximately 45 per cent of the total population.²⁶ The Christian inhabitants of Macedonia were Greeks, Vlachs, and Slavs (the Slavs being described as either Serbs or Bulgars). The Greeks inhabited mostly the towns and coastal areas and were concentrated in the major trading centres of Macedonia, that is, the cities of Thessaloniki, Kavala, Serres, Kastoria, and Monastir. They were also to be found in compact groups in southern Macedonia as well as in the country west of Thessaloniki as far north as Monastir. The rural Greek population lived mostly in the region north of the Chassia mountains, in Chalkidiki— which was almost entirely Greek—in the country west and south of Lake (T)achinos, in the plains of Serres and Drama, and in the valley of the Haliakmon. Thus the so-called Greek-speaking zone of Macedonia roughly extended to the areas south of Kastoria, Edessa (Vodena), Giannitsa, Kilkis, Serres, and Drama, from west to east. This zone, however, as well as the Slav-speaking zone stretching north away from this imaginary line, was interspersed with a considerable number of other ethnic communities.²⁷ The Greeks, who formed a large proportion of the population of the most important cities and towns, were engaged in a wide range of occupations, such as commerce, transport, manufacturing production, etc. In the nineteenth century their role in foreign trade was prominent (owing to the networks established through their connections with the Greek diaspora in Western Europe, and on the Black Sea) and, thus, a ‘Greek bourgeoisie was established well before other communities’. During the same period they developed impressive cultural and educational institutions in most urban centres. Just as Greek culture became an essential element in the expansion of Ottoman trade into the Levant and Western Europe, Greek was the lingua franca of both the Orthodox millet and trade in the Levant.²⁸ The Slavs (Serbs and Bulgars) of the Orthodox confession, although culturally and linguistically a people apart, till 1870 adhered to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. They were, for the most part, illiterate peasants ²⁶ K. H. Karpat, Ottoman Population 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, 1985), 136–45. ²⁷ E. Kofos, ‘O Ypodoulos Ellinismos apo to 1833 eos to 1881’ (Subjugated Hellenism from 1833 to 1881), IEE, 13 (1977), 381. ²⁸ R. Clogg, ‘The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire’, in B. Braude and B. Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, i (New York, 1982), 188; C. Issawi, ‘Introduction’, in Issawi (ed.), The Greeks in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 2002), 2–3; Glenny, Balkans, 112.

22

The Historical Background

and lived in most rural areas of the Macedonian vilayets, sometimes in entirely Slav-speaking communities or with other ethnic or religious groups. About the end of the eighteenth century, some Slav peasants began to move to the cities, but only in the late nineteenth century did they migrate there in considerable numbers. There were also some Muslim Slavs, the Pomaks, who were of Bulgarian origin and inhabited the mountainous regions between Serres and Philippopolis in the east. The Slav-speaking population which lived in compact groups in the northern half of Macedonia spoke a vernacular closely related to the Bulgarian language and they were generally regarded as Bulgarians.²⁹ However, until the mid-nineteenth century the illiterate peasants of Macedonia lacked any national consciousness. They identified themselves as Christians, and it was only the common Orthodox Christian heritage and not a particular nationality which drew a line between the non-Muslim Macedonian communities and the ruling Muslim Turks.³⁰ In many parts of central and western Macedonia, Slav, Greek, Turkish and Albanian villages existed harmoniously in the same area. The Vlachs or Koutsovlachs, predominantly a pastoral people speaking a language closely related to Romanian, lived in the Pindus mountains and in the hills near trading centres such as Monastir, Grevena, Kastoria, Koritsa, Moskopol, Veroia, and Edessa. Among them were transhumant shepherds and some settled farmers, while others were merchants and craftsmen settled in the cities of Thessaloniki, Serres, and Monastir. The great majority of the Vlachs were Hellenized and were indistinguishable from Greeks linguistically or otherwise. Nevertheless, since the Vlachs had affinities with the Romanians linguistically and historically, the latter began to advance claims to parts of Macedonia in the late 1860s. The Sarakatsani, Greek-speaking transhumant shepherds who are culturally contrasted with the Koutsovlachs and formed their self-sufficient traditional economy around the grazing of sheep, lived in the ranges of the Pindus mountains, in the district of Kilkis, in the Menoikion and Kerdylion mountains of Serres and in Chalkidiki.³¹ ²⁹ Kofos, Nationalism and Communism, 12. ³⁰ Kemal H. Karpat, ‘Millets and Nationality’, in B. Braude and B. Lewis, Christians and Jews, i, 141–3; H. N. Brailsford, Macedonia: Its Races and their Future (London, 1906), 99; Perry, Politics of Terror, 19–23. ³¹ For the Vlachs see A. J. B. Wace and M. S. Thompson, The Nomads of the Balkans (London, 1972; re-issue of 1914 edn.), and T. J. Winnifrith, The Vlachs: The History of a Balkan People (London, 1987), esp. ch. 2, ‘Vlachs in Greece’, pp. 9–25; B. K. Gounaris and A. I. Koukoudis, ‘Apo tin Pindo os ti Rodopi: Anazitontas tis egkatastaseis kai tin taftotita ton Vlachon’ (From Pindus to Rhodope: Seeking for the settlements and the identity of Vlachs),

23

Macedonia

The Jews lived mainly in the urban centres of Macedonia, and in particular in Thessaloniki, where their forebears had settled following expulsion from Spain in 1492. The majority of Jews in Macedonia, the so-called Sefardim, came from the Iberian peninsula, the Spanishcontrolled provinces in southern Italy, and other regions of SouthWestern Europe. Their other branch, the Ashkenazim, originated from Hungary and the German-speaking countries of Eastern and Central Europe.³² In Thessaloniki, the Jews formed about two-thirds of the population at the beginning of the century. Jews were also to be found, though in smaller numbers, in Monastir, Skopje (Uskup), Kavala, Drama, Serres, Veroia, Kastoria, and Kozani.³³ Their numbers—according to a Jewish source—are shown in the Table 1.1. The Jews lived in specific and clearly delineated neighbourhoods in the Ottoman cities.³⁴ The socio-economic composition of the Jewish communities was mixed. Their ‘aristocracy’ were owners of independent businesses. The rest of the Jews worked in a wide variety of urban occupations; they were artisans, retailers, hawkers, workers, and even stevedores. Social life was organized around the synagogues, while a dense network of economic and family relations determined social behaviour. Table 1.1. Jewish population in Macedonia, 1880–1908 a. Thessalonki, 1880–1908 1880 1885 1890

1895

1900

1905

1908

30,000

60,000

75,000

90,000

30,000

36,000

45,000

b. Other cities, 1908 Kavala Monastir

Serres

Skopje

1,800

1,200

1,300

6,000

Source: Paul Dumont, ‘Jewish Communities in Turkey during the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century in the Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle’ in B. Braudel and B. Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1982), 231–2.

Histor, 10 (Dec. 1997), 91–137. For the Sarakatsani, their moral values and institutions see the classic work of J. K. Campbell, Honour, Family and Patronage (Oxford, 1964). ³² I. K. Hassiotis, Landmarks and Principal Phases in the History of Modern and Contemporary Macedonia (Thessaloniki, 1992), 11. ³³ Jewish settlers came to Kavala from Hungary early in the sixteenth century. The Jews in Drama were from Spain: ibid. ³⁴ In the urban centres of the Ottoman Empire residential segregation applied to all ethno-religious groups, and was not confined to Jews alone. The neighbourhood in which each group resided was called mahalle (in Turkish). See A. Yerolympos, I anoikodomisi tis Thessalonikis (The Rebuilding of Thessaloniki) (Thessaloniki, 1996).

24

The Historical Background

As in all places where the Jews were settled, those resident in Macedonia maintained a strong sense of identity and, therefore, were immune to any nationalistic propaganda, so that they appeared, indeed, to be the only ‘loyal’ subjects of the Sultan in the region, at the turn of the century.³⁵ Finally, the Gypsies constituted a small minority people in Macedonia. Living in the outskirts of towns and the larger villages—in particular in the districts of Florina, Kozani, and Serres—some were travellers constantly on the move, others settled and working as blacksmiths, horsetraders, and pedlars. They were uneducated and without political aspirations or national consciousness. The majority of nomadic Gypsies were Muslims, while the rest were of the Orthodox faith.³⁶ By the end of the nineteenth century, a number of factors made Macedonia a politically sensitive region. Among these were the imminent political and social disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of nationalism among the Balkan peoples, the irredentist claims of the newly established Balkan states on territories outside their borders (and particularly on Macedonian lands inhabited by their unredeemed brethren), and finally Great Power rivalries in the area. All contributed to the emergence of the ‘Macedonian Question’.

NATIONAL AWAKENING Although the Turks did make systematic use of violence towards and massacres of Christian peoples as a means of consolidating their control of the Balkan peninsula, they made no attempt to forcibly convert ³⁵ Paul Dumont, ‘Jewish Communities in Turkey during the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century’, in B. Braude and B. Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1982), 225–35. For the Jewish community in Thessaloniki at the end of the nineteenth century see: J. Nehama, Histoire des Israélites de Salonique, vii (Thessaloniki, 1978); also Vasilis Dimitriadis, Topographia tis Thessalonikis kata tin Tourkokratia (Topography of Thessaloniki during the Turkish Period), Macedonian Studies Society (Thessaloniki, 1983); Rena Molcho, Oi Evraioi tis Thessalonikis 1856–1919 (Jews in Thessaloniki: 1856–1919) (Athens, 2001); for a thorough examination of its demographic composition see pp. 29–52; Paul Dumont, ‘La Structure sociale de la communaute juive de Salonique à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle’, Revue historique, 258/2 (1980), 352–93. For the Jews in Serres see N. Nikolaou, ‘I Evraiki parousia stas Serras’ (The Jewish Presence in Serres), Chronika (Chronicles), 82 (1985). There are references to the Jewish communities in eastern Macedonia (Serres, Drama, and Kavala) in N. Schinas, Odoiporikai simeioseis Makedonias, Epeirou, neas orothetikis grammis kai Thessalias (Travel Notes on Macedonia, Epirus, the new Borderline, and Thessaly) (Athens, 1886). ³⁶ Macedonia, Handbooks, 11–16; Perry, Politics of Terror, 17–24; Sir Charles Eliot, Turkey in Europe, London 1908, pp. 272–379.

Macedonia

25

Christian or Jewish subjects who submitted to Ottoman rule and agreed to pay tribute to Islam. In the context of the millet system they grouped communities according to their faith. Each community had its own leaders and administration to conduct its own affairs, both religious and civil, its own property, and kept its own records.³⁷ Consequently, ethnic groups could preserve their culture and religion while being subject to the Ottoman economic, social, and political system.³⁸ The Sultan regarded all his subjects who professed Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Greek, Slav, Vlach, and Albanian speakers as one millet, the Rum millet. Thus, until the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1871, all Balkan Orthodox Christians were under the spiritual jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople, and were classified by the Ottoman authorities as the ‘Rum millet’, since religious affiliation was the criterion for identity. Two key factors should be noted at this point: the Christians were collectively distinguished within the Ottoman Empire on a religious rather than a national basis;³⁹ and the explanation for the absence of ethnic conflict, until the Balkan states were created following the rise of nationalism, lies not in ‘tolerance’, but in the absence of any concept of nationality among the Sultan’s subjects. After all, Christianity was certainly not considered equal to Islam in any way, and, for their part, the Christians saw themselves as a ‘community of believers’ rather than a group defined by ethnic solidarity.⁴⁰ Linguistic differences within the Orthodox millet acquired political significance only in the nineteenth century when the Bulgarian nationalists ³⁷ The millet system was part of the theocratic framework within which the Sultan ruled the communities of his non-Muslim subjects. Orthodox Christians, Gregorian Armenians, and Jews constituted separate millets in which the Ecumenical Patriarch (for the Orthodox Christians) and the Rabbi (for the Jews) in Constantinople was the political and religious leader of his community. In this system the non-Muslim subjects of the Sultan enjoyed a degree of fiscal and juridical autonomy. ³⁸ J. K. Campbell and P. Sherrard, Modern Greece (London, 1968), 32; G. Arnakis, ‘The Role of Religion’, B. and C. Jelavich (eds.), Balkans in Transition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963), 115–45. ³⁹ P. M. Kitromilides, ‘ “Imagined Communities” and the Origins of the National Question in the Balkans’, in Martin Blinkhorn and Thanos Veremis (eds.), Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality (Athens, 1990), 52. ⁴⁰ As Kitromilides has remarked, ‘we get no sense of ethnic conflict in the Balkans’ before the age of nationalism. ‘Social and personal conflicts abound because of human corruption and sin, but no sense of ethnic opposition or division is detectable. The occasional Greek merchant and money-lender may be on the opposite side from the Bulgarian Orthodox peasant, but then again they may both be on the same side, supplying refuge and comfort to each other’: P. M. Kitromilides, ‘ “Balkan Mentality”: History, Legend, Imagination’, in Septième Congrès International d’études du sud-est Européen: Rapports (Athens, 1994), 441–467 (461); cf. Mazower, Balkans, 15.

26

The Historical Background

sought to challenge the predominance of the Greek language, which had been used as a means of Hellenizing the Orthodox Slav population.⁴¹ Therefore, Slavophone Christians saw division into different millets as an important tool in the creation of formally separate ethnic identities. As early as 1840, the Bulgarians had petitioned the Patriarch to permit the use of their language in the liturgy but had failed to achieve this objective. In 1856, after the promulgation of a Turkish decree (the Hatt-i Humayun) which promised reforms for the Christian subjects of the Empire, the Bulgarians, supported by the Russians, demanded the appointment of Bulgarian bishops and the use of the Bulgarian language in their churches, but to no avail. In an attempt to exert pressure on both Russia and the Patriarch, they even flirted with Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, whose missionaries had penetrated Macedonia, to further complicate the rivalry between the Greek- and Bulgarian-orientated populations. Some Bulgarian parishes declared themselves Uniate. The Greek Patriarch, in view of the danger of this movement, offered concessions, but the Bulgarians now demanded an autocephalous church with jurisdiction over a wide territory in Macedonia. Finally the Sultan, under increasing Bulgarian pressure supported by the Russians, and in an effort to contain Greek nationalistic aspirations, issued a firman establishing the Bulgarian Exarchate in March 1871. The Exarch would have spiritual jurisdiction over most of Bulgaria and districts in Macedonia as far as Veles and Nish and Pirot, regions which were assigned to Serbia. The previously comparatively harmonious coexistence of the various ethnic groups came to an end.⁴² The efforts on the part of Bulgarian nationalists to establish a Bulgarian Exarchate independent of the Patriarchate had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with politics. As Glenny puts it: ‘After the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870 . . . clerical appointments and church finances were controlled by councils in which the laity held a majority . . . But although the church was politically subordinate to the secular leadership of the national awakening, its residual cultural influence ensured that adherence to a particular rite was central to defining one’s national identity.’⁴³ The Sultan, pursuing a policy of divide et impera, permitted communities in Macedonia which had remained under the Greek Patriarchate’s control to join the Exarchate, provided ⁴¹ K. H. Karpat, ‘Millets and Nationality’, 162–7; Sokrates Petmezas, ‘Politikos alytrotismos kai ethniki enopoiisi stin Ellada’ (Political Ireddentism and National Unification in Greece), Histor, 2 (Sep. 1990), 95–107. ⁴² Dakin, Greek Struggle, 11–23; H. J. Psomiades, The Eastern Question: The Last Phase (Thessaloniki, 1968), 15–17. ⁴³ Glenny, Balkans, 114–15.

27

Macedonia

that two-thirds of their inhabitants were in favour. As a result, before 1875 many Slav districts voted for the new church and went over to the Exarchate, although not all identified themselves as Bulgarians. The revenue formerly received by the Greek Patriarchate was diverted to the Bulgarian Church. In many areas under Bulgarian ecclesiastical control, education became an instrument for instilling a Bulgarian national sentiment into the Slav-speaking population. The blow to the promotion of Hellenism was significant. Tension between the Balkan states increased. Bulgarian nationalism was boosted considerably by the establishment of the Bulgarian Exarchate, and throughout the second half of the nineteenth century it was the Bulgarian Church that spearheaded the promotion of Bulgarian national claims in Macedonia. Local Greek bishops fought back by adopting an equally militant nationalist stance; indeed, national struggles in the region were primarily fought over the control of churches and ecclesiastical jurisdictions. ‘Nationalist struggles and ecclesiastical politics in the Balkans became intertwined in an intense, often violent contest over the loyalties of the faithful.’⁴⁴ Serbia, which up to this time had shown little interest in Macedonia, now began to play a more active role. During the 1870s Serbian schools were founded to counter Bulgarian propaganda efforts in the northern sector of Macedonia. In 1886 the establishment of the ‘Society of St Sava’ spread Serbian national propaganda among the Slav-speaking Macedonians. By 1894 this society had established a hundred schools in the vilayet of Kosovo and considerably weakened Greek influence in the region. However, Serbian efforts to stir up nationalistic sentiments among the peasant population were geographically limited, and never achieved the intensity of those of the two other Balkan states. The advent of nationalism destroyed the ‘imagined community’ of Orthodox Christianity which had determined the common identity of the Christian subjects of the Sultan for centuries. The Balkan nation-states set about cultivating a new sense of community to replace this imagined Orthodox community, making highly effective use of religion to promote their national aspirations. Of course, religion could not become an effective tool for forging new national identities until the new nations had nationalized their churches. Thus, while the aspiring nations were differentiated from one another in the first instance on a linguistic basis, the huge psychological and symbolic force of religion/orthodoxy was utilized to consolidate national unity within the new nations thus created.⁴⁵ ⁴⁴ Kitromilides, ‘Imagined Communities’, 56.

⁴⁵ Ibid. 58–9.

28

The Historical Background THE ‘STRUGGLE FOR MACEDONIA’⁴⁶ AND THE BALKAN WARS

During the nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire suffered severe losses of territory as a result of the national awakening of Greeks, Serbians, Romanians, and Bulgarians, who, with the help of the Great Powers, were able to establish their respective national states. By the end of the nineteenth century the European provinces of the once undisputed ruler of the Balkans were located on the periphery of the Empire, and although it was now in the Great Powers’ interests to preserve what remained of the Ottoman Empire, expansionist forces proved too strong to control as they became the epicentre of popular politics in the newly created countries, and the root cause of the fundamental instability of the new Balkan status quo.⁴⁷ The newly awakened national aspirations of the Balkan states, still unsatisfied, seemed to pose a real threat to Turkey’s position in the peninsula. Every state nurtured dreams of territorial expansion. Every state could lay claim to land currently outside its borders, either because of its historical significance to their nation, or because of ‘unredeemed’ brethren settled there. However, irredentist claims on territories outside their borders overlapped, provoking intense rivalry between these states, particularly in Macedonia, where the struggle over territory wrenched from an Ottoman Empire now largely incapable of protecting itself was, in the main, contested by populations tempted into considering themselves members of mutually hostile ‘imagined communities’.⁴⁸ The state of uncertainty in the Balkans was a permanent excuse for the Great Powers to intervene in Turkish domestic affairs. The maltreatment and suppression of the Christian population and the inability of the Porte to introduce and implement reforms provided the apparent justification for these repeated interventions. More generally, the protection of Christian interests enabled the Powers to increase their influence in the Near East and to obtain important political and financial concessions. ⁴⁶ The term ‘Struggle for Macedonia’ or ‘Macedonian Struggle’, first used by Greek historians, refers to the fighting between Bulgarian and Greek bands for the lands and souls of the inhabitants of southern Macedonia in the period 1904–8. For a detailed Greek bibliographic presentation and interpretation see Basil C. Gounaris, ‘Reassessing Ninety Years of Greek Historiography on the “Struggle for Macedonia 1904–1908” ’, in P. Mackridge and E. Yannakakis (eds.), Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford and New York, 1997), 25–37. ⁴⁷ Mazower, Balkans, 90–91. ⁴⁸ Kitromilides, ‘Imagined Communities’, 59.

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The Macedonian Question, therefore, emerged from Ottoman decline, and the rivalry at one level between the Balkan states, and at another between their patrons, the Great Powers. The core of the problem of Balkan conflict lay in the Treaty of Berlin (1878). The Bulgarians were undoubtedly the worst affected by the settlement of this treaty. They saw the dream of a greater Bulgaria, envisaged in the Treaty of San Stefano, fade and die. The Treaty of San Stefano—signed following Russian victory in the Russian–Turkish War of 1877–8—not only declared Bulgaria to be an autonomous nation, but also handed over most of Macedonia to this new nation. However, this treaty so altered the balance of power in the Balkans—among both the Great Powers and the Balkan states—that Britain and Austria-Hungary insisted on a further congress in Berlin to re-draw the settlement.⁴⁹ Bulgarian disappointment following the territorial limitations imposed by the Berlin Treaty was to be the guiding force behind that nation’s regional policy for some time to come. In 1885 the Bulgarians annexed Eastern Rumelia. They were determined that Macedonia should be their next acquisition. The Serbs, for their part, had gained their formal independence under the treaty, but felt bitter because the territories of Bosnia and Hercegovina and the Sanjak of Novi Pazar had been assigned to Austria-Hungary. This decision blocked Serbia’s attempt to claim that region and gain access to the Adriatic Sea. Thus, Serbia had little choice but to look southwards to Macedonian lands which could provide her with an opening to the Aegean Sea. By 1881 Serbian territory extended as far south as Vranje and bordered on the Macedonian lands.⁵⁰ The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the non-Greek nationalities of European Turkey acquire sufficient power to challenge both the secular authority of the Ottoman Empire in military and administrative matters, and the spiritual authority of the Orthodox Patriarchate in both religious and cultural spheres. One should view Greek policy towards Macedonia in the light of the Great Idea; a modern Greek state incorporating the lands of classical, and particularly Byzantine, Hellenism. It should be remembered that the Greek state of 1830 consisted of Rumeli and the Peloponnese alone. As long as the most prosperous and productive areas of the Greek world remained under Ottoman control, Greece would remain poor, backward, and relatively parochial. Since it was also believed that the Greeks of the Ottoman Empire—who were far more numerous than the population of ⁴⁹ B. Jelavich, History of the Balkans, ii (Cambridge, 1983), 7. ⁵⁰ Kofos, Nationalism and Communism, 18–20.

30

The Historical Background

the new kingdom—had a right to be incorporated into the modern Greek polity, the ideological frontiers of this conceptual Greek nation could be seen to extend further than its political borders; indeed, in this light, it could aspire to a geographical area with unspecified boundaries. And despite its economic and political instability—which rendered it incapable of providing effective assistance to revolutionary movements within the Ottoman Empire before 1870—the Greek state expended a great deal of energy on expansionist policies.⁵¹ More importantly, the 1860s witnessed a major ideological shift: language—which had served as the major criterion for assigning identity since the Enlightenment— was replaced by the concept of national sentiments (phronema) or consciousness (syneidesis).⁵² Henceforth, the identity of the inhabitants of Macedonia was determined by Greek sentiments and attachment to Greek national traditions and faith they harboured in their hearts, rather than the language they spoke. Of course, since Greek national identity was then defined in terms of religion, culture, and historical rights rather than language, Greek irredentist ambitions could as easily extend to Macedonia as they did to Crete and the Aegean islands, Thessaly, Epirus, Thrace, and even Asia Minor.⁵³ Macedonia was regarded as part of the unredeemed Greek world, but there was no realistic Greek policy for this area until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Insurrections in 1854 and 1878 started on the initiative of Greek nationalist agents and isolated band leaders who recruited irregulars among the locals and from the Greek kingdom but lacked the support of the latter. The imminent threat from Bulgaria, however, which put forward claims to the regions of both Macedonia and Thrace, particularly after 1870, and the acquisition of Thessaly by Greece in 1881, rapidly made the incorporation of Macedonian lands one of the main issues in Greek political debates.⁵⁴ In 1886 Charilaos Trikoupis, who was not in favour of irredentism, in his speech in the Greek Parliament, pointed out that ‘Greece would never achieve complete ⁵¹ For the evolution of Greek nationalism and its ideological aspects see Elli Skopetea, To Protypo Basileio kai i Megali Idea (The Model Kingdom and the Great Idea) (Athens, 1988); Thanos Veremis, ‘From the National State to Stateless Nation 1821–1910’, in M. Blinkhorn and T. Veremis (eds.), Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality (Athens, 1990), 9–22 and Kitromilides, ‘Imagined Communities’; A. Politis, Romantika Chronia. Ideologies kai Nootropies stin Ellada tou 1830–1880 (Romantic Years: Ideologies and Mentalities in Greece 1830–1880) (Athens, 1993). ⁵² John S. Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties (London, 1999), 17. ⁵³ Ibid.; Thanos Veremis, Greece’s Balkan Entanglement (Athens, 1995), 101–4. ⁵⁴ Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece 83–126; R. Clogg, A Short History of Modern Greece, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1986), 76–104.

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national statehood without Macedonia’ and that henceforth she was obliged to strive for the annexation of the region.⁵⁵ At the turn of the century, these three Balkan states shared a frontier with Macedonia and had ambitious and mutually conflicting plans to expand further. Overlapping territorial aspirations and claims came to light immediately, and were to characterize early twentieth-century Balkan history. Macedonia became the permanent arena of rivalries, propaganda, and open armed conflict between the Balkan neighbours. Being so inextricably linked with the internal political situation primarily of Bulgaria and Greece, and, secondly of Serbia, it proved to be a stumbling block to every attempt at a Balkan rapprochement. Friction between the Balkan states over Macedonia was only to be resolved by war.⁵⁶ All interested parties, and particularly Bulgaria, tried to rally the Macedonian peasantry to their national cause through subversive propaganda, skilfully exploiting popular dissatisfaction with living conditions under their Muslim landlords. Chronic poverty, strained social relations, and arbitrary official cruelty, accumulated since the early nineteenth century, had led to bitter resentment towards the Ottoman rulers. It is worth noting that of all the forces propelling peasants, nationalism was probably the least important. The peasants were divided between Exarchists and Patriarchists, but they both represented political groups rather than national groups.⁵⁷ Initially, as mentioned above, the methods employed were peaceful. But at the turn of the century, following the temporary suspension of the Bulgarian national schools by the Turkish authorities and, especially after the formation of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) in 1893, peaceful propaganda was replaced by violence and terror.⁵⁸ The IMRO was founded in Salonica by a small group of young Slav idealists, influenced by socialist ideas, to organize the Slav population in the struggle for Macedonian autonomy within a Balkan federation. In 1894, the ‘Supreme Committee’ was formed in Sofia by military men who wished to promote autonomy as a first stage in Bulgaria’s annexation of Macedonia, as had happened in ⁵⁵ Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties, 16. ⁵⁶ L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans since 1453 (New York, 1958), 371–80, 494–5. ⁵⁷ Basil Gounaris, ‘Ethnotikes omades kai kommatikes parataxeis sti Makedonia ton Balkanikon Polemon’, in I Ellada ton Balkanikon Polemon, 1910–1914 (Ethnic Groups and Parties in Macedonia of the Balkan Wars, in Greece of the Balkan Wars, 1910–1914) (Athens, 1993), 189–202. ⁵⁸ Douglas Dakin, ‘The Diplomacy of the Great Powers and the Balkan States, 1908–1914’, Balkan Studies, 3 (1962), 335–6; R. L. Wolff, The Balkans in Our Time (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 87–8; Glenny, Balkans, 112–17.

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The Historical Background

eastern Rumelia. Although nationalist societies of this type had focused on religious and cultural propaganda until 1898, in the realization that propaganda of this type was doing little to undermine Greek Orthodox culture, the ‘Supreme Committee’ began sending armed bands into Macedonia in the years following the Greek defeat. Slav nationalism was perceived in Greece as an ever-growing threat after the Eastern Crisis of 1897. Bands of irregulars entered Macedonia and started to raid the country. Initially the target of their activities was Ottoman troops or Muslim irregulars. The first years of the new century saw the emergence of permanent armed comitadji bands. Violence became widespread and, as law and order was steadily eroded, any village—particularly Greek communities in Macedonia—could be attacked at any time.⁵⁹ The Greeks responded by setting up the ‘National Society’ (Ethniki Etaireia) in Athens in 1894 to provide the necessary funds to establish Greek schools in Macedonia. These schools would serve two purposes: they would promote the teaching of the Greek language; and they would impose the modern Greek national identity on those granted the privilege of attending them. The same society started to send guerrilla bands into the field on year-long tours of duty to fight for the Greek cause following the revival in irredentism after the Cretan revolt of 1896.⁶⁰ Rivalries among churches and schools eventually turned to struggles between guerrilla bands of Bulgarians and Greeks (mostly), who raided the villages adhering to their opponents. Macedonia became a region subject to periodical anarchy and destruction, and fear of physical attack determined the national affinities of many peasants.⁶¹ Pro-Bulgarian activists staged a premature rebellion in October in the Djumaya region in north-eastern Macedonia, but it was local villagers who bore the brunt of the reprisals that followed, despite their indifference to the rebels’ cause. The revolt attracted a great deal of attention in Europe, and an agreement on reforms between Russia and Austria-Hungary known as ⁵⁹ Dakin, Greek Struggle, 44–54; R. J. Crampton, Bulgaria 1878–1918: A History (New York, 1983), 236–8. For a literary account of the sufferings of the Patriarchist villagers at the hands of the comitadji bands during this period see Michel Paillares, ‘Hellenism in Macedonia’, in G. F. Abbott, Greece in Evolution (London, 1909). ⁶⁰ C. A. Macartney, National States and National Minorities (Oxford, 1934), 138; N. Vlachos, To Anatolikon Zitima (The Eastern Question) (Athens, 1956), 64–9. ⁶¹ For the Greek intentions, activities, and inevitable co-operation with local bands operating in the region, see the very interesting article by D. Livanios, ‘ “Conquering the Souls”: Nationalism and Greek Guerrilla Warfare in Ottoman Macedonia 1904–1908’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 23 (1999), 195–221.

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the ‘Vienna scheme’ was accepted by the Porte. Among other things, the scheme provided for the appointment of an Inspector-General to the Macedonian vilayets, and the induction of Christians into both the police and gendarmerie in line with the proportion of Christians in the population at large.⁶² Although things looked hopeful in early 1903, IMRO revolutionaries bombed targets in Salonica in the spring, and bands rose in western Macedonia. The Ilinden rising broke out on 2 August 1903 in the vilayet of Monastir, and quickly spread to the vilayet of Adrianople owing to its professed aims of Macedonian autonomy. The rising was put down in November. Turkish reprisals on the peasantry were harsh. The IMRO’s policy was designed to encourage the Great Powers to support their demands for autonomy, and the policy paid off when Russia and Austria met at Murzsteg on 2 October to draft a reform programme for the region, which was then presented to the Porte in late October 1903. The reforms were designed to strengthen the European presence in Macedonia, and provided, among other things, for ‘a modification of the territorial delimitation of the administrative units in view of a more regular grouping of the different nationalities’ once order was re-established.⁶³ As such, the Murzsteg agreement was doomed to failure, and actually led to an intensification in the struggle between the region’s rival nationalities as they each attempted to benefit from the promised rearrangement of the administrative units by trying to carve themselves out areas of exclusive control for their respective nationals in each of the Macedonian vilayets. As a result, Ottoman attempts to restore public order came to nothing. Three separate groups had committed themselves to defending Greek rights and interests in Macedonia during the first years of the twentieth century: local armed groups of Patriarchists under the leadership of individual Greek patriots; a fair number of staunchly nationalist Greek Orthodox prelates; and the extensive network of consular authorities set up throughout European Turkey by the Greek state to gather intelligence ⁶² Dakin, Greek Struggle, 76–8; H. Gardikas-Katsiadakis, Greece and the Balkan Imbroglio, Greek Foreign Policy, 1911–1913 (Athens, 1995), 19. ⁶³ Ibid. 20; N. Vlachos, To Makedonikon os phasis tou Anatoulikou zitimatos, 1878–1913 (The Macedonian Question as a Phase of the Eastern Question, 1878–1913) (Athens, 1935), 78–81. The reform also provided for attaching an Austrian and a Russian civil agent to the Inspector General; entrusting the reorganization of the gendarmerie to a foreign general; the reorganization of the judicial and administrative institutions; the participation of consular representatives in committees that would investigate political crimes; the repatriation of the refugees; and support for the populations who had been affected.

34

The Historical Background

regarding the stance and needs of both Greek-speaking and Slavophone Orthodox Christians, and to distribute subsidies to Greek schools.⁶⁴ The Ecumenical Patriarchate made its opposition to nationalism quite clear, but could do little to prevent regional churches from becoming component parts of the modern administrative structure of the Balkan nation-states. The Patriarchate in Constantinople did not just stand by, however, as the Bulgarian Exarchate gradually encroached on the administrative jurisdiction of the Patriarchate in Macedonia; it appointed a younger generation of militantly nationalist bishops and empowered them to counter Bulgarian expansionism and promote nationalist Greek claims in Macedonia.⁶⁵ By the start of the twentieth century, it was clear both to Greek state officials and to the nationalist Orthodox prelates appointed to bishoprics in Macedonia that cultural resistance alone was not enough to counter the Bulgarian Exarchate. Germanos and Chrysostomos—appointed to the bishoprics of Kastoria and Drama, respectively, in 1900—set about encouraging local Greeks to form bands to match blow for blow the violence of those organized by the Bulgarian Exarchate. Ion Dragoumis was appointed Vice-Consul in 1902 to Monastir, from which he co-ordinated local Greek groups and recruited Greek officers to the cause. Macedonian organizations were also formed in Athens, and the first Greek band, consisting of Cretans, arrived in Macedonia in June 1903. The Ilident rising led to a new wave of armed Greek partisans leaving for Macedonia; their arrival was greeted with a demonstration of Bulgarian influence among the peasantry. The Theotokis government realized in 1904 that it could no longer ignore public discontent with its policy of not openly supporting the activities of the Greek bands in Macedonia. Prime Minister Theotokis finally gave the Macedonian struggle his moral support when he realized that the failure of the Greek state to take an interest in Macedonia would inevitably lead to Greece being ignored when the time came to divide up European Turkey.⁶⁶ Following his ⁶⁴ Basil Laourdas, To Hellinikon Genikon Proxeneion Thessalonikis 1903–1908 (The Greek Consulate General in Salonica 1903–1908) (Thessaloniki, 1961); Spyros Karavas, ‘Martyries Ellinon apestalmenon gia ti Makedonia’ (Testimonies of Greek Emissaries on Macedonia), Ta Istorika, 14/27 (Dec. 1997), 323–34; Helen D. Belia, ‘I ekpaidevtiki politiki tou Hellinikou kratous pros tin Makedonia kai o Makedonikos Agon’ (The Educational Policy of the Greek State towards Macedonia and the Macedonian Struggle), in O Makedonikos Agonas: Symposio (The Macedonian Struggle: Symposium) (Thessaloniki, 1987), 29–40. ⁶⁵ Kitromilides, ‘Imagined Communities’, 54–8. ⁶⁶ However, the Foreign Ministry was not in agreement with the idea of an armed confrontation with the IMRO and authorized its agents to use lawful means to defend the Orthodox population. See Gardikas-Katsiadakis, Balkan Imbroglio, 22–3.

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appointment to the post of Consul-General in Salonica, Lambros Koromilas dispatched military officers to Greek consulates throughout the Balkans as intelligence agents. He was to be the effective head of the Greek armed struggle against the Bulgarians for the next three years. The ‘Macedonian Committee’ was established in Athens in the summer of 1904, charged with co-ordinating and financing the armed struggle in close co-operation with the Greek government. New bands of partisans started to arrive in increasing numbers, particularly after the heroic death of Pavlos Melas in October 1904. The Macedonian Struggle had begun in earnest. Greece reacted swiftly: patriotic societies sprang up around the country, and refugees from Ottoman Macedonia and Epirus, who had fled their homes for fear of Turkish reprisals after the failed revolts of recent years, formed bands of irregulars to take on the comitadjis.⁶⁷ These rebel bands stirred up Muslim hatred for Christians, which drove the Turks to take revenge on the Macedonian rural population. The armed struggle was rapidly intensified and soon amounted to open war, causing the Turks both material damage and casualties. Thus, on the Greek side, between April 1904 and October 1905, more than seven armed bands, numbering 315 well-trained and equipped men and assisted by local Greek fighters mainly from Kastoria, Naoussa, and Langadas, invaded Macedonia. Turkish reaction to Greek attacks was uncompromising and soon the prisons of Salonica and Monastir were packed with peasants. In addition, great numbers of farmers were deported on the grounds that the rural population had assisted the guerrillas.⁶⁸ These conditions of acute insecurity encouraged migratory movements among Christian peasants, who, although increasingly forced to take sides by revolutionary violence, still preferred to go in search of stability than to die for nationalism.⁶⁹ Caught between the Scylla of hardline revolutionaries and the Charybdis of the arbitrarily repressive Ottoman state, many fled to neighbouring states such as Greece and Bulgaria—where the presence of their ‘co-nationals’ guaranteed safer conditions—or further afield to Central Europe or the USA. Staying bore with it a heavy price, as the various factions increasingly resorted to violence to secure loyalty in the political struggle.⁷⁰ ⁶⁷ See J. S. Koliopoulos, Brigands with a Cause: Brigandage and Irredentism in Modern Greece, 1821–1912 (Oxford, 1987). ⁶⁸ Dakin, Greek Struggle. ⁶⁹ N. Vlachos, The Macedonian Question, 92–5. ⁷⁰ Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 1985), 41–5; Mazower, Balkans, 93–4; B. Gounaris, ‘Emigration from Macedonia in the Early Twentieth Century’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 7 (1989), 137–40.

36

The Historical Background

As a result of these violent nationalist conflicts, Greece received the first considerable number of refugees. Between July 1906 and December 1907, 40,000 Greeks living in Bulgaria were forced to migrate, abandoning their properties. Of these 30,000 sought refuge in Greece and were settled in Thessaly. Their expulsion was prompted by their refusal to give up the Greek language. The Greek population of the Black Sea cities, Anchialos, Varna, Philippopolis, Stenimachos, and Burgas, were terrorized by Bulgarian bands. Their schools, churches, and hospitals were pillaged or destroyed. Anchialos in particular, an almost entirely Greek town of 6,000 inhabitants, was attacked on 12 August 1906 by Bulgarians who set fire to the town and completely destroyed the Greek sector, which contained 900 houses and shops. Those who were not slaughtered fled to Greece and established New Anchialos in Thessaly, in the region of Volos.⁷¹ The Macedonian Struggle ended in 1908, after the Young Turks’ revolution against the autocratic regime of Abdul Hamid. An amnesty was granted to all guerrillas and initially there were hopes that the new regime would solve the problems of all Ottoman citizens. However, in 1910, when it became evident that the new regime was even more ‘Ottoman’ than the old, a Balkan alliance emerged as a matter of urgency. The precipitating event was the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911. This war, which revealed Turkey’s weakness, alerted the Balkan states to the possibility of Italian acquisitions in the area. If this materialized, it was feared that they would lead the other Great Powers, especially Austria-Hungary, to seek compensation. Long diplomatic negotiations between the Balkan states led them eventually to sign treaties and create the Balkan League in 1912. Mutual mistrust was temporarily overshadowed by their common will to synchronize a military attack on Turkey, so as to settle the Turkish Question by force and to present the European powers with a fait accompli.⁷² In October 1912, the Balkan states, despite the efforts of the Great Powers to maintain peace in the European Turkish provinces, attacked Turkey to fulfil their long-delayed national goals. After a month, the Balkan troops had overthrown the Turks. The comprehensive defeat of the Turkish army prompted the intervention of the Great Powers. In May 1913 they compelled the belligerents to accept the terms of the Treaty of London, which settled the principal questions between the Balkan allies ⁷¹ Allen Upward, The East End of Europe (London, 1908), 60–67. ⁷² Dakin, Greek Struggle, 421–41; Wolff, Balkans in Our Time, 89–91.

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and Ottoman Empire. The problem of the division of Macedonia, however, remained insoluble. In June 1913 the Bulgarians, convinced that they could win a quick military victory, attacked the Greeks and the Serbs. Soon Romanian, Montenegrin, and Ottoman troops joined the Greeks and Serbs in the battle against the Bulgarian army. As a result, Bulgaria lost much of the ground she had gained in Macedonia, and was forced to sign an armistice on 31 July. The Treaty of Bucharest of August 1913 partitioned Macedonia between the three Balkan states. Bulgaria was obliged to cede the major part of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece; however, she retained land in the Strumna (Strymon) valley and an 80-mile section of the Aegean coastline, including the port of Dedeagatch (Alexandroupolis). Greece received all southern and eastern Macedonia to the river Mesta (Nestos), including the disputed city of Kavala, and extending westwards as far as Lake Prespa, and northwards to Gevgeli and to Lake Doiran. Serbia acquired northern Macedonia with the city of Monastir and almost doubled her size. This settlement was seen by the Bulgarians as undoubtedly favourable to Greece and Serbia. It was evident that the Bulgarians would seek revision of the treaty and resettlement of the boundaries at the first opportune moment.⁷³

POPUL ATION MOVEMENTS: 1912—1922 The Balkan Wars, though short, set new standards for cruelty and destruction in Macedonia, a region known for its political turbulence. Specifically, the phenomenon of the uprooting of local populations had in fact occurred previously but never on such a scale as during the wars of 1912–13. Massacres were widespread and these bitter conflicts were accompanied by the movement of many thousands of refugees travelling in opposite directions, seeking safety in their respective national states.⁷⁴ Considerable numbers of persons had emigrated of their own accord in order to escape the battlefields and the consequences of remaining under a hostile administration. Within a period of just a few months, Greece, ⁷³ Jelavich, History of the Balkans, 98–100; For a comprehensive study of the diplomacy of the Balkan Wars, their background, the new territorial status quo established in the Balkans following the withdrawal of Turkey from her European provinces, and the factors of foreign policy that determined the inter-Balkan relations, with emphasis on the foreign policy of E.Venizelos, see Gardikas-Katsiadakis, Balkan Imbroglio. ⁷⁴ Marrus, The Unwanted, 40–50.

38

The Historical Background

Bulgaria, Serbia, and Turkey had hundreds of thousands of their ‘subjects’ abandon their homelands and belongings, and move from one end of the Balkan peninsula to be resettled in another. The occupation of Macedonia, Epirus, and Thrace by the armies of the Christian Balkan states was followed by the expulsion of the Muslims, who were forced to seek refuge by the thousands in Ottoman-held territories. Underlying these acts of passion in the region were in many cases the more sober motivations of personal gain and profit, specifically the socio-economic conflict between the Christian cultivators and the Muslim landowners. The Treaties of London (May 1913) and Bucharest (August 1913) drew a new political map of the area. The new Balkan boundaries locked ethnic groups into new national entities which were hostile to their interests. Because of this, ethnic minorities were prompted to migrate to the states with which they had the greatest affinity. Thus, at the end of 1913 and during 1914, minorities were forcibly removed from their homes in the course of the implementation of a policy serving the political and strategic objectives of national rivalries. Venizelos, fearing the diplomatic complications that might ensue from the expulsion of Muslims in the regions acquired by Greece, as well as reprisals against Greeks in Asia Minor, from the start insisted on the inclusion of clauses within the Treaty of Bucharest which would vouchsafe the rights of minority groups. His attempts, however, were to no avail as no such proviso was ever made. On the home front, he found curbing the persecution of Muslims in the New Lands an equally fruitless task. He did not have the co-operation of local government officials and was, therefore, powerless in restraining the local Christians from availing themselves of the opportunity to take whatever revenge they might in retribution for the oppression and violence suffered at the hands of the Ottomans for generations past.⁷⁵ The statistics on the displacement of population in the period 1912–24 are open to question. Owing to the turbulence of the period and the strong feelings aroused, accuracy is not assured. However, it is worth quoting them to give an indication of the magnitudes involved. Chronologically, the movements of populations in the region can be described as follows: in 1912, 10,000 Muslims from Macedonia and 104,000 from eastern Thrace fled before the advance of the allied Balkan armies. In 1913, some 15,000 Bulgarians from the area of central ⁷⁵ Spyros Marketos, ‘O Alexandros Papanastassiou kai i epochi tou’ (Alexandros Papanastassiou and his Era), Ph.D. thesis, University of Athens, 1997, vol. 1, pp. 337–48.

Macedonia

39

Macedonia followed the Bulgarian army in its retreat before the advance of the Greeks. During the same year, 10,000 Greeks fled into Greek Macedonia from parts of Macedonia assigned to Bulgaria and to Serbia. Also 70,000 Greeks from western Thrace (under Bulgarian control) migrated into Greek Macedonia, and 5,000 more Greeks arrived from the Caucasus. While 46,786 Bulgarians left eastern Thrace and emigrated to Bulgarian western Thrace under the Treaty of Constantinople (1913),⁷⁶ 48,570 Muslims emigrated to Turkey from western Thrace under the terms of the same treaty. In 1914, some 115,000 Greeks were expelled from Turkish eastern Thrace and sought refuge in Greece, and 85,000 Greeks from the same region were deported by Turkey to the interior of Asia Minor. In Asia Minor 150,000 Greeks were driven from the coastal regions and migrated to Greece. Between 110,000 and 115,000 Muslims from Macedonia and a further 35,000 from the other Balkan states migrated to Turkey as a consequence of the political changes brought about by the wars, but also by Young Turk propaganda. During the First World War the Turkish government continued the deportations of Greeks to the interior of Anatolia and many perished from the hardships of these journeys. After the war the migrations started again.⁷⁷ After the Balkan Wars, the assimilation of a variety of minority groups into the nation-state in which they happened to be, and the achievement of national purity came to represent the ideological policy and ambitions of all the Balkan states.⁷⁸ The wave of nationalism which swept across the Balkans took the form of ‘ethnic cleansing’, which in Greek Macedonia was spasmodic, locally centred, and the inevitable outcome of the war, whereas in Turkey it was organized by the state and was systematically applied. The consequences for the victims were horrific in all instances. Nevertheless, the blame, as Mazower has pointed out, did not lie with the ⁷⁶ The Treaty of Constantinople (16/29 Sept. 1913) terminated the war between Bulgaria and Turkey. According to a Protocol annexed to that Treaty the two countries decided on the ‘authorized reciprocal exchange of the Bulgarian and Muslim populations within a twenty kilometres-wide zone of their common frontier’. The Convention concerning the exchange of populations signed at Adrianople (2/15 Nov. 1913) in effect confirmed a de facto situation since migrations had already taken place. Nevertheless, this was the first exchange of populations in the Balkans: S. P. Ladas, The Exchange of Minorities: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (New York, 1932), 18–20, and D. Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Minorities and its Impact upon Greece (Paris and The Hague, 1962), 54–5. ⁷⁷ A. A. Pallis, ‘Racial Migrations in the Balkans during the Years 1912–1924’, Geographical Journal, 66/4 (Oct. 1925); Ladas, Exchange of Minorities, 15–17. ⁷⁸ Basilis Gounaris, ‘Anakyklonontas tis paradoseis’ (Recycling Traditions), in B. Gounaris, I. Michailidis, and G. Aggelopoulos (eds.), Tavtotites sti Makedonia (Identities in Macedonia) (Athens, 1997), 48.

40

The Historical Background

state governments and the Balkan peoples alone. The outbreak of social strife and violence resulting in the exchange of populations was the inevitable sequel to the social fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire, the dismemberment of which had been brought about by the rise of nationalism. It was evident to Arnold Toynbee, who lived through the final turbulent days of the Ottoman Empire, that the source of conflict was external. In 1922 he wrote: ‘The introduction of the Western formula [of the principle of nationalism] among these people has resulted in massacre . . . Such massacres are only the extreme form of a national struggle between mutually indispensable neighbours, instigated by this fatal western idea’.⁷⁹ More succinct perhaps is Mark Mazower’s remark that ‘ethnic cleansing’ whether in the Balkans in 1912–13, in Anatolia in 1921–22 or in erstwhile Yugoslavia in 1991–95 was not the spontaneous eruption of primeval hatreds but the deliberate use of organised violence against civilians by paramilitary squads and army units; it represents the extreme force required by nationalists to break apart a society which was otherwise capable of ignoring the mundane fractures of class and ethnicity.⁸⁰

This organized violence against civilians paved the way for a succession of military conflicts that divided the Balkan peoples and cultivated hatreds between them while increasing the political and economic dependency of the region. Internally, the violence led to military mechanisms taking protagonistic roles in the affairs of the state. Furthermore, this ‘reign of terror’ established the misconstruction which survived the twentieth century, whereby clashes and atrocities which were motivated by economic and social antagonisms are identified only in terms of nationalism and religion. Typical of this attitude is the manner in which the French Foreign Minister Hanotaux described the massacre of Armenians in Anatolia as ‘one of those thousand incidents of struggle between Christians and Muslims’.⁸¹

⁷⁹ A. J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (London, 1922), 17–18; cited by M. Mazower, Balkans, 129. ⁸⁰ Mazower, Balkans. ⁸¹ Cited ibid. 128; Cf. dismemberment of Yugoslavia.

2 The Refugees ROOT CAUSES OF THE GREEK REFUGEE PROBLEM Population exchange and refugee resettlement in the Balkan peninsula and in Asia Minor were the concomitant of the transformation of the Ottoman Empire into national states. This transformation, as we have seen, was not a peaceful one. Large numbers of people were persecuted in the process simply on the basis of race, religion, national origin or affiliation, or of belonging to a particular social group. The modernization of multinational empires in the twentieth century required their governments to attempt to create homogeneous political entities in regions where ethnic groups and communities were inextricably intermingled. As a result, any ethnic group that did not share the ethnicity of the state in which it lived, but identified with another state, was compelled to leave its accustomed place of residence and seek refuge outside its country of origin. Hence the high number of ethnic minorities among the refugees of Europe during the inter-war years.¹ Within the Ottoman Empire it was the Young Turks, a Turkish nationalistic group which drew its membership from junior military officers and the professional classes, who developed a national consciousness and provided the most vigorous response to the situation which was undermining Turkish dominance in the Balkans and was threatening the integrity of the Empire. In May 1908 the Young Turk organization in Salonica, known as the ‘Committee of Union and Progress’, decided to take charge of the situation in Macedonia and to protect the sovereignty of the Empire. They were alarmed by Anglo-Russian intentions: at the Reval meeting, Edward VII, King of England, and Nicholas II, Tsar of ¹ Zolberg, ‘Formation of New States’, 24–38; Claudena M. Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime and the Refugee Problem in Interwar Europe’, D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1989, 37–43.

42

The Historical Background

Russia, had agreed on a joint initiative to introduce reforms to solve the socio-economic problems and end the anarchy prevailing in Macedonia. The Committee of Union and Progress saw the frequent interest of the Great Powers as a further attempt to hasten the dismemberment of the Turkish possessions in the Balkans.² They wanted to prove to the Powers that they themselves could bring peace to their country without outside interference and reform it on the lines of the Western model of nationstates. Thus, ‘the officers despairing of containing nationalist guerillas of various stripes, apparently decided that political freedoms where all views could be expressed in a parliament working for the common good might be an option to try.’³ In July 1908 they revolted, overthrew the autocratic regime of Abdul Hamid, and forced the Sultan to restore the constitution of 1876 and recall Parliament. The new regime set out to modernize the country and to protect its territorial integrity. Although the revolt was staged by a small group of discontented army officers belonging to the Committee of Union and Progress, it brought to the political scene new and diversified forces. These were the Liberals, including men who had held office under the regime of Abdul Hamid and whose experience in administrative matters was indispensable to the Committee, as well as members of the activist and radical faction of the Ottoman élite who had been persecuted by the old regime. These men believed in the survival of the Empire through the introduction of constitutionalism and progressive legislation and their reform scheme was confined to accomplishing more effective administration through some form of decentralization based on nationality.⁴ Under the influence of these men, a section of the Young Turks, as Caglar Keyder puts it, ‘saw themselves as players in the European arena rather than as nationalists voicing resentment against the West’.⁵ Soon, however, they were marginalized as events strengthened the position of the nationalists and radicals, who constituted the nucleus of the Committee of Union and Progress. The latter claimed that Turkey had to be transformed into a centralized, unitary national state of people of different ethnic backgrounds living together in freedom and equality; presumably they all had the same nationality. These men considered that the millet system was incompatible ² A. W. Ward and C. P. Gooch (eds.), The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919, iii (Cambridge, 1923), 399–401. ³ Caglar Keyder, ‘The Ottoman Empire’, in Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (eds.), After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation Building (Oxford, 1997), 37 ff. ⁴ Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics 1908–1914 (Oxford, 1969), 14 ff. ⁵ Keyder, ‘The Ottoman Empire’, 37.

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with their platform for a centralized, and secular, nation-state and had, therefore, to be abandoned. Education of the Christians, which under the ‘millet’ system was under the administration of the communities and the Church, should come under government control. Given an increasing ethnic and national consciousness among most Ottoman subjects, this policy could only be realized by force. Nevertheless, during the early days of the revolution there were signs of a coming era of freedom, constitutionalism, and peaceful coexistence between Turks and Christians. All Ottoman citizens, regardless of ethnic origins or creed, were granted equal rights. Initially this programme established a climate of optimism and was heralded as liberal. Among the Greeks there were many who expected that the Young Turks would rely on the Greek bourgeoisie for economic development and Westernization. Most of the Greek community of Constantinople, who had undoubtedly developed a Greek national consciousness, believed that the interests of Hellenism would be further promoted if they could collaborate with the liberals, benefit from the new constitutional regime to secure positions in the bureacracy, and finally manage to achieve hegemony in a multinational decentralized Empire. The ideology of this policy was founded by Ion Dragoumis, who believed that in the historical and international context of the time, Constantinople was destined to be the centre of Hellenism, while the nation’s task was ‘not to add newly liberated lands to the independent Greek state, as widely held, but to accomplish the unification of Hellenism by transforming the Ottoman Empire into one in which the Hellenic element would be dominant’.⁶ The establishment of the Greek association known as the ‘Organization of Constantinople’ in April 1908 by Athanassios Souliotis disseminated this idea among the flourishing Greek commercial classes and made the platform of the liberal wing of the Young Turks atractive.⁷ The elation, however, was short-lived. In the spirit of equality guaranteed by the constitution, military service was to be extended to all Ottoman citizens including non-Muslims, much to their alarm.⁸ The ⁶ Ion Dragoumis, Koinotis, Ethnos kai Kratos (Community, Nation and State), 2nd edn. by P. Dragoumis (Thessaloniki, 1967), 91–2, cited by H. Gardikas-Katsiadakis, Balkan Imbroglio, 27; Veremis, ‘National State to the Stateless Nation’, 15–20. ⁷ Veremis, ‘National State to Stateless Nation’, 15–20. ⁸ Ahmad, Young Turks, 1–17 and 21–3. Ergil Donu, ‘A Reassessment: The Young Turks, their Politics and Anti-Colonial Struggle’, Balkan Studies, 16/2, (1975), 34–5, 40–1, 59–65; see also Photis D. Apostolopoulos, ‘O Ellinismos tis Mikrasias’ (Hellenism of Asia Minor), in Centre for Asia Minor Studies, I Exodos A’. Martyries apo tis eparchies ton dytikon paralion tis Mikrasias (Exodus A. Testimonies from the Eparchies of the Western Coast of Asia Minor) (Athens, 1980), ␯␤ⴕ–␯␦ⴕ [37–84].

44

The Historical Background

Young Turks began to call for the strengthening of the Turkish language and culture at the expense of others. The new regime was soon faced with external threats. In October 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bulgaria proclaimed complete independence, thus ending Turkish suzerainty over that area. The Cretans once more announced their decision to unite with Greece.⁹ The Sublime Porte protested against these violations of the Treaty of Berlin (1878) to the Great Powers. The Concert of Europe, however, was reluctant to intervene on Turkey’s behalf. Conflicting interests between the Great Powers and the violent competition of the Balkan states, which were incapable of agreeing over their claims in Macedonia, complicated the intervention of the Powers in Ottoman domestic affairs, although it was evident to European diplomats and statesmen that the Empire could no longer safeguard its European provinces.¹⁰ The effect of these events on the internal situation of the Empire was of great importance. In 1909 opposition to the regime was mounting and there was widespread fear that other parts of the Empire would be lost. Counter-revolutionary forces emerged, and a coup d’état was launched against the existing regime in April. The Committee of Union and Progress soon confronted the mutineers and regained control. From that date, however, there was a significant shift in its policy inspired by the nationalist wing of the Young Turks’ movement. Ottoman patriotism soon turned into Turkish nationalism. The Young Turks embarked on a policy of ‘Ottomanization of all Turkish subjects’. Since decentralization and autonomy undermined the implementation of the Turkish nationalist programme, it was decided that all religious and ethnic ‘minorities’ should be refused the right to engage in political activity. The political organizations of all ethnic groups and churches were forbidden; under the ‘Law for the Prevention of Brigandage and Sedition’ pursuit battalions were organized by the army; all suspected subversive activities had to be reported to the authorities.¹¹ Political power was concentrated in the hands of the Committee of Union and Progress, who clearly manipulated the elections for a new Parliament of 1912 in order to secure a majority. As a consequence, the ⁹ For a detailed account of the diplomacy over the Cretan Question see GardikasKatsiadakis, Balkan Imbroglio, 33–40. ¹⁰ Ahmad, Young Turks, 24; J. Heller, British Policy towards the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1914 (London, 1983), 9–11. Britain was the only European Power favourably disposed towards the Porte at that time. ¹¹ Dakin, Greek Struggle, 401–8.

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representation of the subject peoples, particularly the Greeks and the Albanians, who had been the most vociferous anti-Unionist elements in the Balkans, was substantially diminished.¹² Resentment and suspicion against all non-Muslim communities grew among certain categories of civilians. The ideology of the most extreme elements in the Young Turk movement became manifest. The Young Turks came to believe that to achieve sovereign independence, defend their empire, and transform it into a modern national state, national homogeneity was necessary. Thus, in practice, equality came to mean assimilation of the existing ‘minorities’, a prospect which was unrealistic, given the degree of awakening of national consciousness among the numerous ethnic groups who inhabited the lands of the Empire. Therefore the advocates of Turkish nationalism launched a campaign to get rid of all the heterogeneous elements of the Empire. ‘First we kill the Armenians, then the Greeks, then the Kurds’, was the cynical exposition of the nationalist programme by a Turkish gendarme to a Danish Red Cross nurse in July 1915.¹³ Following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars, Turkish measures included deportations and death marches of non-Turkish inhabitants (Armenians and Pontics) in areas considered part of the Turkish homeland. When the First World War broke out, the ways of attaining the Turkification of the Ottoman Empire were massacres and violent transfers of thousands of people. During this period thousands of Christian men were conscripted into ‘labour battalions’ where many died as a result of the harsh treatment.¹⁴ ‘The advance of Turkish nationalism’, as Caglar Keyder remarks, could only elicit similar responses from the other nationalities of an already mobilized society. All nationalisms exact great tolls in human suffering, and Turkish nationalism was no exception. Its geographical claim implied a massive ethnic cleansing. When the empire’s estate was fully partitioned a decade after the start of the Balkan wars, the world had been remade in the image of nation-states pursuing Wilsonian principles. Under the hegemony of nationalist ideologies, not many mourned the empires or investigated counterfactual possibilities.¹⁵

¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Ahmad, Young Turks, 155. Cited by Mark Mazower, Dark Continent, 60–1. Apostolopoulos, ‘Ellinismos tis Mikrasias’, pp. ␯␵ⴕ-␰␦ⴕ [37 ff.]. Caglar Keyder, ‘Ottoman Empire,’ 41.

46

The Historical Background PERSECUTIONS OF GREEKS IN EASTERN THRACE AND ASIA MINOR

In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, the collapse of European Turkey gave a new impetus to Turkish leaders for the adoption of a stricter policy towards the Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire. Resentment over the losses incurred during the war increased in February 1914, when the Great Powers assigned the Aegean islands to Greece.¹⁶ In spring 1914 relations between the two countries were extremely tense owing to the effects of this decision on Turkish nationalism. The Turks refused to recognize the Greek annexation of the islands, because of their strategic position and their proximity to the large Greek population living in the coastal regions of Asia Minor. A military confrontation seemed likely, especially after a naval arms race, but was prevented by the intervention of the Great Powers. At this juncture, the Turks launched a campaign of persecution against the Greek Ottoman citizens of a large number of towns and villages in eastern Thrace.¹⁷ The aim of this policy was the transformation of the region into a purely Turkish province through the settlement of Muslims who could also provide defence for Constantinople in the event of a war. To the Turkish nationalists every Greek was a potential supporter of Pan-Hellenism and should therefore be expelled. Moreover, the Greek Ottoman citizens were forced to emigrate in order to make room for the settlement of Muslim refugees. Immediately after the Balkan Wars, a wave of migration of Muslims, from all regions of the formerly Ottoman Macedonia, took place. This migration was the natural consequence of the political changes brought about by the wars, but was also encouraged by Turkish government agents who promised to migrants that in Turkey they would take over the properties of the Christians. According to the statistics of the Ottoman Refugee Office, the total number of Muslim refugees from territories lost by Turkey to Greece was 122,665 up to 1915, and reached 143,189 in 1920.¹⁸ ¹⁶ Under the terms of the Treaty of London, the fate of the Aegean islands was left to be solved by the Great Powers, who in Feb. 1914 decided to cede the islands to Greece, except for Imbros and Tenedos. ¹⁷ Michael Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919–1922 (London, 1973), 30–1. ¹⁸ Ibid.; the number of Muslim migrants to Turkey up till 1914 totalled 413,912, of whom 132,500 were settled in eastern Thrace: see AAAP, F. A, 42, Note indicating the

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Pressure on Greeks to emigrate was exerted through incarceration, harassment of agricultural activities, coercive tax levies, statute labour, blockading, compulsory recruitment into the Turkish army, and the sudden forced evacuation of whole villages. About 115,000 Greeks were expelled from eastern Thrace and sought refuge in Greek Macedonia, while 85,000 more from the same region were deported to the interior of Asia Minor. The official reply given by the Turks to the repeated démarches of the Greek government was that these forced migrations were the inevitable consequence of the post-war treaties and that the Greeks in eastern Thrace were paying the price for the uprooting of the Muslim inhabitants from Macedonia and Epirus.¹⁹ Another wave of persecutions broke out in May 1914, against the Greek inhabitants of the western coast of Asia Minor. The Young Turks’ plan for eliminating the heterogeneous elements from the Empire required the extermination of the Armenians and the expulsion of the Greeks from Turkey. Most of the Greek communities of the western littoral of Asia Minor were systematically uprooted by force, without the Greek consulates being informed, through the operations of irregular bands of çetes and in a climate of national fanaticism cultivated by the press. The majority crossed over to the islands of Lesvos and Chios, abandoning their property. The Turkish government argued again that the expulsion of these Greek communities was a natural consequence of what it claimed to be the maltreatment of Muslims by the Greek administration in Macedonia.²⁰ The outbreak of the First World War determined decisively the fate of the Greeks in the region of Pontus. The nationalist Young Turks committee launched a very aggressive policy towards the Christians of the north-eastern part of the Empire, which culminated in the intentional fluctuations of the population in eastern Thrace, 15 Feb. 1921; also A. A. Pallis, ‘Racial Migrations in the Balkans and Persecutions of Greeks (1912–1924)’, DKMS, 1 (1977), 86. ¹⁹ AYE, K.Y./1915/A 21z, Memorandum on the general statistics of refugees in Macedonia; cf. Y. Mourelos, ‘The 1914 Persecutions and the First Attempt at an Exchange of Minorities between Greece and Turkey’, Balkan Studies, 26 (1985), 392; Ladas, Exchange, 16; E. Kontogiorgi, ‘Forced Migration, Repatriation, Exodus: The Case of Ganos-Chora and Myriophyto-Peristasis Orthodox Communities in Eastern Thrace’, Balkan Studies, 35 1 (1994), 15–45. ²⁰ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, 31; Mourelos, ‘1914 Persecutions’, 393; M. Evaggelidis, Ypomnima peri ton dikaiomaton kai pathimaton ton estion tou politismou Mikras Asias kai Thrakis (Memorandum on the Rights and Sufferings of the Asia Minor and Thracian Cultural Centres) (Athens, 1918), 77–103; A. Panagiotarea, Otan oi. astoi eginan prosfyges (When Bourgeois Became Refugees) (Thessaloniki, 1994), 94–111.

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The Historical Background

destruction of the Armenians. Persecutions of Pontic Greeks were also severe. At the end of 1917, when the Russian troops withdrew from eastern Pontus, about 80,000 Greeks chose rather to follow their fellow Orthodox than be slaughtered by the Turks.²¹ It has been estimated that a total of 257,019 Pontic Greeks were forced to leave during the period of the war.²² Greece soon also realized that she had no other choice but to receive her brethren from eastern Thrace and Asia Minor and organize her efforts to feed and settle the thousands of refugees who swept into her territory. The expulsion of the Greek communities during this period was the harbinger of their compulsory exchange a few years later, and brought to the fore the concept of the exchange of populations as a means of solving the problems between states with common borders which laid claim to ethnologically mixed regions. Negotiations between Greece and the Ottoman government regarding a likely exchange of populations started in 1914 but were soon foiled by the policy of delay followed by the Ottomans, who nevertheless managed to exert considerable diplomatic pressure on the Greek government, which thereafter adopted a more prudent policy towards the Muslim subjects in the northern provinces.²³ The outbreak of the First World War put an end to the diplomatic negotiations between the two states regarding the future of their minorities.

RESET TLEMENT OF THE GREEK REFUGEES IN MACEDONIA, 1913–1915 The total number of Greek refugees fleeing into Macedonia from Bulgaria, eastern Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus between 1913 and 1915 was estimated at 121,604.²⁴ The majority arrived in 1914 between March and September, although the influx of refugees decreased but did not stop then. Economic disruption and constraints in the regions to which the refugees fled made their incorporation into society very difficult. The ²¹ Artemis Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou, ‘The Diaspora of the Greeks of the Pontos: Historical Background’, in The Odyssey of the Pontic Greeks, special issue of Journal of Refugee Studies 4 4 (1991), 361. ²² According to the estimates of the Patriarchal Committee, see Apostolopoulos, ‘Ellinismos tis Mikrasias’ pp. ␰␤ⴕ–␰␦ⴕ. ²³ For a detailed account of the diplomatic negotiations between Greece and Turkey, see Mourelos, ‘1914 Persecutions’ 389–423. ²⁴ Ekthesis peri ton en Makedonia prosfygon (Report on the Refugees in Macedonia), Ministry of Finance (Athens, 1916).

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possibilities for their employment were limited. The few factories in Macedonia, the tobacco-producing industries in Kavala and Drama, and the textiles mills in western Macedonia, preferred to employ local workers, who had also been considerably affected by the economic crisis. Construction work financed by the state, which could have employed some of the refugees, had been interrupted by the war. At the beginning, local offices were created to arrange provisional accommodation and relief, and were funded mainly through donations, as well as through contributions from the Governorship-General of Macedonia.²⁵ In the spring of 1914, when the mass of refugees from eastern Thrace and Asia Minor arrived, a ‘Central Relief Commission for the Resettlement of Refugees in Macedonia’ was established in Thessaloniki.²⁶ It was subordinate to the Ministry of Finance and was entrusted with the task of assisting refugees and resettling those able to work.²⁷ The services of the Commission were divided into two categories: first, the administrative headquarters at Thessaloniki which were concerned with relief, accounting, statistics, medical relief, construction of houses, and the provision of state or abandoned lands for rural settlement; and secondly in situ technical services to examine the conditions in the villages in which refugees were to be resettled and to supervise the whole operation. The Commission had to tackle a number of problems in its resettlement project: there was a continuous influx of new refugees during the period of its work; scarcity of state lands inhibited any systematic or permanent settlement; experienced engineers, capable of carrying out public works, could not be employed because of limited finances; housing of the refugees was neglected because there was not sufficient timber and funds to meet the cost. By the end of 1915, 6,246 families totalling 27,265 individuals had been resettled provisionally on lands amounting to 180,000 stremmata (1 stremma ⫽ 0.1 hectare) of which about two-thirds were arable. The remaining refugees were left to find employment on the large estates of Macedonia. But the landlords were not willing to employ them, preferring local tenants who traditionally worked in their fields, were in better physical condition than the refugees, and who were, moreover, equipped ²⁵ Ibid.—the main source of information for this section. ²⁶ According to Law 350/31 Oct. 1914; ibid. 6. ²⁷ Relief was initially provided in goods, but later was transformed for practical reasons into an allowance of 20–30 lepta per day (1 drachma ⫽ 100 lepta). This sum was cut off when a refugee family was resettled on land or the head of a family managed to find a job.

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The Historical Background

with draught animals. Consequently, many refugees remained without any governmental support. By July 1915 only 29,784 refugees had been resettled by the Commission, while 87,700 had to survive without government assistance. The Central Commission also arranged for the settlement of 608 refugee families of craftsmen and traders in sixteen cities and towns of Macedonia. Their wide dispersal was necessary to avoid an oversupply of services and the resentment of local workers. Refugees were allocated allowances to establish them in their enterprises, and were obliged to repay these debts by small monthly instalments.

THE ASIA MINOR CATASTROPHE After the Balkan Wars, Greece almost doubled her territory and population. In the new provinces, however, the Greek element, although the largest single ethnic group, constituted only about 44.1 per cent of the total population, which included Slavophones, Muslims (Turks, Albanians, and Gypsies), Vlachs, and Jews.²⁸ The presence of foreign elements, in particular in the region of Macedonia, and the hostility of Bulgaria, which had been defeated and had lost territory to Greece and Serbia, augured badly for the future of the northern provinces of Greece. National affiliations of the Slavophones continued to shift, according to the fortunes of the wars, religious or linguistic preference, and political or personal interest. The outbreak of the First World War found Greece in the process of consolidating her position in the Balkans and reorganizing her political and social life. The foreign policy factor and national defence, however, was dominant over domestic affairs. The attitude of Greece to the war became the subject of intense internal disagreement, reflected in the conflict between King Constantine and his prime minister, Eleftherios Venizelos. This conflict had important implications for the future of the Greek communities in Asia Minor. Given the geographical position and the dispersed nature of these ²⁸ As a result of the Balkan Wars Greece increased her territory from 63,606 to 121,794 sq. km. The new areas covered 58,583 sq. km. The 1913 census of the newly annexed territories showed an increase of 2,103,038 people, bringing the total population of the country to 4,734,990: see A. A. Pallis, ‘Les Effets de la Guerre sur la population de la Grèce’, in A. Andreades, Les Effets economiques et sociaux de la Guerre en Grèce (Paris and New Haven, 1928), 133–35; see also Michael Chouliarakis, Geographiki, dioikitiki kai plithysmiaki exelixis tis Ellados, 1821–1971 (Geographical, Administrative, and Demographic Development of Greece, 1821–1971), vol. ia, (Athens, 1973), p. xvi.

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communities in a region where most European Powers had ambitious plans for further economic and political penetration, their incorporation into Greece could not be achieved without the support of the Powers. The ‘Great Idea’ which in the past had united the throne and the political parties, now divided the Greek nation. Although both the king and his prime minister felt that Greece was increasingly threatened by Turkish and Slav nationalism, they adopted diametrically opposed attitudes. King Constantine, impressed by the military strength of the Central Powers and married to the Kaiser’s sister, was a strong proponent of neutrality, while Venizelos advocated Greek support of the Entente Powers. Venizelos was convinced that the co-operation of Greece with Britain and her allies was the only hope for the realization of the ‘Great Idea’.²⁹ In January 1915 Britain offered ‘important territorial compensation to Greece on the coast of Asia Minor’ in return for her participation in the war on the side of the Entente.³⁰ The motive behind this generous but vague territorial concession was to ensure Greek co-operation with Serbia against the Central Powers in the Balkans and at least Bulgaria’s neutrality. The Allies could not promise any territory in Macedonia or Thrace because Bulgaria had claims in these regions. It is outside the scope of this work to describe the political developments in Greece which culminated in the forced resignation of Prime Minister Venizelos in October 1915, and eventually in the National Schism (Ethnikos Dichasmos), namely the division of the country into two parts under opposed governments. When Bulgaria sided with the Central Powers and in May 1916 occupied the strategically important Fort Rupel in central Macedonia, Greek neutrality was no longer possible. Lack of Greek resistance at Rupel made the situation crucial for the Allied Powers. Venizelos, who had withdrawn from active participation in Greek politics, decided that the situation called for drastic action. In October 1916 he formed a ‘Provisional Government’ in Thessaloniki, where in late August a group of officers supporting him had launched a coup against the official government in Athens. This new government was eventually recognized by the Allies, who forced Constantine to abdicate in June 1917. Venizelos then moved his government to Athens, and a reunited Greece entered the war on the Entente’s side in the hope of winning maximum territorial advantage from the defeat of the Central Powers.³¹ ²⁹ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, 35–61; D. Portolos, ‘Greek Foreign Policy, September 1916 to October 1919’, Ph.D. thesis, Birkbeck College, London, 1974. ³⁰ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, 35–6. ³¹ Clogg, Short History, 109–10.

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Thus the end of the war found Greece on the side of the victorious Entente Powers. At the Peace Conference in Paris in 1918, Venizelos fought for Greek claims in areas where there was an ethnological basis: northern Epirus, eastern Thrace, the Dodecanese islands, and Smyrna with its hinterland. In Asia Minor, however, Greek and Italian claims conflicted, because the Entente Powers had promised Italy the region of Antalya and in 1917 the Smyrna region in return for her entering the war. In March 1919 Italian troops landed in Antalya to secure economic and territorial concessions and after two months they were moving towards Smyrna. The Allies were alarmed no less than Venizelos by this event. Anxious to check the Italian advance, the Council of Four on 10 May 1919 authorized Venizelos to occupy Smyrna and its hinterland ‘for the purpose of protecting its large Greek population from worsening persecution’. On 15 May 1919 Greek military forces seized the port of Smyrna.³² The arrival in Ionia of the Greeks who intended to rule the region of Smyrna, where the Turkish Muslims were at least as numerous as the Greeks and in some places twice as numerous, determined the hitherto uncertain fortunes of Turkish national resistance led by Mustapha Kemal. Aided by Soviet Russia, which was also eager to see the Allies driven from Asia Minor, and encouraged by the disunity of the Allies and their inability to control effectively the Turkish forces in Central Anatolia, Kemal initiated a programme of nationalist resistance. With unofficial supplies from the French, who were anxious to gain economic concessions in the area, the guerrilla forces of Kemal soon grew strong enough to put the British troops in the Izmit peninsula under pressure. Venizelos once more offered to assist the British with the Greek army.³³ In June 1920 he received a mandate from the Supreme Council to clear Thrace and western Anatolia of the Kemalist forces. The Greek army captured Brussa in ten days, reached the sea of Marmara and occupied Thrace.³⁴ The Treaty of Sèvres, signed on 10 August 1920, between the Allies and the enfeebled Ottoman government, compensated Greece for her services; the purposes of the ‘Great Idea’ had been realized, at least on paper. Greece was granted eastern Thrace as far as the Chatalja line, the ³² Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 35. ³³ Sir Basil Thompson [Director of the Intelligence Service, 1919–21], The Allied Secret Service in Greece (London, 1931), 237, states: ‘Mr. Lloyd George, whose motive was to keep the Turks too much occupied to turn against the newly created kingdom of Iraq, alone encouraged Venizelos’. ³⁴ David Walter, The Chanak Affair (London, 1969), 82–3.

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Aegean islands except for the Dodecanese, which were ceded to Italy, and the administration of Smyrna and its hinterland for five years. Then, the population would decide by a plebiscite whether it should be united with Greece or would remain under Turkish control. The provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres, however, were to remain a dead letter. The terms of this treaty gave renewed impetus to the nationalist movement of the Kemalists, who set up a provisional revolutionary government in Ankara and organized their forces to drive the Greeks and the Allies out of Anatolia.³⁵ In Greece the elation soon ended in political confusion. Venizelos was defeated in the general election of November 1920 by the royalist Populist Party, and left the country. Constantine returned to his throne after a questionable plebiscite. These events alienated the Allies, who remembered his disloyal attitude during the war, and gave warning in a note that his restoration would have serious political and financial consequences. The French and Italians, who were willing to come to terms with Kemal, found a sound pretext to sign unilateral agreements in 1921 with the Turkish Nationalists and to gain commercial concessions in return for their withdrawal from Anatolia. The French in particular supplied the Turks with large quantities of arms.³⁶ Although the new Greek government had promised in its electoral campaign demobilization and peace, under the influence of Premier Dimitrios Gounaris, who, in contrast with Venizelos, had a limited understanding of international relations, a general offensive in Anatolia was launched. By the end of summer 1921 the Greek armies, commanded by King Constantine, were able to expand their front and reach the Sakarya river. But without diplomatic and military support from the Allied Powers the Greek campaign was bound to end in catastrophe. Kemal was preparing the Turkish offensive while the Greek army, which had retreated to the line of Eskishehir–Afyonkarahisar, was in a demoralized condition. For this reason, Kemal rejected an armistice proposed by Lord Curzon at the Paris Conference of March 1922, which involved the withdrawal of the Greek Army from Asia Minor and the placing of the Greek populations under League of Nations protection. When the Turks launched their offensive in the summer of 1922, the débâcle of the Greek ³⁵ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, 102–34; Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece, 127–9. ³⁶ For the French–Turkish Rapprochement see Yannis Mourelos, ‘I Gallotourkiki proseggisi tou 1921. To Symfono Franklin–Bouillon kai i ekkenosi tis Kilikias’ (The French–Turkish Rapprochement of 1921. The Franklin–Bouillon Agreement and the Evacuation of Cilicia), DKMS, 4 (1983), 211–76.

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army was complete. The consequences for the Christian population of Asia Minor were disastrous.³⁷ The catastrophic defeat of the Greek army in Asia Minor in the summer of 1922 ended with the utter destruction of the three thousand years of Hellenic civilization in Asia Minor. Turkish forces reached Smyrna in a month. The Greek population of Smyrna region, swollen by the terrified masses of Greeks and Armenians who fled as the Kemalist army had advanced, faced the menace and the collective hatred of Turkish nationalists. Thousands of Christians were slaughtered.³⁸ Llewellyn Smith records that ‘Turkish police patrols toured the city. But it soon became clear that the discipline was superficial and confined to the main streets, while in the back streets, Turkish civilians and later Turkish troops were taking their revenge for three years of humiliation by the Greeks.’³⁹ The Greek Archbishop was murdered, his body was dragged about the Turkish quarter, and ‘infidel Smyrna’ was given up to flames. The magnitude of the tragedy shocked foreign observers. Winston Churchill, commenting on Turkish policy, wrote: ‘For a deliberately planned and methodically exercised atrocity Smyrna . . . must find few parallels in the history of human crime.’⁴⁰ In Greece, Venizelist officers set up a ‘Revolutionary Committee’ in September 1922, before going on to overturn the royalist government, seize power in Athens, and force King Constantine to abdicate. His replacement, King George, was expelled two years later on the proclamation of the Republic. Eight royalists, politicians, and high-ranking officers were court-martialled on charges of high treason, and six were hastily executed in November 1922, despite widespread protests. Diplomatic efforts on the part of the Allied Powers—especially Britain—and Venizelos himself to prevent the extermination of political rivals were foiled by the fanaticism of the Venizelists in power. The ‘execution of the Six’ held responsible for the Asia Minor catastrophe by the ‘Revolutionary government’ deepened the divide opened up in Greece by the National Schism and polarized political life in the country for the next decade. The ‘Revolutionary government’ remained in power until December 1923, when a Constituent Assembly was elected with a mandate to revise ³⁷ Llewellyn-Smith, Ionian Vision, 266–311. ³⁸ According to R. Clogg, 30,000 Greek and Armenian Christians were massacred following the Turkish occupation of Smyrna: R. Clogg, Short History, 97. ³⁹ Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, 306; also C. P. Howland, ‘Greece and her Refugees’, Foreign Affairs, 4/4 (July 1926), 614–15. ⁴⁰ M. Gilbert, Churchill, iv. 854, cited in Marrus, The Unwanted, 100.

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the constitution. Greece was declared a Republic in March 1924 by Alexandros Papanastassiou, the radical Prime Minister of the Venizelist government, but in its efforts to circumvent the opposition the government acted outside normal procedures by holding the plebiscite on the constitutional issue after, rather than before, the removal of the monarchy. The Constituent Assembly lasted from 2 January 1924 until 29 September 1925, when it was dissolved by General Pangalos, who had been Prime Minister since June 1925, and who ruled Greece as dictator until his overthrow in August 1926. Elections were held on 7 November 1926, and a coalition government under Andreas Zaimis furnished the Republic with a new Constitution in 1927. Venizelism was to remain the dominant political force in the country between 1927 and 1932, a period marked by the struggle on the part of the government to reassert civilian control over the military. Although it was ultimately successful, the threat posed by the military took time and effort until it was neutralized, and the creation of the Republic owed a great deal to pressure from fervently republican Venizelist factions within the armed forces themselves. The ease with which Pangalos manœuvred himself into the premiership and then established his dictatorship are clear indications of the extent to which the military was involved in Greek political life.⁴¹ The rehabilitation of the refugees took place in a turbulent period characterized by intense party political conflict, repeated changes of government, and periods of military dictatorship.

EXODUS The way in which the Ottoman Greek citizens were displaced from their ancestral lands was different for the three groups of Greeks living in the Ottoman Empire.⁴² The geographical and historical conditions under which they had lived determined the patterns of their flight. The first wave of refugees were the panic-stricken Greeks who inhabited Ionia, the ⁴¹ G. Dafnis, I Ellas metaxy dyo polemon (Greece between Two Wars), i (Athens, 1955), 19–20, 194–5; M. Mazower, Greece and the Inter-war Economic Crisis (Oxford, 1991), 20–1, 73. ⁴² The most valuable and revealing source for the flight and uprooting of the Greek communities, based on the oral testimonies of the refugees collected by researchers of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies, is the archive of the Centre and the two published volumes of the collection: Centre for Asia Minor Studies, I Exodos, A’. Martyries apo tis eparchies ton dytikon paralion tis Mikrasias (The Exodus. A. Testimonies from the Eparchies of the Western Coast of Asia Minor), ed. Photis Apostolopoulos, preface by G. Tenekides

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western coast of Asia Minor. The conditions of the departure of these refugees were tragic and their evacuation to Greek islands and the ports of Thessaloniki and Piraeus occurred amid chaos and panic. Henry Morgenthau, who witnessed their arrival in the port of Piraeus wrote: The conditions of these people upon their arrival in Greece was pitiable beyond description. They had been herded upon every kind of craft that could float, crowded so densely on board that in many cases they had only room to stand on deck . . . In one case, which I myself beheld, seven thousand people were packed into a vessel that would have been crowded with a load of two thousand. In this and many other cases there was neither food to eat nor water to drink, and in numerous instances the ships were buffeted about for several days at sea before their wretched human cargo could be brought to land. Typhoid and smallpox swept through the ships. Lice infested everyone. Babies were born on board. Men and women went insane. Some leaped overboard to end their miseries in the sea. Those who survived were landed without shelter upon the open beach, loaded with filth, racked by fever, without blankets or even warm clothing, without food and without money.⁴³

As the Turkish army pushed the remaining Greek forces towards Constantinople, a further wave of Anatolian Greeks fled to Greece to swell the masses of refugees already there. The armistice in Moudanya (13 October 1922) between the British and Kemal, according to which eastern Thrace was ceded to Turkey, prompted the evacuation of this region. The Greek inhabitants of most communities decided to flee before the departure of the Greek army. In a period of a month they crossed the Evros (Maritsa) river and flooded western Thrace and eastern Macedonia.⁴⁴ Ernest Hemingway, who witnessed their exodus, reported in October 1922: ‘twenty miles of carts drawn by cows, bullocks and muddy-flanked water buffalo, with exhausted, staggering men, women and children, blankets over their heads, walking blindly along in the rain beside their wordly goods’.⁴⁵ Meanwhile, other refugees from the Pontus region left from the ports of Trebizond, Samsun, and Constantinople for Greece. It was estimated that the total number of the evacuees who came to Greece by the autumn of 1922 was not less than 900,000, including 50,000 Armenians.⁴⁶ (Athens, 1980) and I Exodos, B’. Martyries apo tis eparchies tis kentrikis kai notias Mikrasias (The Exodus. B. Testimonies from the Eparchies of Central and South Asia Minor), ed. Yannis Mourelos, preface by P. Kitromilides (Athens, 1982). ⁴³ Henry Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens (New York, 1929), 48–9. ⁴⁴ A. A. Pallis, ‘Anadromi sto Prosfygiko Zitima’, (Review of the Refugee Issue), Mikrasiatika Chronika, 11 (1963–4), 26–7; E. Kontogiorgi, ‘Forced Migration’, 31–2. ⁴⁵ Cited in Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 19. ⁴⁶ Ladas, Exchange 420–41.

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However, in the hinterland of Anatolia, in Cappadocia, Sevasteia, and mainly in Cilicia, there had remained other Greek Orthodox populations who numbered 200,000 at least. These, being cut off from the coastal regions, had not fled along with the other Christians of western Asia Minor and the Pontus. Isolated among Turkish populations, their position was extremely precarious.⁴⁷ Equally deplorable was the situation of the thousands of Christians who had fled to Constantinople from various parts of the Empire. The League of Nations, astonished by their tragedy, authorized the High Commissioner Dr Fridtjof Nansen to undertake the relief of the Near East refugees. At this point it is important to say something about the personality of Dr Fridtjof Nansen, whose role was fundamental in both the exchange programme and refugee resettlement. Dr Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), the well-known Norwegian explorer, scientist, and statesman, in April 1920 was appointed High Commissioner of the League for the repatriation of prisoners of war. At the same time, the Geneva Conference appointed him ‘High Commissioner for Aid to Russia’ to bring food to the starving millions in the Soviet Union during the famine which followed the Civil War. For his relief operation in Russia—which lasted until the summer of 1923— Nansen was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1922. In September 1922, and while he was engaged in this task, the League of Nations entrusted him with the relief of the Near East refugees and instructed him to act as mediator between Greece and Turkey.⁴⁸ Venizelos regarded as ‘an act of Divine Providence’ the fact that the League of Nations had entrusted the solution of the refugee question to Nansen ‘who, owing to his genius for organization and his world-wide reputation, is in position to offer the greatest of services to the task of settling and re-establishing the tens of thousands of refugees’. The Greek politician, who had been entrusted with negotiating the fate of the Greek populations of Asia Minor at the Lausanne Conference, further remarked that Without international support, not only financial but also organizational, it is impossible to resolve this tremendous problem successfully. The very future of Greece is dependent on the success or failure of the solution of the refugee ⁴⁷ Pallis, ‘Anadromi sto Prosfygiko Zitima’, 29. ⁴⁸ For the admirable work of this great humanitarian, who could perform these tasks successfully and almost simultaneously, see Clarence Arthur Clausen, ‘Dr. Fridtjof Nansen’s Work as High Commissioner of the League of Nations’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois, 1932; Tim Greve, Fridtjof Nansen: 1905–1930 (Oslo, 1974); E. E. Reynolds, Nansen (Harmondsworth, 1949); C. M. Skran, ‘Profiles of the First Two High Commissioners’, Journal of Refugee Studies, 1/3–4 (1988), 277–96.

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question. A failure would cause many calamities, while a success would allow Greece to recover in a span of few years from the burdens bequeathed by the Asia Minor catastrophe. After the collapse of the Greater Greece, we can consolidate the borders of Great Greece only when Macedonia and western Thrace have become not only politically but also ethnologically Greek lands.⁴⁹

In early October Venizelos sent Nansen a telegram requesting him to start negotiations with the Turkish government immediately in order to arrange an exchange of Greek and Turkish populations in Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor, before the signing of the peace treaty. The same day the High Commissioners of the Allied Powers in Constantinople made known to Nansen their governments’ wish to arrange such an exchange.⁵⁰ In order to have the full support of the Greek government in his negotiations with Mustapha Kemal Pasha, Nansen asked the former whether they agreed to sign a very simple exchange treaty and, if so, Nansen offered to submit a draft agreement for their consideration. The main points on which they were asked whether they agreed are: (1) that the administration of this treaty should be entrusted to a mixed commission consisting of two League of Nations members, one Turkish, and one Greek member appointed by their respective governments; (2) that the League of Nations members should have the power to take decisions, subject to appeal by the two governments to the Council of the League; (3) to accept that the regulations for the application of the exchange treaty be prepared by that mixed commission; (4) to bear half the expense of the work of the Commission. Finally, Nansen requested that A. A. Pallis be appointed as the Greek member on the Commission and that as complete records as possible of Greek property be brought away from eastern Thrace and placed at the disposal of the mixed commission.⁵¹ Nansen also sent repeated reports to the League of Nations stating the urgency of the situation and appealing for immediate assistance. Faced with the appalling situation of the destitute masses of refugees, he decided to suggest a comprehensive solution to the Greek refugee problem and supported the idea of a formal exchange of populations between ⁴⁹ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 3435, E. Venizelos to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, London 17 Oct. 1922. ⁵⁰ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 173, F. Nansen, ‘Note on the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations in Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor’, 22 Oct. 1922. ⁵¹ Ibid. A. A. Pallis was General Secretary of the Refugee Committee for the settlement of refugees in Macedonia in 1914 and following Nansen’s request became Representative of the High Commission of Greece to the Central Committee for the displaced Greek populations in Constantinople.

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Greece and Turkey.⁵² In a letter he sent to Venizelos on 10 October 1922, he stressed the necessity of helping the refugees to re-establish themselves on Greek soil: ‘I am further convinced that the rapid settlement of these refugees on the vacant lands of Greece is urgently desirable in the interests of the peace of the world.’⁵³ Nansen also reported to the League Council that an international loan under its auspices to the Greek government for refugee settlement was vital to assist it to bear the immense burdens that thousands of refugees had imposed on it.⁵⁴ At that time, however, the politicians of the international organization denounced Nansen’s scheme as ‘wild and foolish’ and thought that there could be no solution unless the refugees returned to Asia Minor. As P. J. Noel-Baker, then a member of the Secretariat, wrote later ‘only he [Nansen] foresaw that within a generation it would make a new and greater Greece’.⁵⁵ The events that followed and the policy of Venizelos, the Greek statesman whose ideas were parallel to Nansen’s, justified the policy that the High Commissioner put forward to the Council at that stage. The Greek government appealed, on the grounds of humane sentiments and charity, to the Great Powers for their intervention for the solution of the refugee problem. Among other instructions to Greek legations in European capitals, Venizelos emphasized that they should point out in particular that the extent of the refugee problem in Greece runs the greatest of risks not only as regards safeguarding the lives of so many hundreds of thousands of unfortunate victims of the Eastern Crisis but also as regards hygiene and social order. We do indeed fear the development in Greece of centres of grave epidemics capable of threatening the whole of Europe as well as centres of Bolshevism from which the greatest of evils could spread throughout the East.⁵⁶ ⁵² ‘Report by Dr. F. Nansen, 15.11.1922’, League of Nations, Official Journal, Jan. 1923, 126–36; A. A. Pallis, who was at that time in Constantinople and met Nansen, also affirms that the idea of a compulsory exchange of populations was formulated by Nansen after his contact with Pallis himself as the only realistic solution that could guarantee peace and make possible the survival of the thousands of refugees in Greece who could only be settled in the New Lands where the Turks still owned large landed estates. A. A. Pallis, ‘Anadromi sto Prosfygiko Zitima’, 29–30. ⁵³ Jacob Worm-Muller, ed., Fridtjof Nansen Brev, iv (Oslo, 1966), 153: Letter from Nansen to Venizelos, 10 Oct. 1922, cited by Claudena Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’, 173. ⁵⁴ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), F. Nansen, Note on the Function of the League of Nations in the Work of Relief for Refugees, dated 22 Oct. 1922. ⁵⁵ P. J. Noel-Baker, ‘Nansen: The International Statesman’, in J. H. Whitehouse (ed.), Nansen: A Book of Homage (London, 1930), 105, cited by C. Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’, 173. ⁵⁶ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 11988, Letter to Greek Legations in Paris, London, and Rome, 27 Oct. 1922.

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Nansen, in his world appeal on behalf of the Asia Minor refugees, emphasized that the refugee problem involved such huge numbers of Christians that it could be a destabilizing factor of the social, economic, and political conditions in the Near East.⁵⁷ During his short visit to Athens, Nansen also met with the Ministers of Relief, Provisions, and Finances. He was particularly concerned about the problem of feeding the people. Cereal reserves amounted to 100,000 tons and barely sufficed for the whole of 1922. For the maintenance of the 800,000 refugees, mostly women and children, who had landed in Greece since September 1922, the following amounts of food were necessary monthly: 15,000 tons of flour, 3,000 tons of milk, 750 tons of rice, 45 tons of tea or coffee, 1,500 tons of sugar, and 750 tons of meat or cheese. However, no purchase orders could be placed before the next harvest in July 1923, because of the lack of foreign exchange. The necessity of seeking foreign credit was all too obvious, as at least US$10 million were needed to feed the population of the country. Nansen promised to urge the International Red Cross to undertake the relief of the refugees and to approach the League of Nations for their assistance as well, until the receipts from the sales of the next tobacco and raisin harvest were in the hands of the Greek government. He met Dr Ross Hill of the American Red Cross and arranged the collaboration of the American organizations with Colonel Corfe, Adosides and his own office. Soon the American relief committees assumed the monthly expedition of provisions necessary for the maintenance of the refugees.⁵⁸ When Nansen visited Athens on 21 October 1922, he proposed to the Greek government the establishment of a joint shipping control involving the Allied High Commissioners in Constantinople, the Patriarchate, and the government in Athens for the supervision of the transportation of refugees from eastern Thrace and the islands, and in particular of the hundreds of thousands of Pontic refugees from the Black Sea shores of Asia Minor, whose very existence was at stake. This control could guarantee the continued co-operation of British ships, and arrange the movements of refugees as well as the ports of disembarkation in Greece.⁵⁹ He further suggested that for such an exchange of populations to be ⁵⁷ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), F. Nansen, Note on the Function of the League of Nations in the Work of Relief for Refugees, 22 Oct. 1922. LNA, R 1762, 48/25545/24954, Dr F. Nansen. ‘World Appeal on behalf of the Refugees in Asia Minor and Greece’, 1922, 2. ⁵⁸ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 10948, Greek Ministry for Foreign Affairs to Venizelos, 9–22 Oct. 1922; AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 12122, Fridtjof Nansen to Politis, Athens 9 Nov. 1922 ⁵⁹ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 324, Fridtjof Nansen: Note on the establishment of a joint shipping control at Athens, 8 Nov. 1922.

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arranged as quickly as possible, a shipping programme for removing the Turks from Macedonia would also be required. He ventured to enquire ‘whether the government would be disposed to agree to the establishment of a joint shipping control to consist of a representative of the Greek government, a British officer and an American officer, to direct all movements of shipping with a view of overlapping and the promotion of the greatest possible economy.’⁶⁰ Nansen also tried to co-ordinate the work of the various voluntary relief agencies to meet the crisis. He regarded detailed programmes for feeding, clothing, and providing shelter as essential to the general programme of settlement and believed that they should be carried out by specialized agencies.⁶¹ In order to assist the refugees concentrated in camps where there was a high risk of an outbreak of epidemics, he managed to secure the collaboration of the League of Nations Epidemics Commission, which had assisted Poland to meet its health problem with remarkable success. He asked the Greek government to ‘instruct its civil, medical and military services to lend their representatives on the Epidemics Commission every assistance in their power in carrying through a general programme of sanitation, vaccination and prevention of disease’.⁶² Nansen made every effort to facilitate the exchange of prisoners of war and civilian hostages retained in Anatolia. All Greek men between 17 and 50 years old had been forbidden to leave and had been deported into the interior. They were estimated to number at least 200,000. The return of these men to Greece was an urgent matter because their separation from their families in Greece—leaving aside the huge psychological effects on the refugee women and children who had lost their husbands and fathers—would have unfortunate economic consequences for refugee resettlement. Moreover, their return was a measure to prevent a likely degradation of moral values. Nansen put forward this argument: ‘it is needless to emphasise under what moral conditions a population of this character will be forced to live in the entire absence of any adult men for a number of years to come.’⁶³ At the beginning of October Nansen submitted to the Allied High Commissioners in Constantinople a memorandum requesting them to ⁶⁰ Ibid. ⁶¹ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), F. Nansen, Note on the Function of the League of Nations in the Work of Relief for Refugees of 22 Oct. 1922. ⁶² Ibid. ⁶³ LNA, R 1761, 48/24722/24337, ‘Report on the Refugee Situation in Greece, (part ii)’ by Dr Nansen, 28 Nov. 1922, p. 9.

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lend him their support in his endeavour to secure from Mustapha Kemal Pasha the return of the male Greek refugees. The Allied High Commissioners agreed to help Nansen in making such a démarche with Kemal and asked him to establish a joint Greco-Turkish Commission which, under his presidency, would discuss the immediate exchange of prisoners of war, civil hostages, etc. Nansen accepted the invitation, and, acting in his capacity as ‘High Commissioner of the League of Nations for Prisoners of War’, started immediate negotiations with the two governments. He suggested to both parties the immediate exchange of all prisoners of war, civil hostages, and deported refugees, pointing out that such an exchange was of ‘vital importance to the restarting of the economic life of both Turkey and Greece. It is essential that their manpower should be returned to its normal economic employment as soon as possible.’⁶⁴ He also suggested the establishment of a Mixed Commission under League auspices to work out the execution of that exchange. The Greek government provided Nansen with all available information on the number of Turkish hostages or prisoners of war in their hands as well as the number of Greek prisoners of war, civil hostages, and deported male refugees kept in Turkey. Thanks to Nansen’s preliminary negotiations on the solution of this problem, the Convention of Lausanne (Article 4) and the Protocol annexed to it provided that the Greek men detained in Anatolia would be transported to Greece immediately after the signing of the Peace Treaty. However, the Turkish government did not consent to their departure before January 1924. By that time, many of the hostages of war who had been forced to work in the labour battalions in the interior of Asia Minor had perished.⁶⁵

THE CONVENTION OF L AUSANNE, 30 JANUARY 1923 On 21 November 1922, the Allied Powers and Turkey met in Lausanne to draw up a peace treaty. Venizelos was appointed by the Revolutionary Greek Government, which came to power after the defeat in Asia Minor, to negotiate the terms of the agreement. The Ankara government was represented by Ismet Pasha, a skilful politician very conscious of the ⁶⁴ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 10960, F. Nansen, ‘Note on the Exchange of Prisoners of War and Civil Hostages’, 9–22 Oct. 1922. ⁶⁵ Ladas, Exchange, 434–5.

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Turks’ military victory. The final peace treaty was signed, after protracted discussions, in July 1923.⁶⁶ The most important aspect of these negotiations for the historical evolution of Greece and Turkey was the Convention of Lausanne (signed on 30 January 1923), which concerned the compulsory exchange of populations between the two countries, and according to which Greece renounced the right to repatriate the Greek Orthodox populations which had left Asia Minor and eastern Thrace. Greece also agreed to the compulsory emigration of members of the Greek Orthodox Church still resident in Turkey with the exception of the établis⁶⁷ of Constantinople and of the islands of Imbros and Tenedos. In exchange, Turkey agreed to the compulsory emigration of Turkish Muslims from Greece, with the exception of those resident in western Thrace. All Muslims of Albanian ethnicity who lived in Greece were also exempted from the population exchange.⁶⁸ During the negotiations leading up to the signing of the agreement, Venizelos endeavoured to have the clause regarding the evacuation of Greeks from Constantinople removed. Had the Turks been successful in insisting on such a term, the refugee problem would have been rendered impossible to resolve, as the total number of Turks in Greece amounted to no more than the Greeks in Constantinople alone. It was not possible, therefore, for Greece to consent to the evacuation of the Greek inhabitants of Constantinople for, in such an event, the very idea of exchanging populations as a solution to the refugee question would be rendered meaningless. Furthermore, the Greek argument was that the evacuation of eastern Thrace provided reasonable proof that Greece had no further political or national intentions in the region. Fortunately for the Greeks ⁶⁶ Psomiades, Eastern Question, 60–8. Llewellyn Smith, Ionian Vision, 312–36. ⁶⁷ The term établis—according to Article 2 of the exchange of population convention, signed in Lausanne on 30 Jan. 1923—defined the categories of Greeks who were recognized as ‘established in Constantinople’. A divergence of views between Greece and Turkey as to the legal interpretation of the term led to protracted negotiations between the two countries. On 21 Feb. 1925 the Permanent Court of International Justice recognized as établis those who resided ‘within the boundaries of the Prefecture of the city of Constantinople, as defined by the law of 1912 and had arrived there, no matter whence they came, at some date previous to October 30, 1918, and have had, prior to that date, the intention of residing there for an extended period.’ See Alexis Alexandris, The Greek Minority of Istanbul and Greek–Turkish Relations 1918–1974 (Athens, 1992), 112–17. ⁶⁸ For the text of the Convention (in French) see Ladas, Exchange, 787–94; also Parliamentary Papers, 1923, 1, 817–27, with an English translation; D. Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 61–71; Sir John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem; Report of a Survey, Royal Institute of International Affairs (Oxford, 1939), 15.

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in Constantinople, in the case of failure to agree on the part of Turkey, the final decision rested with the Allied Powers.⁶⁹ At the same time, the Greek government indicated to Dr Nansen that it was impossible to accept any negotiations on a compulsory exchange of populations which would include the Greeks of Constantinople. Nansen, who held the same view, had already laid it before the Allied High Commissioners to ensure their support. The solution that was being contemplated became publicly known in the countries concerned, while the negotiations over a compulsory transfer of populations as a means of solving the serious refugee problem and restoring peace were still in process in Geneva. In Greece, the response of both the Greek refugees and the Turkish population involved was immediate: public demonstrations were organized all over the country condemning the inhumanity of the forcible uprooting of millions of people from their lands and homes; petitions were made to the League of Nations, and to the governments of the Allied Powers in the hope that by their intervention this decision would be averted. The refugees from Asia Minor, eastern Thrace, and Pontus were strongly opposed to their compulsory uprooting from their ancestral homes because they hoped that they would one day be allowed to return to their birthplace, as had happened with a considerable number of the refugees of the 1914–17 period. The protest of the refugee demonstration in Thessaloniki reads as follows: We declare that no violent treaty will stifle the irrefutable right of millions of native refugees, whether Greek, Armenian, Circassian, Levantine and even Turkish, to return to their hearths whence they have been uprooted by the unheard of Turkish brutality. We plead to the sense of justice of the Allies, of the Greek government and of the civilised world in general and beg them to make recommendations to their representatives in Lausanne not to sign this treaty.⁷⁰

Similarly the Turks in many cities in Macedonia protested against the exchange convention and petitioned to be allowed to stay in their birthplace.⁷¹ ⁶⁹ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), Telegram No. 11618, E. Venizelos, Paris 19 Oct. –1 Nov. 1922. ⁷⁰ Ephimeris ton Balkanion, 10 Jan. 1923. Reprinted in I. Koliopoulos and I. Chassiotis (eds.), I Neoteri kai Synchroni Makedonia (Modern and Contemporary Macedonia) (Thessaloniki 1992), 393. ⁷¹ See e.g. AYE, 1923/A/5/VI/1, No. 3006/927, A. Lampros (GGM) to Alexandris (GFM), Thessaloniki, 17–30 Jan. 1923 about the demonstration held in Langada by Muslim Turks; cf. Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 65–6.

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They were not the only ones, however, who objected to the compulsory character of the agreement. Most contemporary outside observers condemned it as a violation of human rights.⁷² Lord Curzon, the British Foreign Secretary and a leading negotiator at the Peace Conference in Lausanne, conscious of the implications of this decision, regretted that ‘the solution now being worked out should be the compulsory exchange of populations—a thoroughly bad and vicious solution, for which the world would pay a heavy penalty for a hundred years to come’.⁷³ The scheme was defended, however, as the only practical solution and the only guarantee for peace in the Near East. Greco-Turkish rivalries and atrocities committed by both sides during the war had made the coexistence of Christians and Muslims impossible. Above all, the Turks’ nationalistic zeal for the Turkification of their country excluded any possibility of the return of refugees. It soon became apparent that the Greek minority which had remained in Anatolia and Constantinople would no longer be tolerated on Turkish soil. The Turkish nationalist government in early October 1922 had ruled out a return to Turkey of the Greeks who had already fled before the Kemalist forces.⁷⁴ Refet Pasha, Governor of Thrace, informed Nansen that the government agreed in principle with the exchange of populations, excluding western Thrace. Moreover, on 31 October Hamid Bey, who had been empowered by the Council of Ministers at Ankara to conduct the negotiations with the High Commissioner of the League, informed him that he was permitted to negotiate ‘on the basis of a total and enforced exchange of populations, from which the population of Constantinople would not be excepted’.⁷⁵ Kemal had announced to Nansen that a delegation of Turks from Macedonia had requested not to be included in the exchange as they desired to remain in Greece. Were the evacuation of Macedonia not to be general or compulsory, the Turkish population would not have left. In the mean time Nansen had been informed that Kemal had ordered the complete evacuation of Christians from Asia Minor and as a result thousands of Greeks and Armenians were already heading for the coast. Their relief ⁷² Sir Horace Rumbold, British High Commissioner at Constantinople, criticized the intransigence of the Turkish Government over making the exchange mandatory: see C. Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’, 253; S. Seferiades, ‘L’ Échange des populations’, in Académie Internationale de la Haye, Recueil des Cours, 24 (1928), 371 ; Ladas, Exchange, 340. ⁷³ British Blue Book, Turkey, No. 1, 1923, p. 212. ⁷⁴ See C. Svolopoulos, I apophasi gia tin ypochreotiki antallagi ton plithysmon metaxy Ellados kai Tourkias (The Decision on the Compulsory Exchange of Populations between Greece and Turkey) (Thessaloniki, 1981), 17–19; Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 63. ⁷⁵ LN, Official Journal, 4th year (Jan. 1923), 126–32.

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and transportation to Greece augmented the problem faced by philanthropic organizations and Nansen’s office.⁷⁶ Moreover, in the Pontus region, the Kemalists had warned the representative of the American organization for the relief of orphans that if the 20,000-odd Greek and Armenian orphans who had been gathered together along the coastal regions were not evacuated within ten days, they would be put to the sword. Nansen made every effort to have hundreds of thousands of women and children from the Black Sea region transported immediately. The Turkish authorities had made it quite clear that otherwise they would be moved inland and exterminated. In a bid to deter the Turks, Nansen suggested that Greece might possibly respond to such a course of action by persecuting Muslims. Kemal’s representative was quick to respond that in such an eventuality his government would order the immediate slaughter of all Greeks remaining in Turkey, including those of Constantinople. Nansen urged the Western Powers to give the matter their most serious attention and to take every possible measure to persuade Turkey to allow at least a portion of the refugee population to stay temporarily on Turkish soil.⁷⁷ In fact, as more than 800,000 Greeks had already fled their homes, the Convention of Lausanne merely established and ratified an already existing state of affairs.⁷⁸ For those who were to be exchanged, the organized flight under the supervision of the League of Nations was the only possible way to protect—even to a limited extent—their material lot, by enabling the refugees to depart with their movable property. The Greek populations of Asia Minor and eastern Thrace who had left their homes could be compensated only through a bilateral agreement which would bind Turkey to do so. Nansen wrote on that: I believe it may be possible to induce the Turkish Government to sign immediately an agreement for the exchange of population and to carry the exchange through in an orderly way which will guarantee each individual citizen full compensation for the property which he leaves. The treaty required will differ from previous exchange treaties in that it will give each party the right compulsorily to expel subjects of ethnic minorities. In my view they should only have this power, however, when they have registered the property belonging to these ⁷⁶ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), Telegraph No. 5390 by Simopoulos, Constantinople 22 Oct.–4 Nov. 1922. ⁷⁷ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), Ii 11988, GFM to Greek Legations in Paris, London, and Rome, 27 Oct. 1922. ⁷⁸ A. A. Pallis, ‘The Exchange of Populations in the Balkans’, Nineteenth Century and After, 97 (1925), 376–83.

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citizens, in order that valuation and compensation may be carried through afterwards. Registration should, however, be carried through with sufficient speed to enable the removal of Turkish citizens from Greece to begin with practically no delay, so that the empty houses in eastern Thrace can be filled with Turks and the houses they leave in Macedonia be filled with Greeks before winter begins.⁷⁹

Venizelos also stressed that without the immediate evacuation of Turks from the northern provinces and the islands the problems of sheltering and even more of permanently settling the Greek refugees would remain unresolved. The Turkish populations in question came to about 350,000, and between 500,000 and 700,000 Greek refugees could be resettled on the evacuation of the former. For this reason Venizelos proposed that, should Nansen fail to gain the consent of the Turkish government for the immediate transportation of the Turkish populations, then the Greek government should undertake their compulsory evacuation under the supervision of the League of Nations and that the transportation of all their movable property should be facilitated as well. The latter measure was added to make the whole project (which by its very nature was quite inhuman) generally more acceptable, particularly since Greece’s image had suffered in the eyes of the world as a result of the atrocities committed by the Greek forces in Asia Minor. Venizelos also added that he was ready to undertake the ‘paternity’ of the proposal for the compulsory exchange and the inevitable political cost it would exact, and to defend it personally in the international forum.⁸⁰ The most controversial aspect of the Lausanne Convention was the fact that the exchange of populations was made compulsory and both Greek and Turkish delegates at Lausanne held Nansen responsible for the idea. Although Nansen eventually did indeed support obligatory exchange, he disclaimed authorship of the recommendation.⁸¹Third-party delegates such as Lord Curzon and Sir H. Rumbold blamed the Turkish government. An abundance of historical literature has since been devoted to the controversy. Greek historians, including Ladas, Psomiades, Pentzopoulos, Petropulos, and Svolopoulos, present detailed accounts on the negotiations for the population exchange. Ladas, Petropulos, and Svolopoulos conclude that Venizelos first suggested a compulsory ⁷⁹ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 173, Fridtjof Nansen: Note on the Exchange of Greek and Turkish populations in Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor, 22 Oct. 1922. ⁸⁰ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), No. 3435, E. Venizelos to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, London, 17 Oct. 1922. ⁸¹ LN, Official Journal, 4th year, Annexe 471, Report by Dr F. J. Nansen on refugees in the Near East, 13 Mar. 1923, 383–84.

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exchange, whereas Pentzopoulos is adamant that it was Nansen. Other scholars place the blame on Turkey for not allowing the return of its Greek minority, and Pearson in fact went as far as to state that ‘there was never any doubt that the convention was a cynical attempt by Turkey to legitimize the forcible expulsion of its Greek minority’.⁸² It seems that the idea for the exchange came almost simultaneously to the minds of both Nansen and Venizelos, who, being well aware of Turkey’s irreversible decision to get rid of all alien elements, had foreseen that the repatriation of the Greek refugees was impossible, and that were the refugees to survive famine, cold, and disease, they had to be resettled in the lands of northern Greece. The compulsory character, although inhuman, could guarantee the expulsion of Muslims from Macedonia without involving the two governments in a new war. As we have already noted, Venizelos showed himself willing to accept responsibility for the idea of compulsory population exchanges throughout this critical period. What mattered most of all was that the adoption of such a solution could well lead to lasting peace in the region. Moreover, the unmixing of people in the regions of the former Ottoman Empire which had been centres of ‘discord and disorder’ for over a decade was supported by the Great Powers. Apart from their humanitarian concern about the lives of thousands of Christians who had remained in Anatolia, they were eager to ratify at Lausanne the political results of the victorious Turkish nationalists, and favoured the transfer of populations with the aim of eliminating any possibility of future conflicts. The strategic position of Turkey was of great importance for their political and economic considerations in the Near East. After the war, there was a shift of British interests southward to Suez, Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq. A powerful and friendly Turkey could be used as an ‘effective barrier to Bolshevik Russia’, preserve the international rights of navigation through the Dardanelles, and allow the Western powers, and in particular Britain and France, to maintain control of the Black Sea and the Straits.⁸³ The exchange was to take place from 1 May 1923. A Mixed Commission of Greek, Turkish, and European representatives was constituted to supervise and facilitate the process of migration, as Nansen ⁸² C. Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’, 253; cf. Lord Curzon’s statement that ‘to say the compulsory exchange was a Greek suggestion is ridiculous’ since it was enforced by the Turkish Government, cited by Giorgos Kritikos, ‘Motives for Compulsory Population Exchange in the Aftermath of the Greek–Turkish War (1922–1923)’, DKMS, 13 (1999–2000), 216. ⁸³ Ibid. 222–3.

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had proposed. The same commission would assess and liquidate all movable and immovable property of those to be exchanged in order that thay could be indemnified eventually. This task was particularly difficult since the number of persons involved, all Christians and Muslims who had migrated from 18 October 1912 onwards, was estimated at about 1,700,000 in various regions from the Adriatic to the Caucasus. Most of them had no title-deeds to their property and those who had already emigrated could not provide any reliable information to the Commission. Thus various measures were applied during the 1920s for the evaluation of the properties of the refugees in both countries. The convention provided that the exchange was to take place from 1 May 1923, but this was altered by agreement to May 1924. From December 1923, Greeks from Anatolia who were to be exchanged began moving towards the ports of the Black Sea or the Cilician coast. They remained there in camps in destitute conditions, most of them dependent on the sparse relief provided by international organizations and, consequently, it became crucial for them to be sent to Greece as soon as possible. Great difficulties ensued concerning the transportation of the refugees because of the lack of any preparatory work either by the delegations of the two countries or by their respective governments. The transporting of the exchanged populations was completed in 1925. The compulsory transfer of whole populations from one country to the other was an innovation introduced to solve a troublesome ‘minority’ problem in areas where the population was ethnically intermingled.⁸⁴ Charles Howland, Chairman of the Refugee Settlement Commission, pointed out that it was also ‘unique’ in its character owing to a combination of four elements: ‘first the “swarming” of two human hives was compulsory and resulted from military events; second, no economic motives were directly involved, no impulse but that of nationalism; third, populations were uprooted which had been indigenous, in the one case for four centuries and in the other for thirty centuries; and, finally, the scale was unprecedented.’⁸⁵ ⁸⁴ The compulsory character of the Convention of Lausanne was for the first time institutionalized: see Svolopoulos, I apophasi gia tin ypochreotiki antallagi ton plithysmon, 5–6. The exchange of populations as a solution for minority problems in the Balkans, where different ethnic groups were intermixed, had already been adopted in the Convention of Neuilly, signed by Bulgaria and Greece on 27 Nov. 1919. This bilateral agreement, however, provided for the reciprocal emigration of their racial minorities on a voluntary basis: Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 54–5 and ch. 7. ⁸⁵ Howland, ‘Greece and her Refugees’, 613.

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The exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey inaugurated a new period not only for the countries concerned but also more generally for international diplomacy regarding minorities.⁸⁶ This solution seemed to provide a viable method of bringing peace and security through the co-operation of nations and was sponsored by the League of Nations, even though it was contradictory to the idea of minority rights. As Jacob Robinson commented later, Perhaps the most drastic repudiation of the purpose of the Minorities treaties was the bilateral agreement between Greece and Turkey concluded on 30/1/1923, during the Lausanne Conference, as a part of the general Balkan peace settlement. This agreement, by providing for the compulsory exchange of Greek and Turkish populations, was in flagrant contradiction to the basic principle of international protection for minorities. Nevertheless, it carried the full sanction of the League.⁸⁷

It is not surprising, therefore, that this was the last population exchange programme to be sponsored by the League of Nations, which henceforth inclined towards solutions of minority problems through the international system institutionalized by the Minorities Treaties.⁸⁸ ⁸⁶ A. M de Zayas, ‘A Historical Survey of Twentieth Century Expulsions’, in A. C. Bramwell (ed.), Refugees in the Age of Total War (London, 1988), 18. ⁸⁷ Jacob Robinson, Were the Minorities Treaties a Failure ? Institute of Jewish Affairs (New York, 1943), 57. ⁸⁸ For the international system regarding minorities’ rights, see Miriam Jane Aukerman, ‘Minority Protection under the League of Nations’, M.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 1993; also Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’, 256 and 140, citing R. Pearson, National Minorities in Eastern Europe 1848–1945 (London, 1983), 141–2; Mazower, Dark Continent, 43–63.

PART II REFUGEE RESET TLEMENT IN MACEDONIA

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3 Establishment of the Refugee Settlement Commission: Settlement Policies in Macedonia The immediate result of the Greek military disaster of August 1922 was the displacement of over a million destitute civilians. In the autumn of 1922, after the defeat of the Greek armies by the Kemalist forces in Asia Minor, hundreds of thousands of Anatolian Greeks fled the region for Greece. Their number was soon augmented by the arrival of Thracian Greeks (more than 250,000 persons) who evacuated eastern Thrace in the late autumn of 1922.¹ Subsequently, under the Convention of Lausanne, this exodus was formalized and in addition hundreds of thousands more Christians were forced to abandon their ancestral hearths in Asia Minor and migrate to Greece. The combined result for Greece, the population of which was approximately 5 million, was the need to integrate more than 1.2 million destitute refugees, mostly women and children. The exact number of the Orthodox Anatolian and Thracian refugees who flooded into Greece is difficult to estimate because reliable statistical records do not exist.² According to the general population census, taken in Greece on 5 May 1928, the total number of refugees was 1,221,849 persons (of whom 1,104,217 were from Anatolia and eastern Thrace, and 117,633 from Bulgaria, the Caucasus, and elsewhere) divided into ¹ The uprooting of Thracian Greeks started in late Oct. 1922, when the Greek army, which had occupied eastern Thrace since 1919, was ordered to withdraw to the Evros river. The evacuees had the protection of the army and were thus spared the massacres and violence suffered by the Asia Minor refugees and they managed to carry with them part of their movable property. See Psomiades, Eastern Question, 39–50. ² In 1926 the estimate of the RSC placed the number of refugees at about 1.4 million persons: see LN, Greek Refugee Settlement (translation) (Geneva, 1926), 15.

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673,025 urban refugees and 578,824 rural refugees.³ This official figure is undoubtedly lower than the actual number of destitute people who arrived in Greece and received aid. The census figures do not take account of high mortality rates among refugees and emigration from Greece between 1922 and 1928.⁴ The change brought about by the war and the new realities of Greek society post-1922 were clear to see in the cities, harbours, railway stations, and thoroughfares of Thrace and eastern Macedonia. Many places on the mainland and on the Aegean islands were overwhelmed by waves of refugees whereby their populations as much as doubled within days. The government quickly naturalized the refugees—and so these people did not face the legal disabilities that the two other refugee groups of the 1920s, namely the Armenian and Russian refugees, had experienced in Greece and Europe—but still faced the prospect of resettling over a million destitute and homeless people.⁵ The presence of this large number of needy people was a moral and practical problem whose solution was clearly beyond the limited resources of the Greek state. ³ Of the total number of 1,104,217 persons: 626,954 (including 35,000 of Armenian origin) came from Asia Minor; 182,169 from Pontos; 256,635 from eastern Thrace; and 38,459 from Constantinople. See Geniki Statistiki Hypiresia tis Ellados, Statistika apotelesmata tis apografis tou plithysmou tis Ellados tis 15–16 Maiou 1928 (General Statistical Department of Greece, Statistical Results of the 15–16 May 1928 census of Greece), iv (Athens, 1930), 41. ⁴ Paschalis M. Kitromilides and Alexis Alexandris, ‘Ethnic Survival, Nationalism and Forced Migration: The Historical Demography of the Greek Community of Asia Minor at the Close of the Ottoman Era’, DKMS, 5 (1984–5), 9–44. According to the authors’ estimate, about 75,000 persons died in Greece between 1922 and 1928 because of extreme deprivation and illness, while about 66,000 Greek refugees emigrated to Egypt, Western Europe, and the United States: p. 34. ⁵ A core condition of the Convention of Lausanne was that refugees would be granted citizenship and recognized as equal in every way to the citizens of the society into which they would be inducted. Article 7 concerned population exchange, and stated that anyone abandoning one country would automatically be granted citizenship of the other country on arrival. Statute 12 of 25 Aug. 1923 regarding ‘the mass naturalisation of Greek refugees arriving in Greece from Turkey’ stated that ‘those Turkish citizens adhering to the Greek Orthodox faith who left their lands between 18/10/1912 and 30/01/1923, as part of the voluntary population exchange of Greeks and Turks, and moved to Greece, and who did not acquire Greek nationality in some other manner, are considered to have acquired it ipso facto from 30/01/1930 onwards . . . The names of those acquiring Greek nationality in this way are to be recorded ex officio on the electoral rolls and register of males by the Mayors and Village Presidents of their new place of abode’: Sir John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem, 235–6. For the legal disabilities of other refugee groups see Claudena M. Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’; E. Voutira, ‘Population Transfers and Resettlement Policies in Inter-War Europe: The Case of Asia Minor Refugees in Macedonia from an International and National Perspective’, in P. Mackridge and E. Yannakakis, Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford, 1997), 116–18.

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Both civilians and local authorities received the desperate refugees hospitably, irrespective of ethnic and other considerations. It was not long, however, before this unforeseeable overcrowding led to problems of sustenance and sanitation. Appalling living conditions exposed both locals and refugees to the real immediate dangers of epidemics. There were also fears that the arrival of so many refugees would lead to a rise in crime. Consequently, the problem of absorbing these refugees, as vast, complex and costly an undertaking as it was for Greece at this juncture, needed to be resolved without delay. Relief in the form of money, material, and personnel was initially forwarded by various governments, primarily from the USA and Britain, but also from Canada, Australia, and most European countries, in response to the appeals for assistance.⁶ For eight months—from October 1922 to June 1923—the American Red Cross sent representatives to Greece and assisted the refugees by supplying food and inoculations, caring for orphans, and running health care units. The Greek government was at the same time trying to alleviate the sufferings of the refugees by organizing charities in Athens and other reception centres, supplying small relief allowances, and accommodating them in public and requisitioned buildings. However, the Greek private organizations, such as the Refugee Treasury Fund, despite their efforts to meet the most urgent needs of the refugees, had obviously very limited resources to deal with the matter. The problem was of such complexity and extent that, by early 1923, it had become evident that the task of assisting and, even more so, of resettling and integrating over a million refugees was far beyond the capabilities of charitable organizations working on their own. A large amount of capital was requested for a durable solution of the refugee problem. When in June 1923, the American Red Cross made known its intention of withdrawing its support, Greece was faced with the urgent need to raise funds for the maintenance of the refugees while tackling the remainder of its huge social and economic problems.⁷ It was in no way feasible for the financially depleted Greek state to have borne the burden of refugee rehabilitation alone. Greece was an underdeveloped country, financially exhausted by ten years of continuous war, with concomitant high taxation and inflation, and torn by internal political dissensions. The Greek government had spent about £4 million ⁶ For a detailed account on the work of the international philanthropic organizations in Greece see R. E. Hibbard, ‘International Settlement of Greek Refugees 1922–1932’, MA dissertation, University of Illinois, 1933. ⁷ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 75–82.

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sterling for relief and temporary settlement of the refugees during the first two years, and these expenditures had brought the country almost to the end of its financial sources. It was clear that it lacked the large amounts of capital required for the settlement of the refugees.⁸ The economy of the country had been supervised by an International Financial Committee since the defeat in the war with Turkey in 1897, a fact clearly indicating Greece’s economic dependence on the Great Powers of Europe.⁹ Furthermore, the administrative bureaucracy of the government was not organized in such a way as to allow her to cope with such contingencies as the influx of the refugees who required permanent settlement. Shortage of staff, office equipment, poor communications, and lack of resources indicated that ‘the problem was going to drag on for years’.¹⁰ The gravity of the situation, in both humanitarian terms and its political ramifications, required assistance from the international organizations. Nansen had already pointed to the possibility of refugees becoming a destabilizing factor not only for the society and economy of Greece but more generally for the neighbouring countries of the Near East.¹¹ The League of Nations was the only organization in a position to undertake the planning and implementation of a practicable solution to the problem. The plight of the Asia Minor refugees was a challenge to the ‘public- spirited’ politicians at Geneva. Moreover, the fact that the exchange of populations was carried out under their supervision increased their responsibility for the fate of the Greek refugees. However, the League of Nations was reluctant to undertake the financing of refugee relief and resettlement. Funds had to be solicited from governments, banks, and individual economic organizations on an ad hoc basis.¹² For the Greek government, and in keeping with the Convention of Lausanne, the solution to the refugee resettlement problem was ⁸ LN, ‘Minutes of the Twenty-Ninth Session of the Council held at Geneva from Wednesday 11 to Tuesday 17 June 1924’, Official Journal, 4th year (1924), 907. ⁹ Public finances had deteriorated since 1920. The deficit for the financial year 1920–1 was 964 m. drachmas, for 1921–2 it was 1,756 m. drachmas, and it was estimated that for the financial year 1922–3 the deficit would amount to 3,274 m. drachmas. Martin Hill, ‘The League of Nations and the Work of Refugee Settlement and Financial Reconstruction in Greece, 1922–1930’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, 34/2 (1931), 265–83 (267). ¹⁰ This expression was used by Haskell, the American Red Cross Commissioner for Greece, in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the organization (dated Athens, 29 Jan. 1923), to describe the situation, and explain the reason for which they should discontinue relief operations in Greece; cited in Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 78. ¹¹ A. Tounta-Fergadi, To prosfygiko daneio tou 1924 (The Refugee Loan of 1924) (Thessaloniki, 1986) 44, 124. ¹² Atle Grahl-Madsen, ‘The League of Nations and the Refugees’, in The League of Nations in Retrospect (Proceedings of the Symposium) (New York, 1983), 362.

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complementary to that of multi-ethnic Macedonia. Refugee resettlement along with land reform in Macedonia was so colossal an undertaking that the existing state organization was simply incapable of coping with the demands and the inherent problems of the project. None the less, the interest alone on whatever finances Greece could have raised on her own for a scheme of such proportions would have been crippling to her already devastated economy. It was in view of such considerations that Nicolaos Politis put forward as a proposal to the League of Nations Financial Committee what Nansen had already reported to them as his evaluation of the situation: that it was ‘in the interests of the other Members of the League that an international loan should be granted to the Greek people to enable them to re-establish on a firm footing their national economy.’¹³ In early 1923 the Greek government turned to international organizations for financial support. Venizelos, after consulting with Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary General of the League of Nations, put forward a proposal to the Council of the League at its February meeting for a loan and asked for both their ‘moral support and technical assistance’.¹⁴ In response to the urgency of the problem with which Greece was suddenly confronted, and following the timely initiative of Dr Nansen, the Council referred the matter to the Financial Committee, the technical organ of the League responsible for drawing up schemes for the economic reconstruction of Austria and Hungary. Two delegations were dispatched to Athens: one financial, to evaluate the situation, and more specifically the guarantees which the government could offer for the proper administration of the loan; and one in a technical capacity to draw up a plan for the settlement of the refugees. The Council of the League of Nations was sceptical, specifically about the material securities that Greece could offer for the proper floating of a refugee loan because of the near bankrupt state of the country. Moreover, reservations on the part of the League of Nations were due to the political instability which might have caused mismanagement of the loan, diverted part of it to military purposes, or affected the sources of revenue offered as a guarantee. The precarious political climate further generated the fear of and the need for safeguards against the possible repudiation by subsequent governments of any agreement reached. It was finally decided that an independent body should be formed for the purpose. ¹³ Hill, ‘Refugee Settlement’, 267. ¹⁴ LNA/R1763/25486 ‘Record of Conversation between Venizelos, Michalakopoulos and Drummond’ of 25 Jan. 1923.

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The problem was overcome by the Resolution of 5 July 1923, according to which the Council of the League of Nations was to supervise the administration of the funds, in order to safeguard the interests of the foreign creditors, as well as to facilitate the floating of the loan by the Greek government.¹⁵ Furthermore, the Council sought to entrust an international Refugee Settlement Commission with monitoring the programme and administrating the loan, as well as the material means (lands and houses) that the Greek government was obliged to provide for the settlement of the refugees. The two delegations submitted their reports to a special sub-committee consisting of the British, French, and Italian members of the League Council, and a representative from Greece. Professor Andreas Andreades was the Greek representative who was sent to Geneva to negotiate with the League of Nations over the refugee loan.¹⁶ On 9 July 1923 the main lines of a settlement project were approved by the Sub-Committee in recognition of the immense problem in Greece. These included the provision of the financial resources by means of a loan and the establishment of a Greek Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) to carry out the settlement (Protocol of Geneva, 27/11/1924). The League of Nations was to co-ordinate relief and resettlement but not provide the funds. However, by placing the programme for resettlement under its aegis, it provided the creditors with a guarantee that the loans would be spent for the purpose for which they were contracted and not be diverted for military or other purposes.¹⁷ By the autumn of 1923, and on the proviso that such an independent body would be established for the supervision of the resettlement scheme, negotiations for a loan were able to get under way. The RSC duly began to take form and, with it, the range of its rights and obligations as well as those of the Greek government. The Council of the League retained the ¹⁵ See n.10, above Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 80–1; Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens, 115. ¹⁶ Panagiotis Dertilis, La Reconstruction financière de la Grèce et la Société des Nations (Paris, 1929), 130–1. ¹⁷ The settlement programme and the obligations of the Greek Government were contained in two documents: the ‘Protocol Relating to the Settlement of Refugees in Greece and the Creation for this Purpose of a Refugees Settlement Commission’ (29 Sept. 1923) and the ‘Organic Statutes of the Greek Refugees Settlement Commission’. A £6 m. loan was authorized by the Protocol to finance refugee settlement, a sum regarded by many as insufficient. The agreement was completed later in the Protocol of Geneva (27 Nov. 1924). These two Protocols were ratified by Greece, the first by the Decree of 13 Oct. 1923 and the second by Decree 24 Oct. 1924 of the Fourth Constituent Assembly: see Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 82. For the text of both documents see ibid., appendix II, pp. 264–72. Also LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, translation (Geneva, 1926), 7–8.

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right to settle any kind of difference that might possibly arise thenceforth. Once established, the RSC made redundant the various kindred ministerial bodies which had been operative since the end of the Balkan Wars, and began to implement its programme with a free hand. Because of the magnitude of the refugee population, the resettlement project had to be group-orientated and moulded to the development needs of the country. The RSC was authorized to formulate and execute a long-range plan for the establishment of the refugees in productive work, agricultural or other, by using for this aim the land which the Greek government was obliged to transfer to it and the funds placed at its disposal. Charity or temporary relief were explicitly excluded from its function. In the mean time, relief from the American Red Cross and other American organizations began to be reduced considerably, so that the matter acquired even greater urgency. Even if the scheme were to be granted the sanction of the League of Nations, the Greek government would still have to overcome the problem of securing a large enough loan. The newly established RSC began its arduous and complex task in the shadow of the political instability of late 1923. None the less, with the support of the League of Nations, the RSC initially managed to procure sufficient finances to meet the needs of the resettlement programme for 1923–4, even without the security of a long-term loan. Innumerable other problems, and in particular those involving the finer details of land ownership, had also to be resolved on the way. Most of these obstacles were surmounted, without unwarranted complications, through the close co-operation of the Settlement Commission and the Greek government. Once the political air had cleared, and thanks to the splendid work of Henry Morgenthau, the first Chairman of the RSC, these early successes were decisive in gaining the Financial Committee’s final approval for a long-term loan later that year. Henry Morgenthau, a progressive American, was well known in Europe as an active politician with considerable philanthropic work for refugees to his credit. The American Committee for Relief in the Near East—which later became known as the Near East Relief—had been formed on his own initiative and operated through his office in Constantinople. When he was ambassador in Constantinople at the time of the Armenian massacres, he had appealed for a private fund-raising effort to assist the remaining Armenians.¹⁸ Immediately after his appointment as Chairman ¹⁸ Marrus, The Unwanted, 83.

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of the RSC and prior to appearing before the Council of the League, Morgenthau tried to prepare the ground for the negotiations with the Western creditors. In Athens he urged the government to spend the £1 million provided from Britain to settle 125,000 refugees in productive work in order to have evidence to convince international bankers that the same could be done for a million and a quarter refugees by the provision of a loan of £10 million. He also asked the editors of the most important newspapers to promote the work already done as well as the confidence that Greece would be able to tackle successfully the refugee problem with foreign assistance. Morgenthau also met in London with Montague Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, and Sir Otto Niemeyer, Controller of Finance, who initially were sceptical about a big loan because of the instability in Greek politics. In order to obtain their support, Morgenthau stressed that any Greek government would support the RSC and emphasized in an announcement to the British press that ‘this is a business proposition and not charity’.¹⁹ On 1 December 1923 the Chairman of the RSC reported to the Council: ‘The start of the activities of the RSC presents itself as a step of an urgent need on account of the financial inefficiency of the State to continue to meet the great expenses necessary for the refugee settlement, and the need of finding immediately means of employment of the refugees, in view of the fact that if this agricultural year goes by there will not be any possibility of their financial recovery.’²⁰ In the course of the negotiations over the loan, which lasted over a year, Morgenthau worked in collaboration with Sir Arthur Salter, the British economist who headed the Economic and Finance Sections of the League of Nations. Salter argued for the loan as well on the basis of the economic benefits it could bring to the Greek economy, by helping the government to balance its budget and achieve currency stability.²¹ The fruit of Morgenthau’s negotiations in England was a second advance in May of £1 million, which together with the advances from the National Bank of Greece enabled the RSC to continue its work until the end of the year.²² Improvements in the domestic political situation enabled Greece to apply to the Council for an amendment of Article 5 of the Protocol in order to permit it to float a loan of £10 million and not £6 million. In September 1924, after an address by ¹⁹ ‘Help for Greek Refugees’, Daily News, 2 Nov. 1923, cited in Skran, ‘International Refugee Regime’, 176; L. P. Cassimatis, American Influence in Greece: 1917–1929 (Kent, Oh., 1988), 159. ²⁰ LNA, C 129.1, Memorandum No. 4, 1 Dec. 1923. ²¹ FO 371/12162/C3215 ²² Tounta-Fergadi, To prosfygiko daneio tou 1924, 119 ff.

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Morgenthau to the Council in which he gave ‘his full approval to the Greek request’, and the submission of a memorandum by Greece offering more guarantees in addition to those included in the Protocol of Geneva of 27 September 1923, the Financial Committee of the League issued a report favouring the raising of loan of up to £10 million.²³ The terms and conditions of the Greek Refugee Settlement long-term loan were duly settled and it was issued a few months later, in December 1924. The Greek government, under the auspices of the League of Nations, floated a loan of £12.3 million, raised in London (Hambros Bank: £7.5 million); Athens (National Bank of Greece: £2.5 million), and New York (Speyer & Company’s Bank of New York: £2.3 million).²⁴ A very important feature of the loan is that it was contracted at an extremely high interest rate, despite the fact that it was designated for a humanitarian purpose. While the prevailing interest rate was 4–5 per cent for government loans, the Greek refugee loan real rate was as high as 8.71 per cent with the addition of commissions and duties to the nominal rate of 7 per cent, a fact that called into question its ‘humanitarian’ character.²⁵ However, Salter argued that ‘hundreds of thousands must have perished of starvation if the League had not responded to the appeal made to it.’²⁶ The funds of the first loan, however, proved to be insufficient for the completion of the RSC’s scheme and negotiations started as early as 1925 for a supplementary one. The so-called ‘stabilization’ loan ²³ ‘The Settlement of Greek Refugees’, Monthly Summary of the League of Nations. Supplement (Nov. 1924), 20–5. ²⁴ The securities offered by Greece equalled 1,213,974,963 drachmas and exceeded by five times the amount necessary for the service of the loan. They consisted of certain revenues under the control of the International Financial Commission: I. Public revenues free of all charges: a. Monopolies of salt, matches, playing cards, cigarette paper, and tobacco monopolies in the new provinces; b. Stamp duties in the new provinces. c. New customs duties in Chania, Herakleion, Samos, Chios, Mytilene, and Syros. d. Alcohol in the whole of Greece (542,257,000 drs). II. Excess revenue after deducting the sums pledged for the servicing of prior loans (671,717,963 drs); see Cassimatis, American Influence, 160, 262 n. 29; Ladas, Exchange, 635; M. Dritsa, Viomichania kai Trapezes stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou (Industry and Banks in Inter-War Greece) (Athens, 1990), 300; Skran, ‘The International Refugee Regime’, 177. ²⁵ Dritsa, Viomichania kai Trapezes, 300; Ladas, Exchange, 635. The author criticizes the unfavourable terms of the loan and states that Greece could have probably raised such a loan without the assistance of the League of Nations. See also D. S. Stefanidis, ‘I eisroi xenon kefalaion kai ai oikonomikai kai politikai tis synepeiai’ (Inflow of Foreign Capital and its Economic and Political Consequences), in P. Vizoukidis (ed.), Epistimoniki Epetiris ekdidomeni ypo tis Scholis ton Nomikon kai Oikonomikon Epistimon (Academic Yearbook of the Faculty of Law and Economic Sciences), i, University of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki, 1930), 250–1. ²⁶ Lord Salter, Memoirs of a Public Servant (London, 1961), 183; cf. C. B. Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees (London, 1931), 230.

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of £9 million was raised in 1927 at a real interest rate of 7.05 per cent. Though a part of this loan was devoted to stabilizing the Greek currency and liquidating budget arrears of the state, one-third (£3 million) was granted to the RSC in order to complete the work of the settlement of Greek refugees.²⁷ Finally, the United States government advanced a further £2.5 million to the Greek government at an interest rate of 4 per cent, which was eventually assigned to the RSC for refugee settlement.²⁸ Greek efforts at raising a second loan were successful because the administration of the funds to be provided would be placed under the RSC’s management. An extract from a letter sent to the Commission’s chairman reads: Salter told me that they did not want Greece to try to raise a loan independently of the League. Norman’s idea and his was that advantage should be taken of the hold which the Protocol gave to try and bring Greece back to sound financial methods . . . . Norman wants loan made under League patronage— if it is made at all—and the money spent by the Commission. My own impression is that Salter and the League would like if at all possible, to try to find the money to complete our work. Salter told me it was the only League Commission, he thought, which had been favourably commented on from all quarters: it had admittedly done excellent work in difficult circumstances; and for the sake of the thing in itself, to help to stabilise the Balkans, and as a striking example of what League cooperation could effect, they would very much like to see the thing through if that were at all possible. Norman shares these views.’²⁹ ²⁷ FO 371/12165, C 10492/117/19, 14 Nov. 1927: League of Nations, ‘Greek Stabilization and Refugee Loan. Protocol and Annexes, Economic and Financial’, 1927.II.74, p. 43; Hill, ‘Refugee Settlement’, 278–9. ²⁸ Ladas, Exchange, 638; Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 89; Eddy, Greek Refugees, 63–8. For the resettlement of the refugees two more loans were contracted: in 1926 the loan for construction of the settlement of Nea Smyrni of £10 m. and in 1927 the loan for the building company Tekton of 100 m. drachmas: Dritsa, Viomichania kai Trapezes, 299. ²⁹ LNA, C 129, Letter to Howland, 27 June 1926; the Council of the League of Nations accepted, on the recommendation of the Financial Committee, the application made by the Greek government for the issue of a new loan to meet the requirement of the country’s financial reconstruction and of completing the settlement of the refugees, because the policy-makers were aware of ‘the political and social importance of the Commission’s work’. FO371/12165, C 10118/117/19, League of Nations, ‘Settlement of Greek Refugees and Greek Financial Reconstruction. Extract from minutes of the sixth meeting of the 48th session of the Council’. Moreover, they wished to preclude the possibility of a new dictatorship that might destabilize the situation in the Balkans. This could be prevented if financial stability had been restored. See FO371/12164. C9681/117/19, ‘For even if the American credits are secured to relieve the immediate refugee problem, they would leave untouched the general financial mess. At the worst this may mean another military dictatorship and at the best a further deterioration in the financial situation and greater deficits and almost certain inflation.’

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The purpose of the RSC was not simply to monitor and administer the resettlement of the refugees but also to function in a similar capacity as regards the financial reconstruction of the Greek national state, at a time when Greece was in a dire state of emergency. Thus the creation of the RSC was a political issue, involving power struggles between the League of Nations and the Greek government. International loans and the establishment of the RSC determined the relationship between Greece and the international economy. Because of the threat posed by the right wing and the generally unstable political climate in Greece at the time, through the establishment of the RSC, the League of Nations was able to stipulate terms that infringed national self-determination. In the process of providing the required guarantees for the proper dispensation of the loans procured with the support of the League of Nations from British and American creditors, and in particular stipulations that loan money would not be put to use for military purposes, Greece actually relinquished statutory rights. The settlement of disputes over ownership of lands by this international body was, furthermore, an intervention in domestic affairs. An important amendment to the initial Protocol was that the Commission would be allowed to settle refugees on lands of which it was not de jure owner. The Greek government had been unable to provide the Commission with ‘unencumbered lands’ in the area stipulated in the Protocol, because, when the Commission started its operation, most of the old Muslim estates and a large part of the land available in the northern provinces were still under the formal jurisdiction of the Greek–Turkish and Greek–Bulgarian Mixed Commissions for the exchange of populations. The Financial Committee of the League accepted the promise already made by the government to the Bank of England, which had advanced £1 million, that eventually the RSC would acquire clear titles and agreed that this change was necessary for the provision of funds. This enabled the RSC to exert pressure on the government to fulfil its obligation.³⁰ The Commission’s policy was often criticized and its relation with the government was disturbed by the fact that there were politicians who disliked its independent character.³¹ As Morgenthau remarked There is always a political group, strong enough to make its influence felt, which considers that the Protocol of Geneva represents an intolerable interference ³⁰ Hill, ‘Refugee Settlement’, 269–70. ³¹ General Kondylis, for example, repeatedly criticized the RSC and appealed to MPs to take steps to control its activities. See ESV, Session 204, 15 June 1925, p. 564, quoted in Marketos, ‘Papanastassion’, 314–15.

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with the sovereign rights of Greece; there are other groups which desire, almost certainly for interested motives, to secure an effective voice in the decisions of the Commission; there are place-hunters whom the Government desired to placate; there are quarrels between Ministers which retard the Commission’s work; there is little or no attempt on the part of the Government as a whole to face the real issues or to force through the administrative measures to which they are pledged.³²

It should be noted that political factors determined the floating of loans under League auspices for the settlement of refugees in Eastern Europe during the inter-war period. Greece succeeded in raising large loans because it was believed that the project for the settlement of the refugees could put an end to ethnic conflicts in the region, avert the economic disaster that the country was very likely to experience if left without foreign assistance, and create a stable and lasting peace. Other similar attempts to raise funds for refugees under League of Nations auspices were not so successful. Nansen attempted in 1925 to secure an international loan for the irrigation of the land of Erivan, the Armenian homeland in the Soviet Union, in order to settle both Armenian refugees and Soviet Armenians. This was doomed to failure because it would indirectly assist the Soviet Union. Winston Churchill, then a Treasury official, who strongly opposed Nansen’s scheme said: ‘it would be quite impossible to ask Parliament to vote money to turn Armenians into Communists and to develop any part of Soviet Russia.’³³ By way of contrast, the Greek loans minimized the communist danger and helped both Britain and the USA to establish their commercial interests in the area.³⁴ Western bankers and financiers who desired further economic penetration in the Balkan region and easier routes for the development of their own trade restricted offers of loans to Greece and Bulgaria by attaching certain conditions to them. They were keen to promote permanent peace in the region through economic development. American diplomats had made proposals to the Serbian, Bulgarian, and Greek delegations to the Lausanne Conference in 1922 on working out a common scheme to develop the regions they had annexed after the Balkan Wars. The following section of a letter regarding the proposed loan for economic development in the Balkans is illustrative: I purpose going out to the Balkans again to make another attempt to persuade the four states [Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania] to endeavour to come to a ³² Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens, 270–1. ³³ Skran, ‘Profiles’, 288. ³⁴ M. Dritsa, ‘Pisti kai Viomichania sto Mesopolemo’ (Credit and Industry in the Inter-War period), in G. T. Mavrogordatos and C. Chatziiosif, Venizelismos kai astikos eksynchronismos (Venizelism and Bourgeois Modernization) (Herakleio, 1988), 183–4.

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friendly agreement for the purpose of developing their economic resources and their means of transport, and to obtain the funds by application for a guaranteed loan through the League of Nations. . . . I am confident that there is no more hopeful way of reaching some measure of agreement amongst the Balkan states and lessening the risks of trouble in Macedonia, and the present moment when Greece is seeking a loan with the help of the League appears to be a propitious time to discuss the wider scheme. The support of our ministers at Belgrade, Sofia and Athens is essential.³⁵

A case similar to that of Greece, which illustrates the policy of the League of Nations towards refugee loans in Eastern Europe, is that of Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government, which in May 1926 appealed to the Council of the League for a £3 million loan to settle 24,000 refugee families, also received a favourable response on both humanitarian and political grounds. However, Bulgaria’s neighbours, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece, initially opposed the loan because they suspected that the Bulgarian government supported the IMRO, whose policy was encouraged by the Soviet Union. These governments agreed to support a loan for humanitarian purposes provided that refugees would not be settled near Bulgaria’s frontiers. The settlement of refugees less than 50 kilometres from Bulgaria’s frontiers was prohibited.³⁶ With the diplomatic assistance of the British government and pro-refugee politicians, mainly Albert Thomas, the French Director of the International Labour Organization, Colonel Proctor, and Fridjof Nansen, Bulgaria floated a loan of 3,325,000 pounds. In approving the loan, the Council and the Assembly acknowledged both the humanitarian and the political purposes of the loan. After the Greek–Bulgarian border incident in 1925, it had become evident that the presence of unsettled refugees on both sides of the frontier had aggravated the conflict. M. Vandervelde, Rapporteur for the Council, pointed out that ‘the establishment of refugees would improve external relations between Bulgaria and its neighbours and decrease social agitation in which refugees played a part.’ The Assembly resolution passed in favour of the scheme expressed ‘the belief that the execution of this plan will not only alleviate widespread suffering but will also benefit economic and social order within Bulgaria, and consolidate and improve the political relations of Bulgaria with neighbouring countries.’³⁷ ³⁵ FO 286/889, C 17913/17589/7, Copy, W. Theo. Rivett-Carnac to Nicolson, 22 Nov. 1924; also FO 286/889, 2170/B6/1924, Cecil to Selby, 20 Nov. 1924; FO 286/889, Copy No. 14437/F.E., Memorandum from the Department of Overseas Trade, London, 20 Dec. 1924. ³⁶ Sir John Hope Simpson, Refugee Problem, 25; Ladas, Exchange, 591–617. ³⁷ For the border incident and the intervention of the League of Nations see J. Barros, The League of Nations and the Great Powers: The Greek–Bulgarian Incident, 1925 (Oxford, 1970). For the Bulgarian refugee loan, see LN, ‘Settlement of Bulgarian Refugees: Report

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With the massive foreign capital procured, the RSC concentrated its efforts on formulating a programme to assist the refugees’ integration into Greek society and so render them economically self-sufficient. As we shall try to show, with governmental backing, this programme proved, eventually, to be a long-term project for specifically the economic development of the regions of Macedonia and western Thrace. The mandate of the RSC was to establish the refugees in productive work by means of lands assigned to it, the funds placed at its disposal and its own income. The conditions that no moneys could be spent directly on temporary relief or other charitable purposes, and that all funds were eventually to be repaid, constituted the most important provision governing the activities of the RSC. The RSC was not established as a substitute for the international private agencies which the Greek government resorted to in order to meet an emergent situation. Rather, it was an organization which was expected to plan and carry out a project for the permanent solution of the refugee problem. As early as 1922, both British and Greek officials had pointed out that ‘relief kept the refugees in a continuing state of helplessness by depriving them of incentive’.³⁸ The purpose of the settlement programme was to help refugees to become self-supporting in the minimum required time. This idea was first suggested by the High Commissioner for refugees, Dr Nansen. In the early reports that he submitted to the Council in 1922, there was a particular emphasis on organizing the refugee settlements on ‘a constructive and self-supporting basis’. Nansen viewed the construction of such settlements not only as a means for the survival of the refugees, but also as a prerequisite for the expected financial support from Western bankers and governments. In November 1922 he reported to Geneva: It is evident that the greatest problem which confronts the Greek nation is that of settling, with the least possible delay, on the vacant lands of Greece those of the refugees who are agriculturalists. It is also evident that the process of settling must be a long and difficult one and that a great capital may be required. It is also clear that if the work of the settlement can be carried through with reasonable rapidity, it will in the long run bring great wealth to Greece. It is, however, essential that some beginning must be made without delay; unless a great proportion of the Submitted by the Second Committee to the Assembly,’ A.84.1926.II, Geneva 21 Sept. 1926, 1–2. Cf. Skran, ‘International Refugee Regime’, 181–3. The Financial Committee of the LN, however, refused its support when Albania applied in 1926 for a loan for the settlement of 7,500 refugees. ³⁸ Cassimatis, American Influence, 151.

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refugees are supporting themselves by next August by the crops which they themselves produce, a disaster is certain. It may be possible to secure considerable relief from abroad during this winter, but experience proves that to continue relief on a large scale for two years is almost impossible. It will therefore be agreed that it is essential to establish a great proportion of the refugees on vacant lands in time for them to begin ploughing by February or March of next year. This means that immediate action must be taken. Fortunately a considerable proportion of the refugees have brought their animals and their agricultural tools with them. It therefore seems desirable that an attempt should be made to settle these refugees immediately on vacant lands suitable for cultivation in order that they may begin to break up their fields at once. The first essential of such a programme is the provision of shelter. It cannot be hoped that proper houses can be built, but in many points of Macedonia, it might be possible to build, with a minimum of material, huts which would provide thorough shelter for one winter. It is therefore suggested that the able bodied refugees should be organized into battalions for the construction of villages composed of such huts and that they should be started to work immediately. The relief agencies might be asked to help in this work by providing a certain quantity of material, tools, etc. and by undertaking to feed individual battalions or workers, or individual villages when they have been established. The execution of some such plan by the joint action of the government and the relief agencies would enormously facilitate the work of propaganda by relief agencies in other countries, as it would provide a most effective guarantee that the relief work was being conducted under constructive lines.³⁹

Colonel Proctor of New Zealand, the Deputy High Commissioner for refugees at Constantinople, who initiated such a scheme and established feeding camps for upwards of 10,000 refugees in Macedonia and western Thrace, also reported to the League of Nations: ‘In order that the Council may properly appreciate the chief object of this scheme, I think it should be emphasised that the end in view has been to give an example of reconstructive work by the definite establishment of the refugees as self-supporting members of the community in as limited a period of time as possible.’⁴⁰ The League of Nations, before setting up an extensive relief programme for Greece, decided to carry out a survey of the existing conditions in Greece with the aim of finding out, as nearly as possible, the actual needs and the best means of allocating its funds. Colonel Proctor undertook this ³⁹ AYE, 1922/A/5 (13), No. 325, Fridtjof Nansen: Note on the Settlement of the refugees on the vacant lands in Macedonia, 8 Nov. 922. ⁴⁰ LN, C.347.1923, 22 April 1923, ‘Near East Refugees’, Report by Dr F. Nansen.

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preliminary survey. In his account he reported that there were in Greece 1,200,000 refugees in a state of utter destitution; over half of these consisted of a farming population; that Greece, though mainly an agricultural country, imported about one-third of her foodstuffs; the countryside was underpopulated and that a million and a quarter acres were available for establishment of agricultural communities. Finally, Colonel Proctor estimated the amount needed to settle the refugees to be about £10 million.⁴¹ The findings of Proctor’s survey played a particularly important role in the formulation of a permanent scheme for the settlement of refugees when the policy of the League shifted from relief to settlement. In his words, ‘the guiding principle was not indiscriminating charity which tends to degeneration of the refugees but to encourage them to work for themselves and thus become producers of wealth and independent citizens as soon as possible.’⁴² The relief programme of the High Commission included the establishment of refugee villages, particularly in the region of Macedonia, where it was believed there were lands available for such a construction. This idea, which prevailed before the establishment of the RSC and was to some extent realized became the basis upon which the rural settlement policy of the RSC was then built. Agricultural settlement, therefore, was given priority by the RSC as the easiest and most effective method that could assist the refugees to become self-supporting.⁴³ No loan offers were made for industry or urban projects for the refugees (over half the total number) who had been settled in urban centres and who, apart from accommodation, were provided with no other means of providing for themselves, not even the promise of employment. The Commission considered, however, that the problem of the employment of the urban refugees would be partly solved by the establishment of the agricultural population. In explaining its policy, it reported in 1925: The Commission will endeavour to co-ordinate the work of urban and agricultural colonisation. According to a rule which experience has shown to be sound, the establishment of an agricultural population in a given district increases to a certain extent the capacity of absorption of towns in that district. Accordingly, ⁴¹ Howland, ‘Greece and her Refugees’, 620. ⁴² LN, Official Journal, June 1923, p. 696, cited by R. E. Hibbard, ‘International Settlement’, 108. ⁴³ Most internationally funded relief programmes for refugees adopt the rural settlement policy, up to the present day, for the same reason. See B. Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees (Oxford, 1986).

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the role of the Department for Urban Colonisation will henceforth be to reinforce, if possible in this proportion, the urban population of centres in the districts where agricultural refugees are being settled.⁴⁴

STRUCTURE OF THE RSC State organization in the Ottoman Empire with its system of vilayets had a local focus, whereas a centralized system of organization was more conducive to a constitutional national state that centred the process of modernization on capitalism. With the acquisition of new territories and the influx of the Asia Minor refugees, a new bureaucratic framework became imperative. The Greek government had begun to take steps towards reorganizing its bureaucracy in 1913, but these had not progressed because of the wars. In the first years of resettlement, the RSC had full authority not only over the distribution of funds and people but also, for all practical purposes, the reorganization and expansion of the Greek bureaucratic structure. In the decade 1922–32, the state along with refugee resettlement undertook the comprehensive regulation of peasant society, particularly in the northern provinces. It was during this transitional period that local issues were not confronted at a local level any more but had to be referred to the centre. The years of refugee resettlement were marked by a steady increase in the powers and functions of the central government; this caused an alteration in the relations between government and society. Local authorities were becoming inadequate except for those which acted as agents of the central government and had central assistance and support. Understanding the refugee settlement programme requires a look at the organizations that scheduled it, the RSC and the Greek government. Their goals, structure, and patterns of operation determined how resettlement was carried out. The RSC was an international body with full legal capacity and as such was independent of any Greek executive or administrative authority. The Greek government had no right whatsoever to either supervise or intervene in the operations of the RSC even in cases where the former may have regarded the RSC’s activities as inappropriate or inadequate. According to Articles 17 and 18 of the Geneva Protocol, the RSC was obliged to forward quarterly reports on its work as well ⁴⁴ LN, C.112.M.53. 1925. II, Fifth Quarterly Report on the Operations of the Refugees Settlement Commission, Athens, 25 Feb. 1925, p. 9.

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as an annual balance of accounts to the Council of the League of Nations—which could thus exercise ultimate control of the programme— and to the Greek government. However, only the Council and not the government had the right to judge the merits of the progress outlined in these reports and to take any action. Consequently, in order for the Greek government to intervene in any course of action decided upon by the RSC it needed the consent of the Council of the League, even where the RSC’s decisions came into direct conflict with state laws.⁴⁵ The Commission consisted of four members, two appointed by the Greek government but approved by the Council, and two appointed by the Council; one of the latter, the Chairman, it was decided should be an American citizen, representing relief organizations in the Near East.⁴⁶ Decisions were to be taken by majority vote with the Chairman having the casting vote in the case of an equal division of the members. The neutral members of the RSC played a very important role in the planning and execution of the resettlement scheme. They inspected the whole project and the administration and allocation of money; wrote reports to the League of Nations in which they evaluated the progress of the programme; addressed certain issues requiring special attention by the League; toured the areas in which refugee settlements were established and particularly those which presented particular problems, such as frontier regions, malaria-stricken settlements, etc.; and, finally, discussed their findings with local government administrators and tried to find a solution. Thanks to their visits to Macedonia, and the close working relationship they established with the refugees, there was almost nothing the chief executives of the RSC did not know about the situation and the problems in the north, despite the geographical breadth of their operations, and they were therefore equipped to intervene and defend the rights of the refugees. The effectiveness of the refugee scheme was, thus, continually assessed. Moreover, the response of the RSC to meeting the needs of the refugees in more general matters, as we shall see, was characterized by flexibility. ⁴⁵ LNA, C 128, Memorandum by the RSC dated 20 July 1925. ⁴⁶ The first Chairman of the RSC was Henry Morgenthau, who provided his services from Sept. 1923 to Dec. 1924. He was succeeded by Charles P. Howland (Feb. 1925–Sept. 1926), who in turn was succeeded by Charles B. Eddy (Oct. 1926–Dec. 1930). The members appointed by the Council of the League of Nations were: Sir John Campbell, Vice-Chairman (Sept. 1923–Jan. 1927) and his successor Sir John Hope Simpson (Jan. 1927–Dec. 1930). The Greek members who served in the Commission were: Periclis Argyropoulos (Sept. 1923–Aug. 1924); Ettiene Delta (Sept. 1923–Aug. 1925); Theodoros Eustathopoulos (Aug. 1924–Aug. 1925); Alexander A. Pallis (Sept. 1925–Dec. 1930); and Achilleas Lambros (Sept. 1925–Dec. 1930).

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The structure of the RSC itself was centralized, with a vertical hierarchy; its central headquarters were located in Athens and consisted of three departments which supervised agriculture and rural resettlement, urban resettlement, and the distribution of finances. These were in turn subdivided into bureaux and committees, all of which were centrally supervised from Athens. The RSC worked in close co-operation with the Greek government and the Greek refugees.⁴⁷ With the exception of only three foreign officials during the first years, the Commission was strict in adhering to its fundamental policy, formulated by Henry Morgenthau, of employing Greek staff and, wherever possible, every post created was to be given to a Greek refugee.⁴⁸ The financial department had the budgetary control of all projects and was audited by the Financial Committee of the League of Nations. Its personnel were primarily officials from the National Bank of Greece. The urban department had undertaken the establishment of urban settlements and employed people from the Ministries of Public Welfare and Public Health. The agricultural department dealt with the rural settlements throughout the country and issued the general instructions. This department supervised the greatest number of persons involved in the settlement programme and was furnished with the largest portion of the Commission’s funds. The Greek government by a legislative decree dated 17 December 1923 allowed for the secondment of a number of existing services from the ministries to the RSC. In Macedonia, as previously mentioned, the ‘General Directorate of Colonization of Macedonia’ (GDCM) was established, with the task of resettling the refugees who flooded the region during the period 1913–20, with a Director-General for the whole region, and three local branches for eastern, central, and western Macedonia, respectively. When the RSC started its operations, 66,920 refugee families had been settled provisionally by the GDCM in houses evacuated by the Muslims. The Refugee Settlement Commission accepted the administrative pattern designed by the Greek government, took over the entire staff of the GDCM, who became the nucleus for the agricultural settlement, and continued the work that had already begun. Three directors were appointed for the departments of western, central and eastern Macedonia. Each of these departments administered fourteen colonization bureaux, ⁴⁷ With one exception, during 1925, when a major dispute came about between the Government and the Commission and was taken to the Council of the League of Nations for arbitration. On this see LN, ‘Minutes of the Thirty-Fifth Session of the Council’, Official Journal (Oct. 1925), 1359–61. ⁴⁸ Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens, 110.

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each of which administered an area which contained approximately 6,250 refugee families and was directed by an agricultural expert. Another Colonization Department was established in western Thrace, with four bureaux. In Crete an Administration Inspectorate Department (Epitheorisis) with four bureaux was organized. The Greek government founded thirty-five bureaux in the rest of the country, two of which were run by the RSC, in Argos and Patra. The Section for Colonization of the Ministry of Agriculture, the General Directorate of Colonization of Macedonia, the Directorate of Colonization of Thrace, the Inspectorate of Crete, and the Agricultural Colonization Bureaux of Epirus (of Ioannina, Preveza, and later of Paramythia), the bureaux of Messolongi, Attica-Boetia, and the head of the Accounting Service of the Ministry of Agriculture were transferred to the RSC.⁴⁹ These services constituted the nucleus of the RSC at its commencement and were expanded by a considerable number of entirely new services which were necessary for the success of the resettlement scheme. The Headquarters of the RSC consisted of the Council, with its central offices, the most important of which were the Record Office and Archives, the Accounts Office, the Central Urban Office, the Central Finance Office, and the Central Office of the Agricultural Colonization Department. Under the Agricultural Colonization Department there were three Directorates: the Directorate General of Macedonia, the Directorate of Thrace, and the Directorate of Old Greece. At the head office of the DirectorateGeneral of Macedonia there were twenty departments. The most important of these were the Accounts Office, the Technical Department, which superintended the work of water supply for the villages, building, construction of roads and bridges, the Agricultural Department, the Veterinary Department, the Central Warehouse, the Department of Motor Cultivation, the Cadastral Department, the Central Office of the Department of Hygiene, the Department of Personnel and the Record Office and Archives.⁵⁰ The organization, with this strict hierarchical structure, employed, apart from the Commission’s own staff, personnel from the Ministry of Agriculture (725 agriculturists were seconded to the RSC). Since many officials from the public sector were involved in the settlement programme, work was carried out in close partnership with the local administration as well as the centre. ⁴⁹ See Article II of the decree. To the urban section, the Directorate for Urban Settlement of Refugees of the Ministry of Public Assistance and the Technical Section of the Refugee Maintenance Fund were transferred. ⁵⁰ LNA, C 123, F 635, Financial Committee, Confidential, Geneva, 25/2/1929.

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CATEGORIES OF REFUGEES The RSC’s definition of ‘refugees’ divided them into four distinct categories, in accordance with the Geneva Protocol: 1. Refugees from Turkey who sought refuge in Greece after the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922; 2. ‘Immigrants’ or ‘exchanges’ (antallaximoi) from Turkey who came in under the Convention of Exchange of Populations (Lausanne 30 January 1923); 3. Immigrants from Bulgaria under the Convention of Neuilly (1919); 4. Refugees from Russia (mainly the Caucasus) and Turkey, who came before 1922.⁵¹ There did remain, however, the unresolved question of further ‘unclassified’ categories of uprooted people. The first of these were the ‘polemopathes’ (victims of war), namely the Greek populations of eastern Macedonia who had been taken hostage into Bulgaria during the First World War, and who returned to their homeland after the Armistice. Their villages had been completely destroyed during the hostilities and, consequently, they found themselves in the same plight as the refugees. Being indigenous inhabitants, however, they could not be assisted as ‘refugees’, since they did not qualify as such under the classifications which had already been determined. The Greek government endeavoured to persuade the RSC that these ‘polemopathes’ should be included in its resettlement programme. From February to March 1926 the question of ‘exiles returned from Bulgaria’ was discussed informally with the Economic Section of the League of Nations at the meeting of the Financial Committee in Geneva, but it was decided that at that particular time it was undesirable to raise the question officially whether the above persons could be covered by the Protocol of Geneva or not. However, on condition that their numbers were not in excess of 2,000 persons and that the Commission could ensure the necessary funds for their settlement, the Financial Committee gave its consent for these people to be taken under the RSC umbrella. ⁵¹ There was another small group of Greeks from Constantinople, Imbros and Tenedos who were relatively well off, had foreseen the upheavals to come, and had emigrated before the catastrophe and the mass movements. These people were not classified officially as refugees, and did not receive any financial assistance.

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In early summer 1927, in a letter to Sir John Hope Simpson, the Greek Minister of Agriculture Bakalbassis raised the question of the ‘polemopathes’ again, stressing the urgency for these people to be resettled. Aware though Simpson was of the deplorable state of these ‘polemopathes’, he was reluctant to take action, since there were two major obstacles which needed to be overcome, as he explains in a report to Eddy. First was the matter of finance. The RSC had 8,755 new families to settle in Macedonia and anticipated receiving £5 million sterling for their establishment, as well as for the provision of housing and other needs of already established agricultural refugee communities. The RSC was not in a position to spend part of this amount on assisting homeless Greeks, because ‘refugees’ from Turkey and Bulgaria had to be given priority. Secondly, there was an objection ‘of principle’. ‘I cannot see how the indigenous Greeks can be classed as refugees, however poor and miserable they may be. This is a case where the government itself will have to shoulder the responsibility of building houses for the agriculturalists.’ Eddy found these reasons sound and made clear to the Minister that the RSC was unable to accept his proposal.⁵² Thus, the task of housing the ‘polemopathes’ and other exiles was left to the government to deal with as best as it could. For more than a decade, these victims of the wars lived in huts and corrugated iron shacks near the ruins of their villages in the prefectures of eastern Macedonia and Thrace. Eventually, the Venizelos government set aside 60 million drachmas in 1930 for their rehabilitation, some 25 million of which was destined for the plain of Serres alone. Over a thousand houses were built in the wardamaged villages of Mt Pangaion and the plain of Serres and made available free of charge to those without the means to rehouse themselves.⁵³ Similar to the ‘polemopathes’ were the immigrants from Serbian Macedonia. During the First World War they had been exiled from southern Serbia to Bulgaria and when they returned they found their homes destroyed and conditions very unfavourable for ‘ethno-political’ reasons. Consequently they migrated to Greek territories and principally to the region of Florina in western Macedonia, and applied for the assistance of the RSC at about the same period as the other ‘exiles’. The third group of ‘unclassified’ peoples were certain families from Tenedos who were in effect as much ‘refugees’ as those in the first two ⁵² LNA, C 123.F.I.G2(A), John Hope Simpson to Eddy, 25 June 1927; Eddy to John Hope Simpson, 1 July 1927. ⁵³ AEV, F.110, No.173, S. Nikoglou, Prefect of Serres, to the Political Bureau of the Prime Minister, Serres, 12 Mar. 1932.

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classes, and were forced by the prevailing hostile environment which had developed on the island to flee, although they were excluded by the Convention from the exchange of populations. Last were a few refugee immigrants from southern Albania.⁵⁴ In the process of rehabilitation the refugees were classified as ‘urban’ or ‘rural’ by the authorities. This classification, however, did not correspond to their residence, occupations, or professional status in their place of origin but to the manner in which they were integrated into Greek society. In addition they were distinguished in two groups, first, those who fled to Greece after the Asia Minor catastrophe and were in a destitute situation, and, second, those who were able to bring with them their movable property and tools, namely the exchanged inhabitants of Asia Minor and eastern Thrace.⁵⁵ The refugees were divided into the following groups according to their place of origin. 1. Asia Minor Greeks were the main refugee group and came from the three broad ethnographic entities of Asia Minor Hellenism which are clearly identified on the basis of distinct geographical, cultural, sociological, and linguistic characteristics: (a) From the first entity were those refugees who lived in both urban and rural dense Greek settlements in the western and north-western coastal regions of Asia Minor from the Sea of Marmara to the Kerme Gulf, extending inland along the riverine valleys of western Asia Minor. Among them there were professionals, tradesmen, and skilled entrepreneurs from urban settlements who constituted the most economically modernized section of the refugees. Refugees from rural settlements, particularly from the north-western region of Asia Minor, were the overwhelming majority of this section of Anatolian Hellenism. Many of them were skilled growers of silk, vineyards, and orchards. (b) The second category of Asia Minor refugees consisted of the Orthodox Christians who were settled in the area of central and southern Anatolia, in Greek-speaking or Turkish-speaking communities dispersed over a wide geographical area bounded on the north by the rivers flowing into the Black Sea, on the east by the region of the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates, on the south by the valleys of the Taurus mountains, and ⁵⁴ LNA, C 127, Confidential: ‘Note on the work which has still to be undertaken in Greece, if the refugee problem is to be finally settled’, the Council of the RSC to the Financial Committee of the League of Nations, 28 Feb. 1929. ⁵⁵ G. A. Yiannakopoulos, Prosfygiki Ellada (Refugee Greece), Photographs from the Archive of the Center for Asia Minor Studies, CAMS (Athens, 1992).

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on the west by the fertile valleys of the Aegean region. In 1928 the number of these first two groups of refugees (from Ionia, Cappadocia, etc.) was listed as 626,954 persons out of a total of 1,221,849, with an additional number of 38,458 persons from Constantinople. (c) Pontic refugees were from the third ethnographic entity of Hellenism in Asia Minor which consisted of the numerous Greek settlements in the Pontus region, which occupies the northern part of the peninsula, extending along the Black Sea from Sinope to the edge of the Caucasus, and inland into the highlands and valleys of the Pontic Alps, bounded by the southern slopes of that mountain range. Pontic refugees constituted a quarter of the total number of refugees coming to Greece in the 1920s. They had, and still maintain, one of the most distinctive cultures in Greece. They spoke, and still speak, a genuinely Greek though very peculiar and idiomatic dialect closer to Ancient Greek than is standard Modern Greek, and often unintelligible to native Greeks. According to the 1928 census,⁵⁶ the total number of refugees from Pontus was 182,169. The majority of them were resettled in rural areas near the borders with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia and in many cases they managed to reconstitute their communities.⁵⁷ 2. The Caucasians. Most of the refugees from the Caucasus were descendants of Pontic Greeks who had emigrated to Russia, and by the end of the nineteenth century numbered over 400,000.⁵⁸ In 1919—when Greece sent troops to Odessa to fight against the Bolsheviks—about 55,000, Greeks, mostly from the Caucasus and Crimea, fled to Greece. By 1920 110,000 refugees from the Caucasus had come into Greece.⁵⁹ Most of them acquired Greek nationality by law in October 1922. 3. Refugees from eastern Thrace. The majority of the Greeks who lived in eastern Thrace followed the Greek army to Greece after the Moudanya Agreement. The rest were forced to migrate after the Convention of 1923. ⁵⁶ Geniki Statistiki Ypiresia tis Ellados, Statistika apotelesmata tis apografis tou plithysmou tis Ellados tis 15–16 Maiou 1928, 41. ⁵⁷ Kitromilides and Alexandris, ‘Ethnic Survival’ 9–44. ⁵⁸ See A. Xanthopoulou-Kyriakou, ‘Metanastefseis Ellinon ston Kavkaso kata ton 19o aiona’ (Greek Migrations to the Caucasus during the 19th Century), DKMS, 10 (1993–4), 91–172: and by the same author ‘The Diaspora of the Greeks of the Pontos’, 356–63. For the Greek communities in Russia see also K. Papoulidis, ‘Oi Ellines tis Rossias ton 19o kai stis arches tou 20ou aiona’ (The Greeks in Russia in the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Century), Balkanika Symmeikta, 4 (1992), 109–40. O. Lampsidis, ‘Oi ek tou Pontou Hellines kata tin Pentikontaetian 1922–1972’ (The Greeks from Pontus during the Half-Century 1922–1972), Archeion Pontou, 32, (1973–4), 3–27. ⁵⁹ See AYE, 1921, A/5/VII (2) for the difficulties they encountered before arriving on Greek soil.

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Many came to Greece by land and were able to move their belongings on their carts. They came from both urban and rural areas. The peasants were shepherds and cultivators specializing in growing wheat. Their total number was 256,635 in 1928. 4. Greeks from Bulgaria. Many of them inhabiting urban centres, they came to Greece after the Balkan Wars (1913). Those from eastern Bulgaria migrated after 1919. They identified themselves with the Thracians and tended to be more rural. In 1928, they numbered 49,027 persons. Thus, although the refugees were similar in culture, religion, ethnicity and a considerable number in language, they did have significant differences both from the native Greeks and among themselves. The process of their resettlement and integration was undoubtedly influenced by these factors, which also exacerbated the sense of estrangement experienced by refugees in a host country.

WHY RESET TLEMENT IN RURAL MACEDONIA? In 1926 expenditure for rural settlements all over the country was 2,262,397,200 drachmas, out of which 1,670,406,441 dr. was spent in Macedonia. Expenditure on urban settlements in Macedonia during the same period reached the amount of 15,076,500 dr. only. Consequently, it is obvious that the principal object of the RSC was the colonization of the region of Macedonia, because 71.63 per cent of funds advanced for settlement were laid out for rural refugees, whereas the smaller percentage of the expenses (5.16) was that for urban refugees.⁶⁰ The overwhelming majority of rural refugee settlements were established in Macedonia.⁶¹ In 1928, they numbered 1,388 in all and could be classified into three categories: settlements in the place of former ⁶⁰ A. Yerolympos, N. Kalogirou, and K. Chadjimichalis, Boreioelladikoi oikismoi prin kai meta tin apeleftherosi (Settlements in Northern Greece before and after Liberation), i (Thessaloniki, 1988), 149; according to C. Eddy, £8,229,891 sterling (86.35% of the total amount) was laid out for rural refugees, who represented 46% of the total refugee population, while £1,130,894 pounds (13.7%) was spent on the rehabilitation of the urban refugees, who represented the 54% of the refugees in Greece. Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees; cf. A. Liakos, Ergasia kai Politiki stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou (Labour and Politics in Inter-War Greece) (Athens, 1993), 34. ⁶¹ See in Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, map of Greece showing refugee settlements p. 106 and Table IX, p. 107: out of 145,758 refugee families settled in rural areas in the whole country, 87,170 were settled in Macedonia by 1930, according to the Statistical Annual of Greece.

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communities depopulated after the exchange of populations, new settlements attached to existing villages, as well as new establishments. These rural settlements were dispersed throughout the region as follows: 639 in eastern Macedonia, 509 in central and 240 in western Macedonia.⁶² Given the centrality of Macedonia to the Commission’s rural settlement strategy in the 1920s, as the above numbers demonstrate, it is worth entering into a study of the reasons that prompted it.⁶³ The eventual resettlement of almost 60 per cent of all rural refugees in Macedonia was determined largely by the limited resources in other regions of Greece. Large tracts of arable land made available by the evacuation of the Muslim population of Macedonia rendered possible the immediate establishment and productive employment of the refugees there. In almost all other rural areas of Greece the situation was entirely different. In Thessaly with its relatively vast, open plains, the majority of the large estates had been expropriated and distributed among their sharecroppers after the agrarian law of 1917. By the time the refugees appeared on the scene there was consequently little left for further distribution. A refugee recounted: There were forty-five Greek families in Sorchoun up until 1914, but you’d be hard put to find fifteen there now . . . We don’t have family in Athens or Thessaloniki. What are farmers going to do in the city? No, it was Macedonia that took us all in and became our second homeland. The first folk to arrive from Sorchoun were settled in Thessaly and those parts . . . Larisa, Tyrnavos, Elassona. Those were very hard times. The locals—Vlachs mostly—didn’t want anything to do with the refugees. They were mean and they were hateful. But Macedonia gave us no cause for complaint.⁶⁴

With the agrarian problem, the limited resources of the regions of Old Greece barely sufficed for the employment of the existing population, a large number of whom had emigrated to the USA in the first decade of the century.⁶⁵ The response of the rural population to the new settlers was ⁶² Yerolympos, et al., Borciolladikoi oikismoi, 152. ⁶³ E. Kontogiorgi, ‘Agrotikes prosfygikes egkatastaseis sti Makedonia: 1923–1930’, (Agricultural Settlements in Macedonia: 1923–1930), DKMS, 9 (1992), 47–59. ⁶⁴ AKMS, SE (Simerini Egkatastasi), F.42, Kyriakos Karatelidis, refugee from Sorchoun, Neokaisareia. Settled in Anydros, eparchy of Paionia, Prefecture of Thessaloniki; interviewed by Eleni Gazi, 10 July 1963. ⁶⁵ H. P. Fairchild, Greek Immigration to the United States (New Haven, 1911), 109–19, 251, according to the author’s estimation the Greek population of the United States for the year 1910, was 184,907. C. Evelpidis, ‘Oikonomiki Istoria tis ellados’ (Economic History of Greece), Neoteron Encyclopaidikon Lexikon Iliou, vii. Ellas (Greece) (Athens, 1950), 1427, estimates that at least 200,000 Greeks emigrated between 1897 and 1911. For the causes of emigration see Fairchild, Greek Immigrations, 58–82; also Andreadis (ed.), I Elliniki Metanastevsis 1917.

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expected to be hostile in southern Greece and in particular in Thessaly, because of the existing agrarian problem there, and the government was reluctant to embark on such a precarious programme with undesirable political and social implications. Over 37,000 refugees had landed in the Peloponnese by March 1923, but by no means could they be integrated economically into the society of that region. A. M. Anagnostopoulos, the head of the Resettlement Bureau, reported to the Ministry of Agriculture that a minimal number of refugees, at best between 400 and 500 families (c.2,500 persons), could be allotted lands only in the plains of Gastouni and Skala of Lacedaimon as well as in the uplands of Olympia. All refugees in excess of this number had to be moved elsewhere to relieve the pressure which their presence created on the local population. Tension had already built up and the locals viewed the newcomers with growing animosity as they saw their livelihood threatened.⁶⁶ As the major agricultural activity in the Peloponnese was the cultivation of raisins, olives, and tobacco, the region was in need of hands rather than landed farmers. The absence of alternative productive activities, together with the fact that the settlement of refugees would have deprived native villagers and seasonal workers from neighbouring areas of complementary sources of income, would inevitably have led to socio-economic problems with undesirable political consequences. Were the refugees to be settled there as landless farm-workers under such conditions, it was foreseen that after a brief interval they would have sought alternative means of survival in urban areas. This, it was feared, would in turn have driven them to embrace radical, communist ideologies. Both the League of Nations and the inter-war governments were desirous of avoiding such eventualities at all costs. A similar state of affairs existed in most parts of Old Greece. One instance worth citing is that of 8,000 refugees who were to have settled together with landless locals on fourteen expropriated estates in the region of Thebes. Only 50 refugee families remained by 1925. Originally 2,123 stremmata of the ‘Platanakia’ estate had been allocated to them (c.40 str. per family) but constant encroachments on the part of the locals had left them with only 1,013 str. The local authorities not only turned a blind eye to the coercive activities of the locals but in many cases ⁶⁶ AKDK, F13: Copy of report on resettlement of refugees in the Peloponnese by A. M. Anagnostopoulos, 4 Feb. 1923. The total number of agricultural refugees who were finally resettled in the Peloponnese was 3,820 individuals (1,002 families): see Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 107.

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obstructed the settlement of refugees in their eparchies, going as far as refusing to enter them in the local registers in open contravention of state law. Such attitudes resulted in the settling of a mere 5,506 refugees in the whole of Attica-Boeotia.⁶⁷ Research into rural settlements has indicated that in the past, in areas in which there were constraints of a political, social or economic nature, the tendency was towards the concentration of farmers in nucleated settlements.⁶⁸ A particular consideration behind this policy is that of security and military requirements, especially in border areas affected by guerrilla warfare.⁶⁹ Apart from military factors, ideological considerations may dictate the concentration of the rural population. The establishment of rural settlements may, of course, facilitate the provision of fundamental services—such as schools, water supplies, etc.—but is also desirable as an efficient means for exercising political and ideological control over the peasantry.⁷⁰ In Macedonia, at the time when the Commission inaugurated its programme, all the above conditions were met. Before the exchange of populations, the existence in the ‘sensitive’ area of Macedonia of minority groups, orientated ethnically towards bordering and hostile states, increased the vulnerability of the country and was seen as a permanent threat to national security. In 1912 the Greek inhabitants of Macedonia, though the majority, represented only 42.6 per cent of the total population. The departure of Turks and Slavs after the exchange of populations and the establishment of Greek refugees dramatically altered the Greek percentage, boosting it to 88.8 per cent of the total in 1926.⁷¹ This ethnological change deprived the northern neighbours of Greece of any ethnically justified territorial aspirations. The settlement policy of the Greek government in Macedonia was carried out with due consideration to national security. The desirability to defend the territorial integrity of the country is shown in a deliberate policy of establishing rural settlements near the borders, even in areas lacking the infrastructure that could support economically the number of ⁶⁷ LNA, C 124, protocol no. 24406, letter of protest by the refugees’ representative in Thebes, A. Fliskounopoulos, to the Council of the RSC, 25/8/1925; ibid., Department of Statistics, table indicating the number of refugees settled in rural areas by the RSC by 30 June 1926. ⁶⁸ In Greece, for geographical, historical, and social reasons, the concentration of farmers in villages has always been the norm. Isolated farms, such as those encountered in North America and Australia, never existed in Greece. ⁶⁹ M. Chisholm, Rural Settlement and Land Use, 3rd edn. (London, 1979), 124–5. ⁷⁰ Ibid. 126. ⁷¹ See Ch. 7 below on ethnological changes.

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persons settled there. Colonel Gonatas, Prime Minister in 1922–3, wrote in his memoirs: ‘We settled the rural refugees particularly near the borders of the state in order to consolidate the frontier populations so that they could defend themselves against irregular aggressions.’⁷² Particular care was given to the frontier tract of Macedonia south of the Bulgarian border. The Greek army was interested in settling refugees in the abandoned villages near these borders. In 1924 they suggested to the government a number of provisional measures which could guarantee settlement: to send the refugees immediately after their transfer to the border villages, because it was observed that long residence in the cities made them unwilling to be resettled in remote villages; in order to persuade them to remain there it was proposed to cut immediately any kind of relief for those who abandoned the villages; to give priority to transporting tools and ploughing animals to refugees residing in frontier areas; to establish national guards to protect them from burglary by comitadji bandits.⁷³ The League of Nations gave its support to the scheme and facilitated the work of the RSC in the New Lands because the Great Powers desired to maintain peace and preserve social stability in the area after 1923. As Charles Howland remarked: it is not risky to prophesy that in the course of time the effect of Hellenising Macedonia will be to destroy brigandage and pillage which have thriven on disturbed political and economic conditions, to eliminate civil or guerrilla war among villages and comitadji, and to reduce appreciably the chances of war between Greece and her neighbours who so often have had or created an excuse for intervening on behalf of non-Greeks in the table-lands and valley-pockets of Macedonia and Western Thrace.⁷⁴

At the end of the First World War in 1918 the situation in Macedonia was depressing with regard to material damage and the sheer decrease in population. According to modest calculations, it was estimated that human losses were about 60,000 souls. In the Serres region alone (war operations theatre) there were seventy-nine villages totally demolished and forty-one severely damaged.⁷⁵ The population of the rural areas was considerably diminished after 1923 as most Muslims and Slavs left the country. With the mass migration of the Turks, who in 1912 were 39.4 per cent of the ⁷² Translated and cited by Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 136. ⁷³ LNA, C 134. no. 2, ‘Confidential Telegrams of correspondence’, K. Tsimikalis, Lieutenant-General of the first Contingent of the Army to General Administrator of Thrace, Komotini, and to General Colonization Department, Thessaloniki, Kavala, 28 Aug. 1924. ⁷⁴ Howland, ‘Greece and her Refugees’, 622. ⁷⁵ ESV, 29/10/1918.

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total population of Macedonia, and the abandonment of their immovable property, the problem of settling the refugees seemed capable of being tackled. The existence of large estates of arable land provided an optimistic prospect for immediate employment in productive work. In 1923, when the Convention on the exchange of populations was signed, there were already in Greece hundreds of thousands of refugees who had fled before the Turkish army after the Asia Minor catastrophe. Their state was critical in the urban centres: the British Ambassador noted that the population of the country had increased by the addition of some nine hundred thousand destitute refugees of which only fifteen percent are men and most of them old men. At present they remain in refugee camps or parade the streets as beggars—few appear anxious to work and of those ready to work still fewer are able to find any. In such circumstances it is difficult to see how they are going to contribute, in any material degree, to the wealth of the country.⁷⁶

In March 1923 the number of refugees in Macedonia exceeded 250,000. The majority of these were sheltered in camps, storehouses, and public buildings in urban centres, totally depended on relief, and faced starvation. Settlement of the refugees in the vacant rural areas was essential for a number of reasons: first, it would help them to become self-supporting. Secondly, it would fill the demographic vacuum, and, thirdly, it would increase agricultural productivity and contribute to the recovery of the economy of the region, which was shattered by the departure of Muslim cultivators. Nevertheless, as Macedonia was far behind the rest of Greece in its economic development, only a successful programme of exploiting the natural resources of the region could enable it to sustain the demographic influx of the refugees. The emphasis given to the type of agricultural settlement of the refugees was determined by two factors: first, the economic ability of the state to bear the burden of settling and compensating for the loss of their properties approximately 1.4 million refugees; and secondly, the prevailing attitude of the times as to the existing and future condition of the Greek economy, that is, the development programme which had been decided upon. The attitude shared in common by all post-1909 governments was that the economic future of the country depended upon the development of the agrarian sector, which was considered second only to trade and the merchant marine. Although a Department of Industry, Agriculture, and Trade was created and labour legislation was passed by the government in ⁷⁶ FO371/8826, No. 38, Copy, Bentinck to Curzon, Athens, Jan. 1923.

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1910, the focus of economic policy did not shift towards industrial development. The traditional attitude which had existed ever since the creation of the modern Greek state and which had remained central in economic policies well into the twentieth century was supported equally by the urban middle classes, who were the popular mainstay of the military coup of 1909, as well as the bourgeois bankers and merchants. The latter gained control of political and social developments with the policies of Venizelos and the Venizelist governments.⁷⁷ During the inter-war period the objectives of the economic policies of the Liberal governments were to increase agricultural outputs. The country’s balance of trade, always in deficit, demanded an increase of exports which, in the case of Greece, were mainly agricultural products— particularly in the form of raw materials. The conviction of virtually all political circles of the period was that Greece should remain, as it had always been, a primarily agricultural economy. It needed, consequently, to increase its agricultural productivity in order to balance the trade deficit with the export of agricultural products.⁷⁸ In addition, the insufficiency of cereals for domestic consumption, which came to a head in the wake of the Allied blockade in 1916–17, had always been a matter of concern for politicians and economists.⁷⁹ Before 1912 poverty in rural areas of Greece—but also of Ottoman Macedonia—had compelled thousands of peasants to emigrate to the West, especially to the USA. However, emigration from areas unable to sustain their rural population economically was brought to an end in 1921, with the introduction of strict immigration quotas by the US authorities. This, in conjunction with the congestion created by the influx of uprooted Greeks from Asia Minor, deprived the country of a demographic safety-valve but also of the emigrant remittances which had ⁷⁷ Christos Chatziiosif, I giraia Selini: I viomichania stin elliniki oikonomia 1830–1940 (The Aged Moon: Industry in the Greek Economy 1830–1940) (Athens, 1993), 280, 323–4, 335. The only industries encouraged by the state throughout the nineteenth century were those directly connected with agriculture. This was in compliance with the prevailing opinion that the nature of the land was favourable to agriculture and that therefore the national economy should concentrate on this area of production. ⁷⁸ A parallel could be drawn between the development plans of underdeveloped and Third World countries with large-scale demographic problems and the resettlement project for 1.5 million Greek refugees. Many such projects in more recent years have limited their scope to the agricultural sector even where the prerequisites for industrial development exist. Such comparisons, however, lie beyond the objective of this study, so it must suffice to mention in passing the case of post-British Raj India and the underlying attitude of the Green Revolution movement. C. P. Oman and G. Wignaraja, The Postwar Evolution of Development Thinking (London, 1991), 37–66. ⁷⁹ Dritsa, Viomichania kai Trapezes, 304.

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hitherto constituted a valuable source of income going towards the meeting of budget deficits.⁸⁰ With the acquisition of the northern provinces in 1913, the development of the agricultural sector and the increase of cereal yields to the extent of making the country self-sufficient seemed attainable. Not only the land under cultivation but also the population involved in agriculture was augmented considerably.⁸¹ Land capable of cultivation increased from 8,600,000 to 13,300,000 stremmata and agricultural output rose from 262 million drachmas in 1911 to 413 million drachmas in 1914, an increase of 57.5 per cent.⁸² Nevertheless, agricultural yields for the period 1914 to 1921 fell. This was due to a number of factors: mobilization during the First World War, fighting, migration movements, and disruption of economic activities in northern Greece (particularly in eastern Macedonia), the political upheaval caused by the ‘national schism’, and the campaign in Asia Minor. By 1921 overall output in the whole of Greece was lower than it had been in Old Greece alone in 1911. In the same year the number of livestock herds in Macedonia had dropped by 50 per cent since 1914.⁸³ In 1923 it was clear that economic policy should direct its efforts towards boosting agricultural yields in order to tackle long-term economic problems. This goal occupied the minds of politicians during the 1920s and was to be at the core of economic planning and debates. The only conscious economic policy during this period was agricultural policy, and this is manifested especially in Macedonia, where the neglect of the industrial sector led to the decline of the few industrial centres, such as Naoussa.⁸⁴ The arrival of refugees presented the Greek authorities with a tremendous task but at the same time they were an important asset in terms of human capital.⁸⁵ Both the RSC and the ⁸⁰ Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 41–46; HAM, GGM, F 70, Letter from the American Ambassador to A. Lampros informing the latter that the USA could not accept any more refugees from Asia Minor and Thrace as migrants, dated 12 June 1923. ⁸¹ The population of Greece had increased by 80% after the Balkan Wars and the land by 90%. Pallis, ‘Les Effets de la Guerre’, 133. ⁸² Gardikas-Katsiadakis, Balkan Imbroglio, 275. ⁸³ Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 44, 51–3. ⁸⁴ See M. Dritsa, ‘Eterochthones koinotites: o enophthalmismos tou prosfygikou stoicheiou ston makedoniko choro’, Symposio I thiachroniki poreia tou koinotismou sti Makedonia, (‘Non-native Communities: Grafting of the Refugee Element in Macedonia’, Proceedings of the Symposium held at Thessaloniki, 9–11 Dec. 1988: The Course of the Institution of Self-contained Communities in Macedonia through the Ages) (Thessaloniki, 1991), 420. ⁸⁵ J. Petropulos, ‘The Compulsory Exchange of Populations: Greek–Turkish Peacemaking, 1922–1930’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 2 (1976), 149.

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Liberals realized that with the rural settlement of great numbers of refugees in Macedonia the chance of pushing forward agricultural productivity was great. Thus, as Mazower puts it, they combined their efforts ‘to provide a notable instance of a decisive and far-reaching reshaping of the economy’.⁸⁶ Macedonia was the part of Greece in which the great bulk of the refugees was to be resettled because, first, in contrast with the provinces of southern Greece, where the mountainous areas are preponderant, it contained large areas of uncultivated but cultivable land; and, secondly, it was potentially one of the most fertile districts. Both the government and the RSC considered that the region was suitable for rural settlement because of its geographical and climatic characteristics. The valleys of the Axios, Aliakmon, and Strymon were particularly fertile even during the dry season; drainage and irrigation works could alleviate the problem of frequent flooding and malaria, and provide thousands of stremmata of cultivable land.⁸⁷ In 1923 the ‘Union Agronomique de la Macédoine et de la Thrace’ was founded with the purpose of studying and recommending to the government any measures likely to encourage agriculture. Though it was not a governmental organization, most of its members were government officials serving in the Colonization Department of Macedonia and Thrace. It consisted of 120 members. E. Venizelos and A. Papanastassiou were elected Honorary Presidents, S. Goudas, Director of Agriculture of Macedonia, was appointed as President, and I. Karamanos, DirectorGeneral of the Ministry of Agriculture and subsequently Director-General of the Colonization Department of Macedonia, as Vice-President. Among the rest of the members of the governing committee there were eminent agricultural engineers and experts, geologists, forestry experts, veterinary surgeons, as well as manufacturers and merchants. The Union, in an attempt to create the framework for agricultural development on Western models, addressed their enquiries to the Ministries of Agriculture of some sixty-three countries in order to collect information and draw up a comparative international treatise on rural credit. The report based on the results of this enquiry was to be submitted to the central government to help it in forming the new ‘Agricultural Bank’.⁸⁸ ⁸⁶ Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 75. ⁸⁷ AAD, Diomidis to Karamanos, ‘Simeioma epi ton paragogikon ergon’ (Note on Productive Projects), 1931; also A. A. Pallis in Eleftheron Vema, 26 Nov. 1922.a. ⁸⁸ FO 286/1045. A. Boyazoglou to Minister of Colonies, London: ‘Union Agronomique de la Macédoine et de la Thrace’, Thessaloniki, 21 Jan. 1923.

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The RSC espoused the Greek government’s aims for the expansion of the agricultural sector and attainment of self-sufficiency in agricultural products. A representative of the RSC stated in Geneva in 1924 that: We are determined to use the million pounds which was first advanced to us to demonstrate that these people could be housed and could be located and that this tremendous calamity could be converted into a great Godsend to Greece by enabling these refugees to become self-supporting, and by enabling them to increase the production of Greece to such an extent that she herself would become a self-supporting nation and would, after a few years, no longer be dependent upon her imports.⁸⁹

Political reasons also governed the selection of Macedonia for the establishment of agricultural refugees. Rural settlement aimed as much at increasing agricultural productivity as eliminating the danger of social unrest and communism. The policy-makers were too anxious to have as many refugees as possible moved from the congested urban centres to the rural areas in the north. They had been worried at the prospect of an increase in the unemployed and workers in a period in which there was growing labour discontent, as many employers, owing to the fluctuations in the purchasing power of Greek currency, had reduced wages by 20 per cent and dismissed a number of workers. The British Ambassador reported in the summer of 1923: A League for the defence of Labour against Capitalist attack was formed in Athens—Piraeus and Salonica and many Labour Unions which have hitherto stood aside joined the General Union of Greek Labour, which does indeed represent all the chief Unions of Greece but is completely under Communist management . . . The important point is that Communists have undoubtedly made a great advance. . . . further, which is more serious, the Piraeus, hitherto the centre of the moderate anti-communist workmen, has now been the centre of the resistance and moderate labour has thrown in its lot with the extremists.⁹⁰

As early as 1923, Venizelos realized that a successful settlement of the refugees upon lands allocated to them, and the creation of a large class of peasant smallholders, might ensure that Greece was spared the problems of peasant radicalism. Since there was not any significant industrial working class, only a common peasant–worker bloc could pose a threat to the ⁸⁹ FO 371/9890, no. 1281, ‘Work on the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission’, Extract from minutes of 30th Session of Council of League of Nations. 5th meeting, Geneva, 13 Sept. 1924. ⁹⁰ FO371/8827, no. 590, Bentinck to Curzon, Athens, 25 July 1923.

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democratic order. The urgent need of the Venizelists to ensure refugee and peasant support lay behind the policy of settling in rural areas which was closely linked with the final and most radical phase of land reform. In February 1923 the government removed the constitutional requirement of previous compensation, and initiated a policy of expropriation of large estates and immediate distribution to rural refugees and to landless native peasants alike. In Macedonia the process of expropriation was for the most part completed in the field within a short span of three years, though the arrangement of its legal and financial complications was to drag on for years.⁹¹ The members of the RSC were in accord with the government’s policy with regard to rural settlement, as a means of avoiding social disorder and political affiliations of the refugees with the communists dangerous for the regime. In 1924, the Chairman of the RSC wrote about it: ‘I don’t think that Communism is going to be of a permanent danger in Greece. It is the huge number of refugees which constitute the real danger; and as they get settled the danger will disappear. Greece is so pre-eminently a country without an industrial class, and of innumerable small proprietors, that Communism does not seem to me to have much to lay hold of here.’⁹² Ideological considerations were also supportive of the development of the agricultural sector, particularly in Macedonia. During the inter-war period, two attitudes had been formulated concerning the assimilation of the Slavophones. The first aimed at assimilation through economic integration, its adherents believing that land reform, in conjunction with the rural developments brought about by the completion of productive works in Macedonia, would lead to this end. Fundamental to this view was that it was preferable to win over the Slavophones rather than force them into migrating to neighbouring states, where inevitably they would nurture anti-Greek sentiments. The second was diametrically opposed to this and proposed the expulsion of the Slavophones through the establishment of as many refugees as possible in the region. In practice, however, the former attitude was undermined, as is explained in Chapter 7. Konstantinos Amantos, in his treatise on the Slav neighbours of Greece, stated in 1923 that it was essential for the very existence of Greece that there should be an improvement of the status of the rural population by the adoption of an economic ⁹¹ Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 75. ⁹² LNA, C 129, Confidential, General. Private letters to and from the League of Nations, [Aug.] 1924, letter to Salter.

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policy promoting agriculture.⁹³ Amantos considered indispensable the growth of the population of the country, especially in the northern regions, and the only means for the realization of this goal was seen in the creation of a robust agricultural economy that could sustain it. For all the above reasons emphasis was placed on agricultural settlement during the inter-war period despite official recognition by the RSC that ‘the notable feature of this national community [Asia Minor Greeks] was the large proportion of the urban element compared with the purely agricultural element’.⁹⁴ Before its liquidation the RSC, however, justified this policy, stating that: At the start the RSC deliberately expended most of its funds on agricultural colonization. This was essential for two reasons. In the first place, had this policy not been adopted, many of the agriculturalists would have lost their desire for country life and have become inefficient town-dwellers. In addition, it was essential to stimulate the production of foodstuffs in view of the large influx of additional population. The policy has been justified, the results desired attained— and the Commission is now concentrating more especially on the provision of urban dwellings.’⁹⁵

The importance of establishing settlements in Macedonia for the development of the region had been stressed even before the arrival of the refugees. A fundamental feature of the Macedonian plains, particularly after the Balkan Wars, was the very low density of the population. On average, the number of inhabitants per square kilometre was 8.5 and in the Kilkis region it was as low as 2.9, whereas for the rest of Greece it was 41. Karavidas, in 1920, strongly advocated the idea of establishing agricultural communities in central Macedonia as a means of solving its demographic and economic problems. A detailed record of all cultivable lands was therefore necessary. A survey conducted by Karavidas in seven major districts of Macedonia (including 344 chiftliks) covered: extent of total area of chiftliks, the cultivable and cultivated land, number of tenants, and density of the population. These are presented Table 3.1. ⁹³ K. I. Amantos, Oi Boreioı geitones tis ellados (Northern Neighbours of Greece) (Athens, 1923), 328–9. See also K. D. Karavidas, I Makedonoslaviki agrotiki koinotis kai i patriarchiaki georgiki oikogeneia eis tin periphereian Monastiriou (The Slavo-Macedonian Rural Community and the Patriarchal Agricultural Family in the District of Monastir), reprint from the Archive of Economic and Social Sciences, 6/4 (1926), 1. ⁹⁴ LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, (Geneva, 1926), 15, cf. R. Hirschon, Heirs of the reek Catastrophe (Oxford, 1989). ⁹⁵ Nineteenth Quarterly Report of the RSC, C.406.M128.1928.II Geneva, 22 Aug. 1928.

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Settlement Policies in Macedonia Table 3.1. Cultivated land and population in Macedonia, 1920 District

Chiftliks Total area (no.) (str.)

Cultivable Cultivated Families land (str.) land (str.) (no.)

Thessaloniki Langadas Kilkis Katerini Veroia Edessa Karatzova

111 33 52 32 73 34 9

2,216,314 305,613 783,700 1,142,000 1,103,700 207,639 29,700

874,590 134,318 229,200 452,200 422,650 71,154 8,650

177,746 28,104 23,300 57,700 105,400 32,457 4,850

2,907 811 328 1,117 1,881 895 181

Total

344

5,788,666 2,192,763

429,557

8,120

Population Cultivated per str. land per family (str.) 6.5 13.2 2.9 4.8 8.5 21.5 31.2

88 35 74 57 105 4 48

Source: AKDK, F17.1.

In an article dated 21 February 1921, Avrasoglou argued that the ‘colonization [of Macedonia] could prove a source of wealth for the nation’ and goes on to state that ‘the sight of the Macedonian plains causes the greatest dejection and disappointment to the wayfarer. Endless expanses of fecund land are covered in reeds and thistles. The most common example of cultivation in the Macedonian plains is as follows: on a 25,000 str. estate there live a mere 20 families of farmers who in all cultivate 200 str., the remainder being left fallow and for grazing.’⁹⁶ Karavidas goes further to propose an amendment to the law (regarding the resettlement of Greek refugees from eastern Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus) so that it also provided for the resettlement in Macedonia of landless farmers from Old Greece as a means towards even more intensive exploitation of the uncultivated lands. He believed, however, that the drainage of lands, hydraulic works and, above all, agrarian reform were substantive requirements for the success of such a scheme.⁹⁷ Parallel to the economic need to increase the productive population of Macedonia there also existed a political motivation. Underlying Karavidas’s proposals was his desire—often touching on obsession—to see Macedonia peopled by Greeks or Hellenized. Either way, the fact remains that the existing population could not meet the demand for a labour force. The British and French companies which negotiated ⁹⁶ AKDK, F11, article by A. Avrasoglou, ‘O Epoikismos ton Ado kai o Epoikismos ton Kavkasion’ (Resettlement of Hades and Resettlement of the Caucasians), cutting from a newspaper published in Thessaloniki, 21 Feb. 1921. ⁹⁷ AKDK File 17.1. Anakefalaiotikes paratiriseis epi tou epoikismou ton prosfygon (Recapitulation on the Resettlement of Refugees), 1920.

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with Venizelos between 1917 and 1920 for the undertaking of the construction of infrastructure works had pointed out such a need and suggested the employment of Slavs from neighbouring states.⁹⁸ The settlement of the Greek refugees after 1922 fulfilled these needs of the region and determined its Greek character. ⁹⁸ See Leto Apostolakou, ‘Brettaniki oikonomiki politiki stin Ellada. Metastrofi i’ palindromisi? I periptosi tis Makedonias 1917–1918’ (British Economic Policy in Greece: Change or Back to Traditional Policy? The Case of Macedonia 1917–1918), Histor, 4 (1992), 89–114.

4 The Land Issue before and during the Refugee Resettlement L AND TENURE AND RURAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE IN MACEDONIA In order to understand the practices of the rural resettlement of refugees in Macedonia and the dynamics of the receiving society, it is important to bear in mind the forms of land tenure in different parts of the region. Ottoman law permitted no private ownership, and in theory all territory of the Empire was property of the Sultan, who was perceived as the representative of God. The two main principles of the land tenure system were, first, the prevention of large privately owned estates and, second, respect for the peasants’ right to remain on the land and retain a portion of the produce.¹ The status of share tenants, in the Ottoman context, provided for conditional but inalienable and inheritable rights of usufruct (tessaruf) on the land, as the landowners did not have the right to evict the share tenants and their families out of the estate.² Chiftliks, the large estates farmed for the market, had first appeared in the sixteenth century and became widespread in the eighteenth century owing to the weakening of the central political authority and the increase in international trade. The chiftlik system contributed to the emergence of local administrators, beys and aghas. The military problems of the Empire in the late eighteenth century facilitated the increasing independence and political autonomy of these local administrators, and a quasi-feudal land ownership system was ¹ W. W. McGrew, Land and Revolution in Modern Greece, 1800–1881: The Transition in the Tenure and Exploitation of Land from Ottoman Rule to Independence (Kent, Oh., 1985), 22–3. ² G. P. Nakos, To nomiko kathestos ton dimosion Othomanikon gaion, 1821–1912 (The Legal Framework of Ottoman State Lands, 1821–1912) (Thessaloniki, 1984).

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established. In the ninteenth century, however, some ambitious Ottoman aghas and beys who up to that time had been content with their unwritten rights to a share of the revenues, took up arms against the Sublime Porte and eventually were successful in having their rights recognized de jure, through a series of successive laws introduced between 1808 and 1858. The 1858 Land Code gave aghas and beys the right to full ownership of estates which they had been cultivating for ten years, namely the right of sale, purchase, or mortgage of lands. It also encouraged the cultivation of fallow lands and facilitated the privatization of communal lands, thus legalizing the chiftlik system.³ By the end of the nineteenth century much of Macedonia’s arable land had become the de facto property of Muslim landlords, beys and aghas, while the Sublime Porte in an attempt to modernize its institutions, but in particular to win over its non-Muslim subjects, granted all Jews and Christians equal statutory rights with Muslims, and by so doing provided them with the opportunity to invest in land and property. Nevertheless, in Macedonia the Christian landowning classes remained weak in comparison with Muslim landowners for the rest of the nineteenth century. It was towards the turn of the century that large estates came into the possession of Greek notables and Jews as a result of the inability of Muslim landlords to meet their debts, which forced them to resort to borrowing from well-off Christians and Jews who eventually took possession of the estates. The holdings owned by Christians and Jews were generally to be found in mountainous regions and on the whole rarely exceeded 2,400 acres in extent.⁴ The land tenure system as applied in practice divided the land into two categories: the chiftliks, the large freehold estates, and the kefalochoria (head villages), the ‘free’ Christian villages which were subject to the central government and not to a local bey or agha. Chiftliks in Macedonia, consisting of twenty to thirty families of tenant farmers—rarely fifty—were ³ T. Stoianovich, ‘Agrotes kai gaioktimones ton Balkanion kai Othomaniko kratos: Oikogeneiaki oikonomia, oikonomia agoras kai eksygchronismos’ (Peasants and Landowners in the Balkans and the Ottoman State: Household Economy, Market Economy and Modernization), in K.-D. Grothusen, J.-G. Da Silva, H. Gross et al., Eksygchronismos kai Biomichaniki Epanastasi sta Balkania ton 19o aiona (Modernization and Industrial Revolution in the Balkans in the 19th Century) (Athens, 1980), 179–80; E. Frangakis-Syrett, The Commerce of Smyrna in the Eighteenth Century (1700–1820) (Athens, 1992), 1–7. ⁴ K. Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zitima stin Ellada (The Agrarian Question in Greece) (Athens, 1975), 135, estimates that almost half the villages in Macedonia had been transformed into chiftliks by the beginning of the 20th century.

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located in the fertile plains close to major thoroughfares and were administered as the estates of a landlord.⁵ Kefalochoria were generally mountain villages or at best situated in the foothills—where hygienic conditions were much better than in the lowlands and cultivation of land was easier—and enjoyed a considerable degree of local autonomy as the main interference of the state in village life was in the field of tax-farming.⁶ The economy in the upland villages was dependent on regional resources and based on subsistence farming with a small degree of integration into the market. It was a combination of agriculture and animal husbandry and was more open to market fluctuations; it was also complementary to the agriculture in the lowlands, since it provided the seasonal work farm labourers needed. Farmers in the upland ‘free’ villages possessed a small plot which was inadequate to sustain their family and thus many were obliged to supplement their meagre income by working as seasonal farm labourers on the estates in the valleys. However, as the prospects for finding employment in the lowlands was socially restricted, the surplus population of these villages had to find complementary non-agricultural occupations or to emigrate, usually for several months of the year and rarely permanently, to the cities and towns.⁷ This was particularly the case for those inhabiting the mountain villages of western Macedonia, where there was always a lack of agricultural capital and access to natural resources in the lowlands was limited, and so in the nineteenth century they were forced to emigrate temporarily. Relative economic independence and larger numbers of families than in chiftliks allowed the development of communal life in the upland villages. Another important social group was that of the transhumant shepherds. With their huge flocks of sheep and goats, they spent the summer on the communal pastures on the mountain ranges and, on St Demetrius’s day (26 October), they migrated to the valleys, where they spent the winter on rented pastures, to move again to highland pastures on St George’s day (23 April). Shepherds were more attached to the existing money economy ⁵ Ruth Yaeger, ‘Refugee Settlement and Village Change in the District of Serres, Greece, 1912–1940, Ph.D. thesis, University of California 1979, 146–57; McGrew, Land and Revolution, 28; Koinotis, 10, 4 Dec. 1922. ⁶ Kefalochoria were defined as ‘free’ in comparison to share tenants whose status was one of serfdom. ⁷ E. Papataxiarchis and S. Petmezas, ‘ The Devolution of Property and Kinship Practices in late- and post-Ottoman Ethnic Greek Societies: Some Demo-economic Factors of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Transformations’, Mélanges de l École Française de Rome, Italie et Mediterranée, MEFRIM-11-1998-1, 226–7.

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than the farmers. They had to pay their taxes in cash and were engaged in a variety of occupations, such as commerce, transport, and woollen stockings production, while some were gold- and silversmiths.⁸ The surplus of peasant population in the highlands of the region who could not seek employment in the towns and plains owing to socio-political limitations turned to brigandage. As Koliopoulos, the author of an illuminating study of this endemic phenomenon in the region, states: ‘Impoverished and demoralised shepherd families allowed a young male member to attach himself to a friendly band of brigands while another male might find employment with peasant sheep–owners. They did this essentially for the same reason—to augment declining incomes—but also to intimidate hostile sedentary peasant communities or secure their co-operation.’⁹ The institution of the chiftlik had evolved as a result of attempts to commercialize Ottoman agriculture and meet demands from Europe for such products as wheat, cotton, and wool.¹⁰ None the less, it was based upon quasi-feudal concepts, and proved too inefficient to succeed in a competitive export market. The chiftlik was a combination of agriculture and pasture, and not a large agricultural enterprise. By dividing his land into three sections, one for growing winter grains (wheat, barley, rye, etc.), another for spring crops, and the third lying fallow and rented out to shepherds as pasture land, the landowner developed a kind of security mechanism for his annual income. This system of land exploitation, known as damka, protected the owner from possible losses due to weather conditions and secured a certain income in the form of rent from the shepherds, whilst eliminating soil exhaustion. Division into sections depended on local differentiation of cultivated crops, on water supply for irrigation, and on the quality of the soil. The cropping system was to raise grain on one field every other year, alternating with fallow.¹¹ The landlords cultivated their large estates on the basis of sharecropping, whereby landless peasants working on the chifltiks were either share ⁸ Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties, 6; Papataxiarchis and Petmezas, ‘Devolution of Property and Kinship Practices, 227. ⁹ Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties, 7–8. The study by the same author of Greek brigandage in the 19th century is Brigands with a Cause. ¹⁰ For the reasons which brought about a new land tenure system in the Ottoman Empire, the chiftlik, see B. MacGowan, Economic Life in Ottoman Europe (Cambridge, 1981), 136–41; T. Stoianovitch, ‘Land Tenure and Related Sectors of the Balkan Economy, 1600–1800’, Journal of Economic History, 13 (1953), 398–400; Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zitima, 64–97. ¹¹ K. D. Karavidas, Agrotika (Agricultural Issues) (Athens, 1931; reprd 1978), 122, 177.

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tenants (koligoi) or wage labourers (called parakentedes and koulouktsides or ter-oglans). The share tenants were allocated a small plot of the chiftlik to cultivate, usually equal to 6 or 7 acres (24 or 28 stremmata). They had to provide livestock and tools for the tillage of their share, while the landlords provided free lodging and the necessary seed. After deduction of the tithe, the produce was usually shared between producer and landowner on an equal basis when the landlord provided the seed for the following year’s sowing. This was known as the misakariko system, whereby the koligoi were obliged to pay half the expenses for the harvest, threshing, as well as the tax on the animals. Under the tritakariko system, share tenants provided the seed, besides their labour, tools, and ploughing animals and the landowner took one-third of the crop yield while the cultivator kept two-thirds.¹² In both systems tenants’ draught animals, horses, and cattle, as well as up to twenty-five sheep and/or goats, were allowed to graze on the chiftlik meadow lands free of rent. Tenants of the chiftliks often suffered many injustices. Beys often kept the better part of the produce, not being satisfied with their pre-arranged share. They often collaborated to standardize labouring conditions to protect the interests of their class by controlling the labour market so that the koligoi had little freedom in choosing employment, and thus there was little competition among landowners for labour:¹³ The koligoi, furthermore, usually had to bear the whole burden of the tithe, and were obliged to transport the landlord’s share of the produce to warehouses and markets, reap and mill the bey’s private crops, and collect firewood for his permanent residence. For these additional services tenants however, were allowed to cultivate an additional piece of land equal to half an acre for themselves. Parakentedes were landless agricultural labourers who worked for wages on a daily basis on the large estates. They did not possess draught animals and tools, and were not directly involved in the cultivation of lands, but usually employed in transporting goods, cutting wood, and doing other menial jobs around the estate on which they lived with their families in a small house consisting of one room, which they shared with poultry or any other small animals they happened to possess, and paid yearly rent. ¹² Spyros Asdrachas, ‘Eisagogiko simeioma: problimata oikonomikis Iistorias tis Tourkokratias’ (Introductory Note: Problems of the economic history in Tourkokratia), in Spyros Asdrachas (ed.) I oikonomiki domi ton Balkanikon choron sta chronia tis Othomanikis kyriarchias (15os–19os aionas) (The Economic Structure of Balkan Countries in the Years of Ottoman Sovereignty (15th–19th Centuries) (Athens, 1979), 17–42. ¹³ B. Gounaris, Steam over Macedonia, 15–34.

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When they were hired on a yearly basis these wage labourers were known as koulouktsides and did not have the right to graze animals. Wages were very low and both parakentedes and koulouktsides had difficulty in surviving. Though there are no statistics available, it has been estimated that they made up a considerable proportion of the rural population.¹⁴ The chiftlik system kept the koligoi at a subsistence level but provided them with relative security, which Christian peasants living in ‘free’ villages did not enjoy. Although the security mechanism of the damka did not work out for the tenants, who were obliged to provide a half or a third of their produce to the landowner even when crops failed because of unfavourable weather conditions, they were still provided with seed for the following season as well as food supplies until the new harvest. They were, however, obliged to repay the owner for these extra provisions, although they could barely recover even if the next harvest was good. Although they were subject to exploitation by the landlords, they were safeguarded against fluctuations in the market and population growth, as there were always large tracts of uncultivated lands waiting to be made arable. In addition, the tenants of the chiftliks were not exposed, as were ‘free’ villagers, to the terrorism and banditry common over the countryside of Macedonia.¹⁵ Farming practices in Macedonia were as a rule traditional. In the chiftliks the rate of capital investment was minimal and modern cultivating techniques, expert advice, chemical fertilizers, and the like were almost unknown. Peasants used simple tools to till the land, in most regions wooden ploughs with an iron point, and grew their crops with minimal use of animal manure. Threshing and winnowing practices were also primitive. As land holdings were largely small, the output was barely adequate to sustain a family. The tax system, in itself extremely regressive for the Christian peasants, was riddled with abuses by the officials. The tithe was nominally set at 10 to 12 per cent of a farm’s production for a given year, but was calculated on expected yield as determined by the tax officials. Tax collectors were allowed to charge for their own expenses, and customarily over-rated the market value of prospective yields to turn a greater profit, sometimes reaching an assessment five or six times higher than would be reflected in real market values. The result was that peasants often destroyed crops ¹⁴ The Christian landless agricultural workers constituted approximately 85% of the total rural population. Ibid. 27–30. N. H. Anagnostopoulos, I Agrotiki Metarrythmisis (Land Reform) (Athens, 1929), 13–22. ¹⁵ Perry, Politics of Terror, 25; Karavidas, Agrotika, 179–94.

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rather than have them confiscated in a corrupt tax system. Over and above the tithe, Christian peasants were subject to a wide array of additional charges, including poll tax, education tax, and road construction tax. At the beginning of the century, when the central state authority was too weak to check on the local landlords, the latter managed to appropriate an increasing share of the rural surplus, not only from the produce but also as tax-farmers and usurers.¹⁶ For this reason, Christian peasants with small plots in mountainous regions were wholly unable to meet the tax burden, particularly in the 1890s during a series of crop failures and falling market prices due to competition from Western European imports. In the decade which followed these peasants were compelled to take out loans to meet the tax burden. Unable to service their debts, many lost their plots and became landless workers. The social dislocation which ensued dovetailed with the increasing general instability of the region in the form of popular uprisings and repression, fighting among the many bandit groups, and the Macedonian Struggle. In view of the injustices suffered by the peasantry, including oppressive taxation, land confiscation, brutality at the hands of warring factions passing through or fighting in their regions, and subsistence farming for those who managed to continue farming, it is not surprising that there was a widespread expectation of radical change after Macedonia came under Greek administration. In the period after the Balkan Wars and before the mass influx of refugees involved in the exchange of populations (1923), Greek administration in Macedonia did not substantially alter the institutions already in place. The New Lands were divided into prefectural administrations and sub-administrations, and senior civil servants from the Greek state were appointed to head them, while elements were retained from the existing administrative system, such as regional and mayoral councils, and councils of elders. However, the socio-economic essence of peasant life remained the same. With the acquisition of Macedonia, and the rest of Epirus in 1913, Greece did not modify the existing land tenure system.¹⁷ ¹⁶ Gounaris, Steam over Macedonia, 17–20, 106–11; Perry, Politics of Terror, 26; Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zitima, 93, estimated that in Macedonia the share taken by the chiftlik owners was 55% in the 1900s. ¹⁷ Laws 138 of 1914 and 670 of 1915 protected share tenants from eviction from their estate and prohibited any changes in the existing relationship between landowners and tenants: Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zitima, 172; X. Zolotas, Agrotiki Politiki (Agrarian Policy) (Athens, 1934), 80–1.

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During and after the Balkan Wars, some Turkish landlords left Macedonia after they had either liquidated their properties, or, if this was not possible, simply abandoned their estates. Thus in some cases Muslim landlords were replaced by wealthy Greeks who bought land at very low prices. On the estates which were abandoned by their Muslim proprietors the tenants who traditionally cultivated the land expected the Greek government to introduce reforms and legally recognize their right to own and use the land. However, the transition from the Ottoman system of land rights to one based on tenets of private ownership was extremely problematic. The chiftliks previously owned by Muslims came under the control of the Greek state, whose status, however, was not that of ‘owner’ but rather of ‘quasi-guarantor’ (meseggyitis). This status of limited responsibility meant that the state could not proceed towards a radical solution in the form of land reform through expropriation and redistribution of large land properties to landless farmers. The resulting ambiguity as to ownership rights in a region not fully integrated into the Greek state created a situation in which the wealthy were able to benefit at the expense of the peasantry. In 1913 there were in Macedonia 701 chiftliks ranging in size from 100 to 3,000 hectares (1,000 to 30,000 stremmata). Of this number, 491 (totalling 380,000 hectares) belonged to Turkish landowners, 197 (totalling 100,000 hectares) to Greek, and 13 (totalling 14,000 hectares) to foreign subjects.¹⁸ Since the majority of large estates had remained in the hands of Muslim landlords, the Greek government was reluctant to expropriate this land so as not to risk diplomatic complications with Turkey. This was the main reason why Venizelos avoided pursuing policies which could dispossess Muslim landowners. He preferred, at first, to respect their property rights, thus frustrating the hopes for land reforms of Christian (Greek- or Slav-speaking) landless peasants in these areas.¹⁹ During the first decade of Greek administration in Macedonia, the position of the chiftlik cultivators deteriorated sharply. The government often appointed local Christian landowners (tzormpatzides) as its representatives. These local elders were quick to take advantage of the complete ignorance of the authorities as to the state of affairs within the communities, which they promptly gained control of. N. Malouchos, an agronomist with vast experience of the conditions of rural society in ¹⁸ Nearly 90% of the land in the plains belonged to Turkish landlords. Pallis, ‘Les Effets de la Guerre sur la population de la Grèce’, 156. ¹⁹ G. T. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic: Social Coalitions and Party Strategies in Greece, 1922–1936 (Berkeley, Calif., 1983), 159.

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Macedonia, describes the situation as follows: The tzormpatzides were easily able to increase, through clever exploitation of Greek laws, the wealth which they had acquired unjustly during the last phases of Turkish rule, and to appropriate relatively vast tracts of arable fields and pasture lands. Moreover, as their role in society was indisputable, they continued to exploit their fellow-villagers and often resorted to violence in doing so. Whereas they had previously to contend with the beys and the Turkish authorities the tzormpatzides soon became, with their newly acquired freedom, a ruling class even more hateful in the eyes of the people. Their control over local rule and the support of the state mechanism provided the tzormpatzides more rigid claims over pasture lands which the communities normally rented out to shepherds. They were, as a consequence, able to increase their own flocks and did great damage to cultivation in the process.²⁰

Shortly after liberation, the state also rented the abandoned chiftliks of Muslim landlords who had migrated by auction to the well-off, mainly from ‘Old Greece’, who continued the policy of the former Muslim proprietors. They appointed agricultural guards—usually former bandits, according to contemporary observers—who used force to extract from between a third to half of the produce as rent. These new landlords did not provide cultivators with the protection which they had traditionally enjoyed under Ottoman rule, namely provision of seed for the next sowing in case of adverse weather conditions. They extracted more of the surplus produce than the beys used to and exploited the peasants to such an extreme extent that the latter hated them more than their former rulers.²¹ Thus the agrarian problem existing under Ottoman rule continued in its intensity in Macedonia.²² ²⁰ N. Malouchos, ‘Oi koinotites tis Makedonias kai i Elliniki dioikisi’ (Communities in Macedonia and Greek Administration), Koinotis, 11 (1922), 15, cited by Hans Vermeulen, ‘Agrotikes sygkrouseis kai koinoniki diamartyria stin istoria enos Makedonikou choriou (1900–1936), (Rural Conflict and Social Protest in the History of a Macedonian Village, 1900–1936), in S. Damianakos (ed.), Diadikasies koinonikou metaschimatismou stin Agrotiki Ellada (Processes of Social Transformation in Rural Greece) (Athens, 1987), 221–44; N. Anagnostopoulos, ‘O Tzorbatzidismos eis tas koinotitas tis Anatolikis Makedonias’ (Tzorbatzidism in the Communities of Eastern Macedonia), Koinotis A, 10, 4 Dec. 1992. ²¹ Malouchos, ‘Koinotites Makedonias’. ²² As this problem was particularly acute in eastern Macedonia, the Governor-General took over the estates vacated by departing Muslims and leased them directly to the farmers, who then organized themselves into co-operatives. With a lower rent charged and more cultivable land available, farmers were encouraged to produce food crops, such as cereals for their subsistence, as well as cash crops towards which agricultural production was geared in eastern Macedonia: see ‘O Agrotikos Nomos stin Anatoliki Makedonia’ (The Agrarian Law in Eastern Macedonia), Koinotis, 4, 23 Oct. 1922.

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Some changes in the land tenure system occurred only in areas where the Greek government settled refugees from Thrace and Asia Minor who had come to Macedonia, particularly in the eastern provinces, following their persecution by the Turks (1914–15). These areas had been nearly depopulated during the Balkan Wars, and included large tracts of arable land. The settlement of the refugees, however, was provisional, as the Greek government was reluctant to assign lands claimed by the indigenous landless peasants to the new arrivals, in the hope that the latter would possibly be repatriated, but mainly because in this instance it wanted to avoid likely social restlessness in these northern provinces. The solution devised was to divide the land among the villagers and the refugees for cultivation, but without granting land titles.²³ At that time, on the other hand, the repatriation of the Greek refugees was a likely matter. This ambiguity in the status of land ownership, however, exacerbated overall increasing tension among the peasantry, affecting both the economic and the political situation in these Macedonian provinces. The state did not make any provision for the transhumant shepherds of Macedonia who were experiencing difficulties in securing sufficient grazing land for their flocks. During Ottoman times, fallow lands had been rented to shepherds, an arrangement which was continued under Greek rule by the large landowners, fearful of otherwise having their lands expropriated. With the arrival of refugees, however, this ad hoc situation ended as these lands came under the plough. The result was a devastating reduction in the shepherds’ flocks. In eastern Macedonia alone it was estimated that in 1921 flocks were reduced by approximately one-third, namely by more than 50,000 animals.²⁴ Mass migration movements and the First World War affected mainly the northern provinces of Greece and also prevented the national government from making any immediate changes to the land tenure system. The impact of the war had been especially acute for the rural population of Macedonia. This province became the theatre of war from the autumn of 1915 until the beginning of 1919. With the departure/mobilization of a large segment of the rural classes, the population decreased by 10 per cent and economic activities in this region, which had been one of the most important and productive agricultural areas of Greece, were thoroughly disrupted. ²³ Ekthesis peri ton en Makedonia prosfygon (Report on the Refugees in Macedonia), Ministry of Finance (Athens, 1916). ²⁴ Koinotis, 4, 23 Oct. 1922; 11, 11 Dec. 1922.

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In eastern Macedonia attempts towards land settlement and improvements in productivity were nullified by the Bulgarian occupation of 1916–18. The harvest—mainly tobacco in the fertile regions of Serres, Drama, and Kavala—was expropriated by the Bulgarian army and sent north. A sizeable portion of the population was also forced to migrate to Bulgaria. Villages in the plains were depopulated, and only very remote areas in the mountains remained unaffected by the war. By 1919, when peace was restored, agricultural activities and village life were in complete disarray. The National Schism of 1915 had a drastic impact on the political inclinations of the landowning and peasant classes. Both Greek and Muslim landowners were traditionally conservative and sided with the anti-Venizelists. The landless peasants, on the other hand, held high hopes that Venizelos would pursue radical land reforms. Such land reforms were first announced in a decree adopted by the provisional government of Thessaloniki under Venizelos and were extended to the entire country in late 1917 after Venizelism prevailed.²⁵ By this time the Liberals’ need to obtain peasant support for the war effort and against the Royalists, as well as the need to establish the Greek presence in the New Lands, outweighed other political considerations of domestic stability and steady relations with Turkey.²⁶

L AND REFORM The acquisition of small rural freeholds was the major expectation of the people of the newly created Greek state after the Revolution of 1821. This, together with free education and the right to vote, made up the triptych which set the framework without which no political proposition would have been acceptable to the people. Of the three, however, the acquisition of freeholds was considered the most important social demand, particularly in view of the fact that, with the Revolution, all former Ottoman estates came under state ownership (ethnika ktimata ⫽ national lands) while the majority of the population were landless farmers and the economic character of the state remained agrarian.²⁷ The pressing ²⁵ Law 1072 of 1917, which codified five revolutionary decrees promulgated by the provisional government of Thessaloniki, is the constitutional law on the agrarian legislation from which the agrarian policy of the Greek state during this period is derived. ²⁶ Mavrocordatos, Stillborn Republic, 159. ²⁷ A. Liakos, Ergasia kai Politiki, 559.

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need to satisfy the above popular demand led to the distribution of state lands to landless farmers by the Koumoundouros government in 1871.²⁸ Ten years later, with the acquisition in 1881 of Thessaly, where there were large estates of considerable importance cultivated by share-tenants, the agrarian problem came to the fore once again. Greece was prevented by the treaties she had signed with Turkey from nationalizing the Ottoman large landed estates. When many of these properties were sold by the Turks who left the region to rich Greeks of the Diaspora (merchants, bankers, entrepreneurs, and shipowners), the position of the peasants became worse because the new landlords (relying on the principle of absolute ownership of the Roman Law adopted by the Greek state on its independence) had the right to evict the sharecroppers from the estates on which they had worked till then. In the Kileler rising of 1909 the previously sporadic peasant unrest took a more organized form. It was after the military coup d’ état of Goudi, however, that the landowners were prohibited by a law introduced in 1911 from evicting the sharecroppers from their estates.²⁹ Venizelos was prompt to realize that land reform would ensure popular support for his party against the conservative political class and argued that ‘the existing distribution of property was contrary to the economic, agricultural, humanitarian and national interests of the state’.³⁰ With the annexation of the new provinces after the Balkan Wars, the land reform issue became even more urgent. Apart from its being a pressing social problem, it now took on political and national significance. Through a radical social policy which would satisfy the people’s basic expectation of acquiring their own plot, the need for the state to assimilate the heterogeneous (from a linguistic and cultural point of view) population in regions of Macedonia could be resolved simultaneously. After the Balkan Wars the Venizelos government had forbidden any alteration in land ownership, so as to prevent any repetition of what had happened in Thessaly, where a new group of Christian estate-owners had emerged. Venizelos intended to expropriate the big estates and then ²⁸ The legislative measures of 1871 ratified a situation which had been established by previous regulations, in particular the bill which prohibited eviction of cultivators of ethnic lands: see Evi Karouzou, ‘Zitimata katochis ethnikon gaion (1833–1871)’ (Ownership Issues of National Lands (1833–1871) ), Mnimon, 12 (1989), 149–60; T. D. Sakellaropoulos, Thesmikos metaschimatismos kai oikonomiki anaptyxi (Institutional Transformation and Economic Development) (Athens, 1991), 79–92, 164–88. ²⁹ Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zitima, 120–3, 146–8. ³⁰ G. Ventiris, I Ellas tou 1910–1920 (Greece in 1910–1920) (Athens, 1931), i. 78, cited by Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 75.

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boost the appeal of the national programme among the Christians in the New Lands by dividing both the estates and the common land among the landless farmers. The intention was initially to expropriate Christianowned estates on a voluntary basis, and for the formerly landless purchasers of the land to pay for it over an extended period of time with the help of a number of government programmes.³¹ Nevertheless, resistance from the estate-owners—many of whom were Liberals—coupled with the fact that most of the estates in the New Lands belonged to Muslims, which meant their expropriation could harm Greek–Turkish relations, prevented Venizelos from putting his plans into action.³² However, the agrarian issue took on a new form with the arrival of the first refugees from Asia Minor and Thrace in 1914, following their systematic persecution by the Young Turks. The need to resettle the refugees gave the government one more motive for intervening in the national economy. As has already been mentioned, the Central Committee for the Resettlement of Refugees, which had been set up in Thessaloniki, handed over public buildings and provided financial aid to both refugees and native farmers under Laws 1914 and 1915. The National Schism and the First World War settled the outcome of the agrarian question. It was now essential for the sake of the nation that the farmers were integrated and agrarian relations radically reformed. While the landless and smallholding peasants were now an essential part of the war effort, the influence of the estate-owners had declined. After 1917 agrarian reform was safeguarded by being declared a ‘national’ strategy aimed at strengthening the peasants’ sentiments (fronima) for the nation, and safeguarding the New Lands. Thus Venizelos’s ‘Provisional Government’ in Thessaloniki moved immediately to implement the party’s stand on land reform in a bid to consolidate its position against the official government in Athens. On 2 May 1917 they issued five decrees regarding the expropriation of large estates. According to these decrees the state would distribute the large landed estates among the landless cultivators, as well as among the people who had participated in the liberation of the New Lands. It could also mandatorily expropriate the houses within these estates and arrange for a method of compensation to landowners. This law introduced ³¹ Sokrates D. Petmezas, ‘Agrotiki Oikonomia’ in Historia tis Elladas tou 20ou aiona, 1900–1922, Oi aparches (Agrarian Economy, in History of Greece in the 20th Century, i, part 1. 1900–1922: The Beginning) (Athens, 1992), 83; Evi Karouzou, ‘Las reformas agrarias en Grecia, siglos XIX y XX’, Noticiario de Istoria Agraria, 6 (1993), 59–83. ³² Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 156–62.

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a number of piecemeal measures to alleviate the agrarian problem. It provided for the redistribution of land to the original chiftlik cultivators (koligoi) but not the settlement of peasants working the land as mortites. It had been these mortites, however, who were given the right to rent land for cultivation in eastern Macedonia by the provisional local policies. After the establishment of the Venizelist government in Athens and the removal of King Constantine, the Ministry of Agriculture was established (by the Legislative Decree of 14 June 1917) and, in December, the Agrarian Law (1072) was passed by the Chamber of Deputies, thus allowing expropriation of large estates for redistribution to landless peasants in all provinces of Greece. All state lands, lands owned by monasteries, estates held by absentee landlords, and private holdings exceeding 400 stremmata in Thessaly, Macedonia, Epirus and Thrace and 1,200 stremmata in the other provinces of Greece were subject to this law. Woodland, forest and tree plantations were exempt from expropriation, while pasture land which could not be cultivated by the peasants was made available for nomadic herdsmen. Lands not exceeding 2,000 stremmata which were cultivated personally by their owners and/or members of their family, as well as parts of large estates equal to 1,200 stremmata which were cultivated by agronomists or agricultural school graduates themselves in a model way, were also exempted from the provisions of the law. In Macedonia, after the extraction of 5,000–10,000 stremmata which were allocated to the original owner, the remaining property was to be divided into plots of equal size and distributed to the landless cultivators (koligoi). In principle, the state could also maintain control over and rent to landless farmers the specified 5,000–10,000 stremmata in its capacity of as quasi-guarantor of this land. Nevertheless, as this possibility was not provided for by the law, it failed to become a general practice, and consequently the problem of the peasants was protracted. In addition, as the newly established co-operatives were required to pay a state-determined fee (according to Article 21) far beyond the limits of their financial capability, their operation in Macedonia did not survive.³³ During the first two years that Venizelos was in power the implementation of the land reform was put off because of the centralized system introduced for the survey and appraisal of landed estates, which rendered the preliminary procedure for the expropriation of properties both very complicated and time-consuming.³⁴ In 1919 the government took ³³ See ‘The Agrarian Law in Eastern Macedonia’, Koinotis A, 4, 23 Oct. 1922. ³⁴ The only large estate expropriated was that of Charvati in Attica. A. D. Sideris, I georgiki politiki tis Ellados kata tin lixasan ekatontaetian (1833–1933) (Greek Agricultural Policy during the Last Hundred Years, 1833–1933) (Athens, 1934), 171.

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a further step, and Law 2052, suggested by the Minister of Agriculture, Georgios Kafantaris, revised some articles of Law 1072 of 1917 with the aim of decentralizing the system for the expropriation of private properties and eliminating the legal obstacles hindering such a policy. Between 1918 and 1920, sixty-four estates were expropriated and distributed to landless native families. In February 1920 the Minister of Agriculture, Georgios Kafantaris, amended the legislation in order to include farmers with smallholdings among those entitled to receive land from the expropriated estates. In a speech at Patras on 21 October 1920, Venizelos announced that the distribution of lands to landless cultivators and smallholders had already begun in Thessaly and was to be extended throughout Macedonia and Epirus. He made clear that his government was determined that there would be no landless cultivators anywhere in Greece within three years. ‘This is not simply an act of justice’, he stated, ‘but one of mainly national and major political importance. In the new provinces we have populations, other than clearly Greek, of questionable and malleable national consciousness, who would ultimately side with that state which would solve the agrarian problem, which for them is of such vital importance.’³⁵ The results of the November elections, however, prevented the perspicacious politician from implementing his plans. In November 1920, after their return to power, the Populist Party temporarily suspended Law 2052 and annulled 150 decrees on expropriation of large estates until the law could be modified. As a result only twelve estates were expropriated in the whole country between 1921 and 1922. It was the outcome of the First World War and the influx of refugees following the Asia Minor catastrophe and the exchange of populations that precipitated the realization of land reform. The political, social, and economic situation of the country became more critical and more explosive than ever with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees who needed to be settled. The ‘Revolutionary Government’ of Plastiras, by the resolution of 14 February 1923, rendered Article 17 of the Constitution of 1911 invalid and introduced the compulsory expropriation of all large landed estates and their distribution to landless peasants and refugees, in a bid to maintain order.³⁶ The decree of 5 March 1923 ‘on the settlement of landless peasants’ became the basis for the agrarian reform. Several laws and decrees published afterwards to solve various problems that arose during the complicated process of ³⁵ S. Stefanou (ed.), Ta keimena tou Eleftheriou Venizelou (Eleftherios Venizelos’s Texts), iii. 1920–1929 (Athens, 1989), 82. ³⁶ Article 17 stipulated that owners were first to be indemnified prior to expropriation of their lands.

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expropriations were compiled in the Agrarian Law of 15 October 1926, which was active until 1936.³⁷ Expropriation of large estates and their distribution to refugees and landless peasants, even before the landowners had been paid, was a manifestation of the political aims of the Liberals. It was designed to contain social upheavals, the radicalization of the peasantry and to inhibit the spread of communism during the 1920s, which was considered a cause for national concern. Furthermore, it was a measure which would help reinforce the national character of the countryside of Macedonia.

Expropriation of lands belonging to foreign subjects Land reform was far-reaching and affected not only Greek landowners but also foreign subjects, British, French, Italians, and Belgians, who possessed large estates. The Greek government sequestrated private property indiscriminately in order to deal with demands from the RSC for land upon which to establish refugees, and even complaints on the part of the latter to the League of Nations that this obligation had been largely disregarded.³⁸ Therefore, to the complaints of the Bible Lands Mission, when refugees settled themselves in cornfields in its possession, E. Delta, Greek representative on the RSC, replied that ‘the annexation of all property—both Greek and foreign—was an unfortunate necessity which compelled the Colonization Service against its will to become disagreable even to its best friends.’³⁹ The Greek government’s initial objection was to exempt foreigners from the expropriation in order to avoid undesirable diplomatic ramifications, and by decree of 29 January 1925 foreign subjects in Greece were allowed to sell their property to the Greek state. However, these measures were found to be impractical as the prices demanded by foreign owners were too high and, as a consequence, the refugees settled on foreign lands would have been forced to live in near poverty, unlike those living on ³⁷ Sideris, Georgiki Politiki, 178–9; B. Alivizatos, I metapolemiki exelixis tis ellinikis georgikis oikonomias kai i ep’ aftis epidrasis tis agrotikis politikis (The Post-War Evolution of the Greek Agricultural Economy and the Impact of the Agrarian Policy on it) (Athens, 1935), 41–2; Zolotas, Agrotiki Politiki, 83–4. ³⁸ It is worth noting that, during the same period in laws on agrarian reforms of other countries (Italy, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Canada, Latvia, and Estonia) no exemption was made in favour of foreigners. See FO 371/11375, No. 250, M. Cheetham to Sir Austen Chamberlain, Athens, 24 June 1926. ³⁹ FO 371/11357, Crow, British Consul in Salonica, to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 6 Apr. 1926.

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Greek lands.⁴⁰ On the other hand, Greek landowners would have felt discriminated against. Thus, by a ministerial order issued later that year, the Greek government reserved such rights only for Muslims, while foreign properties were assimilated to national properties. An exception was made (by the decree of 16 March 1926) in favour of foreign landowners, who were eligible to be compensated in cash and not in thirty-year bonds redeemable at 6 per cent, as was the case for the Greeks. However, the methods of expropriation—which was carried out either through the local Colonization Bureaux or by independent inroads by refugees, quite often with violence—and even more, the delay in payment to their owners, due to prevailing strict financial conditions in Greece, caused protests from foreigners and the involvement of their governments. The latter tried to suspend further expropriation until they could reach an exceptional agreement with the Greek government for their dispossessed subjects. British subjects owning property in Greece were entitled to equal treatment to Greeks in accordance with the Anglo-Greek Treaty of 1886, namely compensation of the average price per 1,000 square metres during the five years ending with 1914, plus an increase in valuation up to 40 per cent for improvements. The Belgian government, with a view to securing that this would also apply to its own subjects, suggested that all interested parties should bring pressure to bear on the Greek government to settle the matter of compensation. The French government, however, had aready secured a secret agreement with the Greek government during bilateral negotiations on the conclusion of a commercial treaty.⁴¹ British properties in Greece were of a greater extent than French properties and of those of the subjects of the other governments concerned.⁴² The British government then decided to press for a similar arrangement through the Greek–Turkish Convention (1 December 1926) regarding the compensation of Greek and Turkish landowners in Turkey and Greece, respectively. At that convention it was stipulated that the Greek ⁴⁰ As the valuation of lands was by law based upon twenty times the pre-war rental, refugees and other landless peasants were debited accordingly. If the purchase of foreign-owned land were effected, the prices demanded by foreigners would have been so exorbitant that peasants could not have afforded to pay their debts. ⁴¹ FO 371/12160, No. 346, Or. E. Sargent to the Marquess of Crews, 8 Feb. 1927. ⁴² British properties expropriated for the resettlement of refugees were: the estate of Mrs Baker at Achmetaga; of J. Bizzo at Kitros; of Abbott at Kourfali; of the Bible Lands Mission Aid Society at Sfanitsa; and others of a lesser extent. See FO 371/12160, No. 26, Note Verbale, British Legation, Athens, 29 Jan. 1927; LNA, C122: Achmetaga and Euboea.

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government had to submit a sum of money to the International Financial Commission (IFC) in Athens in order eventually to pay Turkish claims, which it was then expected would exceed Greek claims in their amount. As the consent of the IFC was required for this arrangement, Britain and Italy did not allow their representatives on the IFC to accept the sum of money unless arrangements were made to compensate British and Italian landowners in Greece. The Greek government found this action unjust.⁴³ The Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs threatened to resign if the IFC representatives acquired such power. He pointed out that the two issues, namely the consent of the IFC to matters related to the administration of Greek public finances and the satisfaction of the claims put forward by the Powers who had representatives on the IFC had to be disestablished. He further explained that, in future, Greece and Turkey would be unable to resist any compensation demands, just or unjust, if a British delegate on the IFC acquired the power to stop settlement claims.⁴⁴ Eventually Britain, admitting that the very nature of Turkish and British claims was different, dropped the matter on the Greek Minister’s assurance that British property-owners would be fairly compensated. The main features of the plan for settlement of this problem were: repurchase of properties by the government at prices fixed by individual owners; in the event of disagreement, arbitral valuation by a commission composed of three valuers (one appointed by each party and the third chosen by both), or restoration of property would be the solution. The maximum delay for payment was eight years, whereas Greek landowners were to be compensated in twenty years; part of the payment could be in Greek Treasury bonds. The general level of prices at which foreign subjects had already sold properties where refugees were established to the Greek government was to be the basis for calculation of the purchase price and not the inflated actual value of these lands.⁴⁵ On 8 December 1927, after negotiations in Geneva on the so-called stabilization loan, French, Italian, and British delegates signed a declaration on the basis of which the IFC continued to control surplus revenues in order to repay loans. Because of this, the Greek government had to give to the IFC 150 million drachmas from the loan in order to pay in gold the British, French, and Italian landowners whose properties had been expropriated under the Agrarian Reform Law. This sum was fourteen times more than that paid to Greek landowners.⁴⁶ ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

FO, Note Verbale, 29 Jan. 1927. FO 371/12160, C 1856, Telegram from Sir P. Loraine, 3 Feb. 1927. Ibid; FO 371/12160, C 1192, Telegram from Sir P. Loraine, 7 Feb. 1927. Ladas, Exchange, 637–8.

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Review of the land reform policies In conclusion, by having recourse to radical means, the Revolutionary Government realized land reforms without delay after 1923 in order to meet the urgent need of resettling the agricultural refugees and to achieve the political and national goal of homogenization and consolidation of Macedonia and western Thrace. Following the return of the peasants from the military after 1922, there was much agitation within agrarian circles, leading to the establishment of the Agrarian Party. The Liberals had initiated the land reform programme in 1917 with the ulterior motive of securing the support of the peasants, both politically and for the war effort. Uneasy at the prospect of the new party acquiring popularity, which could only result in a weakening of their own forces and so jeopardize their remaining in power, the Revolutionary Government hastened to resolve the agrarian question. The need was made more urgent by the recent military defeat and the subsequent demobilization of the army in conjunction with the pressing problem of the refugees, who numbered over one million. For Greece, whose economy had been drained by a decade of hostilities and which lacked alternative national resources, this meant drastic redistribution of large landed properties and social power through land reforms. At this critical juncture, moreover, political opposition was non-existent in parliament, as the Populist Party had abstained from procedures, so leaving the field open but at the same time casting much doubt on the legitimacy of the governing party.⁴⁷ The revolutionary inter-war governments, in all of which the military always had control to a greater or lesser degree, did not hesitate to circumvent democratic procedures as they did the protests of landowners and conservative élites. Supported by, among others, the British, whose major concern was peace and stability in the Balkans, the Liberals were able to paralyse the embittered landowners and other former privileged classes, or anyone else attempting to put obstacles in their way. Commitment to the requirements and the deadlines stipulated in the Geneva Protocol, however, could not be waived as lightly. Through the RSC, as a powerful and independent international body, the League of Nations, which was motivated by humanitarian as well as strategic considerations, was in a position to compel the government to fulfil its obligations and provide the necessary lands for the effective settlement of agricultural refugees. Without this external pressure and the fear of refugee farmers moving in exasperation to urban centres, which were ⁴⁷ Marketos, ‘Papastanassiou’, ii. 126–127.

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already congested, having absorbed over half of the incoming refugees, the procedure of confiscating large properties, whether owned by Greeks or foreigners, could never have been accomplished so efficiently. Charles Howland, commenting on the reforms and the egalitarian principle adopted by Venizelos, emphasized that this policy would lay the foundations for greater political stability as ‘not only have the estates of the departing Muslims been divided among refugees and natives, but the domains of large proprietors, including some of the most influential and richest men of Greece, have been freely expropriated and divided among the native and refugee cultivators.’⁴⁸ The implementation of land reforms consolidated the bourgeois hegemony and democracy. The peasants, desiring no political changes before the finalization of the Land Reform Programme, readily linked their interests to those of the Venizelists, who were thus able to stay in power for a whole decade. The abolition of semi-feudal socio-economic conditions existing between landowners and peasants improved the social status of the latter. Moreover, the distribution of lands to refugees appeased their claims for a ‘place’ in their new homeland and established a feeling of belonging to the national community. Finally, it rendered ineffective the ideological convergence of the peasantry with the working class and the petit-bourgeoisie and so curbed a swing towards social democracy, an eventuality that a visionary of the Left, A.Papstanassiou, who supported and promoted the reforms to a considerable degree, would have gladly welcomed.⁴⁹ The speed at which the government planned and executed its programme of nation-wide compulsory expropriation of large estates, in order to resettle the refugees and give land to the landless, certainly produced a much more homogeneous national identity, responding as it did to the people’s demands for ‘a place of their own’ in the Greek nation-state. It is worth quoting from the account of a refugee which reveals other aspects of the problems posed by resettlement. We really longed to have a small farm of our own, though, to get a bit of land again, and say we’d made our own village again. After knocking on many doors, we managed, and they sent us to Epirus, to a village near the Albanian border, Perdika. On Paxos we were very happy about the people, but you see, we’re not used to the life of the sea, and we wanted somewhere inland, like our old home, that we knew. Perdika, where we went, was mainly a Turkish village, with only a few Christians. There were four hundred Turks, and only about a hundred had left with the Exchange. The rest claimed they were Turkish Albanians. ⁴⁸ C. P. Howland, ‘Greece and the Greeks’, Foreign Affairs, 4/3 (Apr. 1926), 463. ⁴⁹ Marketos, ‘Papastanassiou’, ii. 385.

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We didn’t put down roots there, either. We rented land, and worked on the Turkish farms, but we didn’t get anywhere. In the end, in 1925, we managed to get ourselves sent by the state to a place outside Preveza. There they gave each one of us a piece of land and a house to live in. They called the place Sinope, because some refugees from Sinope, in Pontus, had been resettled there. We finally got the land we wanted there. We worked hard, we struggled against the cold and the heat, but we still couldn’t live as we’d expected. Poverty and misery. The plain didn’t get any water, and the soil produced nothing. You sowed, but you didn’t reap. We all got into debt.’⁵⁰

CATEGORIES OF L ANDS ASSIGNED TO THE RSC: PROBLEMS REGARDING FULL POSSESSION BY THE RSC The need for land was the most pressing problem connected with the permanent settlement of the refugees. The Greek government was obliged to provide not less than 5 million stremmata to the RSC for that purpose.⁵¹ These were to be furnished free of charge in order to serve a twofold purpose: first, as land to be distributed to, and cultivated by, the refugees with the aim of helping them to become self-supporting citizens of Greece; and, second, as a guarantee of the loan which was administered by the RSC. In 1923 the government could assign to the Commission with a clear title only such lands as belonged to the state (dimosiai gaiai) which did not exceed 500,000 stremmata.⁵² For the settlement of the refugees, the state was compelled first to have recourse to the chiftliks which had been abandoned by their Muslim owners and were under its sequestration. Refugees were also settled in the Turkish kefalochoria and cultivated part ⁵⁰ Savvas Fotopoulos, refugee from the village Akkayia, near Kerasous: ‘Arrival and Wandering’; interviewed by the researcher of the CAMS Eleni Gazi, in Yiannakopoulos (ed.), Refugee Greece, 49. ⁵¹ According to (1) Article II of the ‘Protocol Relating to the Settlement of Refugees in Greece and the Creation for this Purpose of a RSC’, signed on 29 Sept. 1923 between the RSC and the Greek government; for the text see Eddy, Greek Refugees, Appendix E; and (2) the amendments made by the Legislative Decrees of 13 Oct. 1923 (Government Gazette A, No. 289, 1923) and of 24 Oct. 24 (Government Gazette A, No. 272, 1924); cf. M. I. Notaras, I agrotiki apokatastasis ton prosfygon (The Rural Resettlement of Refugees) (Athens, 1934), 32. ⁵² LN, C.91.M. 30.1924.II Geneva, 6 March 1924: Report on the Operations of the RSC for the first three months, p. 4.

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of the lands which belonged to the Turks. In Macedonia and the other northern provinces, lands of a large area which could serve for cultivation and the construction of refugee villages were not yet in the full possession of the state. Delays in the departure of Muslims from most villages of Macedonia and Crete worsened the problem of the shortage of land. The fields they had controlled were still in their possession and cultivated either by themselves or by local Christian peasants who had leased them. This was to the detriment of the refugees, who were terrified at the prospect of remaining unsettled for a second year. In Macedonia there were, in the autumn of 1923, more than 300,000 refugees who depended entirely on relief. As the majority were living under deplorable conditions in the cities, in damp and dark warehouses, tobacco stores, or out in the open without blankets or any form of shelter against the cold of the coming winter, many were expected to perish. The situation was even worse for those in the countryside, because the international relief organizations were operating mainly in the cities, where the number of refugees was much higher and was constantly growing with the continual influx of new arrivals.⁵³ Eventually the refugees decided to put pressure on the government to provide lands for their resettlement. As the British Consul in Thessaloniki reported in the autumn of 1923, ‘the organisations representing the refugees, particularly those in Northern Greece, seem suddenly to have realised the danger of the situation, and have decided to intervene.’⁵⁴ They sent strongly worded telegrams to the Prime Minister, the Mixed Commission for the Exchange of Populations, and the Assembly protesting against, first, the order prohibiting agricultural resettlement before the appraisal of the value of Muslim properties by the Mixed Commission and, second, the delay in the departure of Muslims.⁵⁵ Greek refugees claimed that, according to international agreements, the exchanged populations on both sides had equal rights, and therefore it was fair that they should be settled in the Turkish houses and properties immediately, since Turkey had been enjoying the use of the abandoned Greek ⁵³ FO 371/9889, Report by the British Consul in Thessaloniki, 1924. ⁵⁴ Ibid. ⁵⁵ See AYE, 1923/ KTE, AP/7(43): telegrams sent to the Leader of the Revolution, the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministers of Relief and of Agriculture, the Central Committee for Refugees, etc. by the Federation of Pontics (Thessaloniki, 19 Nov. 1923), the Committee of Refugees in the Eparchy of Anasselitsa (13 and 23 Dec. 1923), the Refugee Associations of Kailaria (6 Nov. 1923), of Kastoria (5 Nov. 1923), of Karatzova and Sidirocastro (6 Nov. 1923), of Chroupista (8 Nov. 1923), the Committee of Refugees from the Adramyteinos Gulf (Thessaloniki, 27 Oct. 1923), the Committee of Refugees from Kydonies, Moschonisia (Thessaloniki, 27 Oct. 1923); also by refugee organizations from Crete: Rethymno (22 Nov. 1923), Chania (24 Dec. 1923).

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properties for two years now, while the delay in the departure of the Muslims had exacerbated the refugee problem in Greece. They also implied that the government would not remain in office for long if it did not fulfil its obligations to the RSC and transfer to it the 5 million stremmata for their resettlement. Finally, they advised the Assembly to terminate their ‘political intrigues’ against the RSC, and to help the state to support the Commission’s plan and take the necessary measures for its fulfilment. As a result, Alexandros Papanastassiou was authorized to discuss the matter with Sir John Campbell, the Vice-Chairman of the RSC, in order to reach an agreement on the measures to be taken by the government for the transfer to the RSC of the Turkish properties and of some of the estates expropriated under the Agrarian Law. By May 1924 the government had assigned to the Commission only 252,000 stremmata of land with clear titles, all situated in Macedonia and consisting entirely of estates belonging to the government. No land belonging to Muslims had been ceded as yet to the RSC. Though the government had accepted the proposals of the Commission that these lands should be taken over by the RSC with clear titles as soon as their owners had vacated them, it was the work of the Mixed Commission for the Exchange of Populations to take the final decision on this matter; and as long as the process of liquidation was not complete, the lands under this category could not be ceded de jure to the government.⁵⁶ By the legislative decree of 2/3 May 1924 a new service was established at the Ministry of Agriculture, the ‘General Administration of the Exchange’ (Geniki Dieythynsis Antallagis), entrusted with the task of dealing with the property rights of Muslims and of finding a sound solution to land problems. Meanwhile, the Mixed Commission, in order to facilitate the situation, made some amendments to the articles of the Convention on the exchange of populations referring to the property rights of the exchanged persons. The most important were those decided on 7 December 1923 and 21 June 1924, according to which the immovable properties of Muslims in Greece and Christians in Turkey would be handed over to the Greek and Turkish governments respectively, before their evaluation by the Mixed Commission was effected.⁵⁷ ⁵⁶ LN, C.274.M. 87.1924.II Athens, 25 May 1924: Report on the Operations of the RSC for the second three months. p. 4; Ladas, Exchange, 457–8. ⁵⁷ More specifically, the text of this arrangement stated that ‘property abandoned on departure by persons who are liable to exchange will remain at the disposal of the government on whose territory it is situated, subject to the obligations imposed on the two

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The Ministry of Agriculture immediately placed almost the entirety of the cultivable Muslim lands under the legal possession of the RSC. They did not, however, do so with lands in the ex-Muslim chiftliks which were being cultivated by Christian tenants or by other native landless farmers. In many of the chiftliks local farmers from neighbouring kefalochoria (free villages) cultivated extensive lands because of the insufficiency of their own property, which was exempted as well. Instead, the government undertook to replace these estates with other lands subject to exchange.⁵⁸ There was also another part of ex-Muslim lands exempted from this transfer. Although the Minister of Agriculture had promised the Commission to transfer to the latter all cultivable lands owned by Muslims who were to be exchanged, certain properties of exceptional value—such as certain tobacco lands, vineyards, and olive orchards—were transferred to the National Bank of Greece under an agreement which made these properties the basis for fulfilment of the government’s obligation to satisfy the claims of refugees for compensation for their properties left in Asia Minor.⁵⁹ The area of lands to be vacated by the Turks was estimated at about 3.5 million stremmata. The government had, furthermore, contemplated plans for the reclamation of the marshy lands of the Vardar and Strumna valleys, which would have added a further amount of cultivable land, and tried to persuade the RSC to undertake the financial cost of such a project. The Commission at that time, however, opposed any investment of money in such projects because the refugees were still unsettled and depended on relief. Charles Eddy wrote to Sir John Campbell that this idea was rather disquieting because the figure of 500,000 hectares was taken as a safe minimum figure on the basis of Procter’s recommendations, and accepted by the Greeks, with the clear understanding that this did not include any land requiring capital expenditure before it could be available for settlement. Any question of the reclamation of the Vardar and Strumna must, I think, be regarded as outside the scope of any loan contemplated in the Protocol.⁶⁰ governments by the provisions of article 14 of the Convention’; see C. A. Kossyva, Nomothesia dioikiseos Mousoulmanikon kai antallaximon akiniton (Legislation concerning Muslim and Exchangeable Immoveable Properties) (Athens, 1928), 15; A. B. Protonotarios, To Prosfygikon Problima apo Istorikis, Nomikis kai Kratikis apopseos (The Refugee Problem from a Historical, Legal, and State Perspective) (Athens, 1930), 59–62. ⁵⁸ LNA, C 129.1, Folio 2, Memorandum No. III, Athens, 1 Dec. 1923, NS/PZ (unsigned); also A. Mylonas, Minister of Agriculture to RSC, 21 Aug. 1924. ⁵⁹ FO 371/10765, C. P. Howland to Sir J. Arthur Salter, 12 Aug. 1925. ⁶⁰ LNA, C 129, Charles Eddy to Sir John Campbell, Geneva, 6 Dec. 1923.

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Thus, the balance of the 5 million stremmata had to be found from a third category, by the application of a vigorous policy of expropriation of large landed estates from both Greek and foreign subjects. On 3 October 1924 the Agrarian Reform Law was passed by Parliament. One of its main clauses provided that all large publicly owned estates and all private properties exceeding an area of 400 stremmata (100 acres) in Thessaly (including the Domocos region), Macedonia, Thrace, and the region of Arta in Epirus, or 1,200 stremmata in the other provinces of Greece, were to be expropriated. The owner of property liable to expropriation was allowed to retain, apart from the 300 or 100 stremmata, all his olive plantations and certain categories of vineyards and meadow land.⁶¹ Part of the expropriated land was to be allocated to all landless native cultivators over 20 years old, while the largest portion had to be transferred to the RSC for the settlement of refugees. The RSC expressed its enthusiasm for the ‘strenuous measures’ taken by the Greek government in order to carry out its policy of expropriating large estates in spite of the political consequences.⁶² The transfer of expropriated lands to the RSC, however, was made piecemeal whenever the topographical survey was completed. The lands assigned to the RSC by December 1924 were approximately as shown in Table 4.1. By this time, the refugees had already been settled on 2,800,000 stremmata out of the above total of 2,850,000 stremmata. Of these lands, however, only 360,000 str. had been transferred with full proprietary rights to the RSC, owing to the lack of a land survey registry.⁶³ In 1925, the Commission held in Macedonia 5,010,445 stremmata, out of a total of 5,629,219 in the whole of Greece, of which the vast majority, 78 per cent, was former Turkish property, another 8.1 per cent Table 4.1. Lands assigned to the RSC by December 1924 Categories of land

Stremmata

state land land of exchangeable Muslims requisitioned or expropriated property

250,000 2,200,000 400,000

Total

2,850,000

⁶¹ The Agrarian Law, Articles 2–3; Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 76. ⁶² See LN, C.438.M. 167.1924.II Athens, 30 Aug. 1924: Third Quarterly Report on the Operations of the RSC, 18. ⁶³ LN, C.767.M.269.1924.II Geneva, 23 Dec. 1924: Fourth Quarterly Report on the Operations of the RSC, 5.

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was domain land, and 2.4 per cent was leased. Yet, only 65.3 per cent of this land was classified as cultivable.⁶⁴ By the end of 1927, the land at the disposal of the RSC had increased to 6,161,120 stremmata in Macedonia out of a total of 8,155,920 in the whole Greece, most of the additional land having been expropriated from large estates.⁶⁵ By 1926 lands available to the RSC were classified as: (1) estates which previously belonged to the government; (2) estates which belonged to exchanged Turks and Bulgarians; (3) estates which belonged to Muslims exempted from the exchange, mainly in Thrace and Epirus; (4) lands belonging to indigenous proprietors which had been requisitioned but had not yet been expropriated; (5) lands belonging to monasteries; (6) lands appropriated by the Director-General of Macedonia from indigenous cultivators. Lands of the first category presented no difficulties. The government could pass legislation to provide sound titles for clearly defined areas. It was the second category of lands that presented, in many cases, great difficulties. Some Turkish and Bulgarian owners, when they realized that they had to leave Greece, made surreptitious sales of their land to native Greeks at nominal prices, in order to get at least something, as they foresaw the difficulty of obtaining any compensation once they had left the country. A large number of estates sold unconventionally to indigenous Greeks had been taken over by the Director-General of Macedonia and had been used for the settlement of refugees. The proprietary rights of the RSC over these estates were disputed by their new owners, who in all cases tried to produce evidence, sometimes even title-deeds, to certify that they had obtained the lands through regular purchases. The uncertainty over the legal title of this category of lands, irregular transactions, and the protracted period of delay before any sound solution was reached provoked conflict between native Greeks and refugees, the latter claiming their right (according to the Convention on the exchange of populations) to be resettled on these lands. As to the fourth category, namely lands requisitioned but not yet expropriated, under the Agrarian Law two steps were necessary before expropriation could be finalized. First, a Commission of Expropriation ⁶⁴ The increasing shortage of land was a serious problem by 1925. In certain areas no cultivable land was ceded to the Commission for the establishment of waiting refugees. In order to find a solution and to alleviate their deplorable situation, the RSC even examined the possibility of exploiting the soil on mountain slopes where cultivation by tractors was impracticable. The DGCM was authorized to carry out experiments in breaking up the land with dynamite. LN, C.470.M.176.1925.II Geneva, 31 Aug. 1925: Seventh Quarterly Report on the Work of the RSC. ⁶⁵ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 104.

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had to inspect the property in order to fix the boundaries of the land and its value before proceeding to the second step, the payment of indemnities; but as the Expropriation Commissions were few in number and worked very slowly, this procedure was protracted. As a consequence, clear titles to lands of this kind were slow in reaching the RSC. A further, and perhaps the worst, complication was that the Expropriation Commissions had undertaken the task of fixing the boundaries of the land expropriated, of dividing it into plots and then distributing these plots among the indigenous and the refugees where people of both classes were entitled to receive holdings. In many villages refugee families had already been settled by the RSC on large areas of such requisitioned (but not yet expropriated) lands. When the members of the Expropriation Commission visited these areas and fixed the limits of the lands, it quite frequently happened that a portion of the land held and cultivated by refugees had to be transferred to the indigenous inhabitants, and vice versa. Any change of this kind resulted in a redistribution of the plots of the refugees in the affected area. This not only caused great delay in the process of settlement, but also led to great distress, dissatisfaction among the refugees, and friction between them and the natives. Its impact on agricultural production, moreover, was negative, a question which will be discussed in a later chapter. Monastic lands (metochia), particularly situated in Chalkidiki, were large areas of land which were the property of monasteries under the jurisdiction of Mount Athos. This category of land was most suitable for the establishment of refugees from the coastal regions of Asia Minor.⁶⁶ The density of the population on these monastic lands—equalling two-thirds of the total size of Chalkidiki was very low throughout this region and climatic conditions as well as the variety of the countryside were similar to those of the Asia Minor coast. The Chairman of the Commission stated: ‘Most of these [Church lands] had reverted to primitive wildness and the soil was matted with the accumulated grass and weed–roots of centuries. The breaking up of this soil for the first season’s crop was beyond the power of the peasants with their primitive tools. The Refugee Settlement Commission met this problem by introducing American tractors.’⁶⁷ These lands, however, could not be easily expropriated under the law. The first problem to be tackled by the government was to reach an agreement with the monasteries of Mount Athos in order to get their ⁶⁶ More than 80 such large estates were the property of the monasteries of Mount Athos: O Athos kai i Chalkidiki (Mount Athos and Chalkidiki), Etaireia ‘Ellinismos’, (Athens, 1902), 70, 92. ⁶⁷ Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens, 276.

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permission for the establishment of as many refugees as possible on the extensive monastic lands. After negotiations, the government obtained a lease on a considerable area of monastic lands for a period of ten years (1924–34) with an extension of time, if desirable, and put them at the disposal of the Commission.⁶⁸ Eighteen monasteries which had in their possession various large estates (metochia) in Chalkidiki (Prefecture of Thessaloniki) and in the Prefecture of Serres, transferred fifty of these estates to the government on lease for the establishment of refugees. The rent for each year was fixed at 5 million drachmas to be paid by the National Bank to the Holy Community of Mount Athos in two instalments, in April and October of each year. During this period the government, however, made unsuccessful efforts to persuade the RSC to debit the refugees settled on these lands with their rent. Before the liquidation of the Commission, the government passed through Parliament a law which provided for the liquidation of these monastic lands on which refugees were already established.⁶⁹ Land appropriated by the Director-General of Colonization in Macedonia was another category of land which presented particular difficulties. When the settlement of the agricultural refugees in Macedonia was commenced, in a considerable number of cases they were established in villages in which there were already resident native cultivators. The Director-General of Colonization in Macedonia, acting under the powers conferred upon him by Clause 1 of the Law of 10 September 1923, in order to settle refugees took forcible possession of lands which were the legal property of indigenous Greeks and did not exceed 100 str. Such expropriations took place where the lands belonging to indigenous cultivators exceeded the limit considered by the Director-General necessary to support a family, and equal plots were shared out among refugees and indigenous farmers irrespective of ownership. The RSC had no ⁶⁸ Lease No. 84016 signed in Athens on 10 July 1924 between the Minister of Agriculture A. Bakalbassis and a delegation from the Holy Community of Mount Athos consisting of the monks Ignatios Emmanuel Lampakis—Vatopedi Monastery, Damaskinos Fokionos Saltelos—Xenofontos Monastery, and Varlaam and Panagiotou Aggelakos or Gregoriates—Gregoriou Monastery, in LNA, C 124, No. 3 (24–30), Annexes to Convention, L2(F). ⁶⁹ AKDK, F 17. Law 4082, which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies in 1929, exempted the land of monasteries from expropriation for the settlement of landless farmers and refugees. Peasants who were settled prior to this law on lands belonging to monasteries were obliged to pay for their land at prices fixed by the National Bank of Greece, which ran the land of the monasteries as an enterprise. See C. P. Trachanas, ‘The Agrarian Political Party of Greece, Politics and Peasants’, Ph.D. thesis, Amsterdam, 1989, 101.

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legal transferable titles to lands taken by the Director-General in this way, because lands were not given in exchange to native cultivators or, where given, the area of land given or its value was inferior to the land requisitioned.⁷⁰ Until the government passed legislation to give the RSC proprietary rights, the latter was not in a position to transfer the land with clear titles to the refugees, even if the latter had paid their debts. The Commission obtained legal titles over all land and properties— both agricultural and urban—on which it had established refugees or had begun work for their settlement by the Decree of 15 May 1926. Until that date the RSC had only been in possession of the land.⁷¹ However, as this transfer was made ‘in the form of general comprehensive entities’ owing to the lack of a land register, there were still both legal and practical problems regarding the distribution of plots and the fixing of permanent boundaries. Moreover, this decree was passed during the dictatorship of General Pangalos, and was not placed before the Chamber for confirmation until 1929. It was in force—because it had not been rejected by the Chamber—but it had not been fully recognized either by the notaries public or by the courts as conferring a sound title.⁷² In 1929 the expected liquidation of the Commission precipitated the arrangement of most uncertainties over lands on which refugees were settled. The legal status of land assigned to the RSC and distributed to the refugees was finally resolved when the Greek Parliament passed a law published on 13 August 1929 which ratified the previous Decree of 22 May 1926.⁷³ An additional reason was that the economic crisis forced the poorest refugees to abandon their settlements and migrate to the cities, where radicalization of the workers and unemployment were disquieting. The government tried to establish among the refugees the feeling that they would retain their plots, in order to halt migration to the cities.⁷⁴ One of these laws established the right of possession of the refugees ⁷⁰ LNA, file C 123, Financial Committee. Confidential, F 635. Geneva, 25 Feb. 1929. ⁷¹ LN, C.308.M.117.1926.II, Geneva, 1 June 1926: Tenth Quarterly Report on the Work of the RSC, 3. The Decree was issued in the Official Journal (no. 164), 22 May 1926. ⁷² When the Decree of May 1926 was published, it caused considerable unrest among urban refugees who were expecting to be compensated for the properties they had abandoned in Turkey by the sale of Muslim properties in Greece. Thus, when the new law came into force, they thought that it would reduce the amounts to which they had claims. But the government was determined to assist the Commission to establish the rural settlements, and so modified the law slightly in order to ease the resentment of urban refugees. For the ratification of the Decree of May 1926 by the Legislative Chambers see LN, C.363.M.133.1929.II Geneva, 22 Aug. 1929: Twenty-third Quarterly Report of the RSC. ⁷³ Eddy, Greek Refugees, 90. ⁷⁴ Notaras, Agrotiki Apokatastasis, 14.

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over their plots, as the government was henceforth bound to reject the claim of any other person to them. The RSC issued provisional title-deeds of possession to refugees whose land had been allotted; the final titledeeds could only be granted once the topographical survey was complete and the refugees had repaid in full their debts to the state.⁷⁵ ⁷⁵ Ladas, Exchange, 650.

5 Agricultural Resettlement and Land Distribution AGRICULTURAL RESET TLEMENT Agricultural resettlement was carried out in accordance with the Decree of 6 July 1923, which required that refugees should form ‘legally constituted groups’. Cases of individual settlement were very rare, and authorization was given only in exceptional circumstances. In the same law governing rural settlement it was indicated that the heads of families of each group should appoint a council to represent them. By depositing the statutes with a local magistrate the group constituted a ‘legal entity’ and was entitled to establish itself on land allocated to it. Representatives of each group were shown by the RSC several districts for the purpose of selecting a site for their group. Competition for the better sites was acute and often resulted in the settlement of larger numbers of refugees than the land could support. This prompted the intervention of political agitators, usually from among the refugees, the so-called ‘refugee fathers’ ( prosfygopateres), who acted as intermediaries between their illiterate fellow villagers and the state, with promises of securing the better sites for the refugees.¹ When the refugee families arrived at the place of settlement, the refugee council accepted delivery of a certain area of land by an act signed together with the government official charged with this duty. Then the land was divided into shares, on the basis of a family of four, and distributed to the refugees. At this very early stage allocation of land was made approximately, without previous land-surveying, and boundaries were therefore defined provisionally. Each refugee household was then provided by the RSC with livestock, tools, and a house, wherever there were houses left by ¹ Ladas, Exchange, 653–4.

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Turks or Bulgarians who were exchanged. Land, houses, and supplies were not given free of charge: refugees were committed to repay the cost of their settlement, as well as a fixed amount of money for various infrastructure works, which were constructed by the Commission. Where settlement of refugees was to take place, research was carried out by the local agricultural authorities with the aim of finding out the agricultural and economic condition of the estates or agricultural lands determined by the government. The aim of this was accurate examination of the land which would be distributed to the new settlers. The result of this research was then submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture, which decided upon the settlement of refugees on certain lands. The refugees were organized, as indicated, by the government or by themselves into groups and according to the origin of their community. In Old Greece and the New Provinces, except Macedonia, they chose, through their deputies, the lands suitable for the re-establishment of their village from the list of estates and lands indicated by the Ministry of Agriculture as still being free for establishment. When the refugees decided upon a certain place and the Ministry of Agriculture had approved it, the refugees were moved to this place. For a time they were sheltered there in tents. As regards their restoration and the undertaking of the work each refugee used to do, the initiative was left to them. The council of the refugees determined the distribution of lands and composed lists of the different tools and the sum of money necessary for each family as well as loans from the government to start the work.² One of the major practical difficulties encountered in establishing the refugees arose from the fact that different ministries of the government had at different times varying views regarding the particular groups of refugees which should be settled on lands expropriated for this purpose. The procedure that had been initially adopted by the RSC, as a matter of courtesy, was for the RSC to inform the Ministry of Agriculture of its desire to have certain specified areas of land expropriated for the establishment of specified groups of refugees. Because of the numbers of the refugees to be resettled in rural Macedonia, the Commission had no obligation to consult the Ministry of Agriculture before proceeding to the establishment of any refugee group. The Commission’s job was to establish refugees and in performing its duty it ‘was not dependent upon any Greek or administrative authority’. In 1924 the RSC decided, on the ² LNA, C 129, ‘The organization of the settlement work in Old Greece and the New Lands except Macedonia’ (signed by) N. Anagnostopoulos, Chief of the Section on the Settlement.

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143

grounds that divergence of views seriously affected the work of refugee establishment, to determine by itself which groups of refugees would be settled upon lands placed at its disposal by the Greek government.³ The immediate and productive preoccupation of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Macedonia and the general organization of refugee groups was set within an institutionalized framework dictated by a series of legislative and presidential decrees. These aimed at the enforcement of the agricultural reform laws, the settlement of abandoned Muslim areas, and the resolution of various matters related to the above and, in effect, left little if any scope for choice, on the part of the refugees, as regards the place of their final resettlement. An interesting practical application of these location principles in rural settlement policies is that of taxation or collection of debts. The aim behind rural settlement policy was the creation of agricultural units which could evolve into co-operatives, enabling their members to become self-sufficient in a short period of time, and boost agricultural productivity. As the repatriation of the refugees was precluded, the money given for their assistance and resettlement did not fall under emergency relief—as is the case with present-day refugees in Africa and Third World countries. By way of contrast, the RSC was concerned to ensure that the financial assistance channelled through its agencies to the refugees would be provided in the form of loans, and that the refugees would in due time repay their debt to the RSC. Therefore the method applied for the rural settlement of the refugees in Macedonia orientated them towards establishing agricultural co-operatives. Collection of debts from the co-operatives of refugees, and not from individuals, was considered by the members of the RSC as the more efficacious system. First, because the RSC—and any other organization which was likely to replace it after its liquidation— would have to deal with about a thousand co-operatives instead of with about half a million individuals, and thus the Commission would have been able to save a lot of money. Secondly, the co-operative, by being held responsible for the repayment of the debts of all its members, would try to take any measures required to ensure that its members would not ‘incline towards undue leniency’. This system of common responsibility rendered the collection of debts easier and eliminated the danger of friction between the centralized organization and the community. In order to avoid eviction by his own fellows, every cultivator was expected to intensify his ³ LNA, C 129, Miscellaneous, reports, memos, etc.: memo ‘to the President of the Council of Ministers’, unsigned, 1924.

144

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

efforts to meet his obligations.⁴ This was very important, because tensions could be restrained within the co-operative, whereas an eviction of a refugee by the Commission might have caused either resentment or the reaction of the whole community. In 1927 there were 656 rural refugee cooperatives in Macedonia, with a total membership of 44,815, while in 1930 the refugee associations were approximately one-quarter of the total number (including those which were mixed). The majority of these co-operatives, however, were founded to facilitate the provision of credit to cultivators. Their members lacked a sense of solidarity, communal obligation, and common interest, regarding the organization as a mere device through which they could obtain loans.⁵ Land was allotted to those refugees who had declared farming as their major occupation prior to leaving their homelands. Many of these, however, were in fact smallholders who, even though they may have owned some land, quite often left it in the care of relatives, who usually employed Muslim hired labourers for the more menial farming tasks. The owners were more often than not town-dwellers involved in various trades, while those who lived in coastal regions were merchants, seamen, or fishermen. Such smallholders from poorer regions usually earned their living as seasonal workers, quite often travelling great distances from their homes. Table 5.1 shows the occupations among the 80,651 families totalling 302,398 persons (147,729 men and 154,669 women) who were settled in Macedonia by the summer of 1924.⁶ The proportion of town-dwellers among the Asia Minor refugees was considerably higher than that of the rural population. This was due both to the work opportunities available in urban centres as well as the more general attractions of city life. In the rural settlements in Macedonia many town-dwelling smallholders, as mentioned above, as well as many tradesmen and craftsmen, were resettled along with the bona fide peasantry. The former were allotted smaller holdings and usually on the periphery of urban centres and townships. Because of their ignorance of farming and the limitations of their smallholdings, the majority of these refugees either under-cultivated their plots and supplemented their incomes with some other occupation or even abandoned them altogether to seek better prospects of employment in the towns as part-time workers, or ventured into self-employment. A considerable number of farmers who found employment in the urban ⁴ LNA, C 129, Letter to Sir Eric Hambros, K.B.E., Hambros Bank, Ltd., 30 Oct. 1925. ⁵ Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis 119. ⁶ AYE, 1925, B/40: Table indicating the number of refugee families and individuals settled in Macedonia. Xydis, Head of the Statistics Department, 16 July 1924.

145

Agricultural Land Distribution Table 5.1. Refugees’ occupations in Macedonia, summer 1924 Occupations

Refugee families

Percentage

Agriculturalists Tobacco cultivators Olive producers Horticulturalists Sericulturalists Shepherds Coal miners Masons Carters Blacksmiths Carpenters Carpet-weavers Workers Grocers Various

69,322 801 152 372 168 480 115 293 79 107 221 18 550 371 7,602

86.00 10.0 0.20 0.50 0.20 0.60 0.14 0.36 0.09 0.13 0.27 0.02 0.70 0.46 9.50

TOTAL

80,651

100.00

Source: AYE, 1925, B/40.

centres at the beginning were resettled eventually there and augmented the number of urban refugees. It is worth noting here that although the refugees took immediate possession of the lots and houses assigned to them, definitive title-deeds were not issued before they had paid their debts. The problem of definitive titles of ownership was perpetuated into the post-war period. Incompleteness of the settlement and the financial obligations it involved were all a source of resentment. This is better understood particularly when viewed in conjuction with the refugees’ right to be compensated for the properties they had abandoned in Turkey. The next section examines how and why the slow process of permanent distribution of lands in rural Macedonia took place, and discusses the implications that it had for the options of the farmers, refugee and native. PERMANENT DISTRIBUTION OF L ANDS: SHORTCOMINGS AND DEFERMENT A problem related to distribution of plots to the refugees was the fact that Greece had no cadastral survey of lands and, consequently, the exact extent of estates could not be defined. The problem was especially acute

146

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

in the northern provinces where the majority of the refugees were to be settled. As there was no way of ascertaining the precise boundaries of an estate assigned to the RSC, it was difficult to divide the land and distribute the plots to the refugees on a permanent basis. Moreover, it was very difficult to charge each refugee family with the value of its plot. The RSC had received, as has already been mentioned, from various sources lands with various titles, some of which were ‘distinctly questionable properties’ which presented further complications for the process of land distribution and development. In Macedonia there was an office that kept a list of these properties, but it was doubtful in the eyes of the RSC whether that register had adequate information as to the titles by virtue of which the properties were held. The necessity for making a land register was evident from the outset. Three years after the arrival of the refugees, the Chairman of the RSC, Charles P. Howland, in a letter to Salter, noted the difficulties encountered by the Commission in the distribution of lands as well as in the collection of debts from the refugees: There are no surveys or land maps in Greece, and in Macedonia in particular no maps of the region which have any value for the purposes of the Commission, and of course surveys and anything like a cadastre are totally lacking. The Government does not know how much land it has furnished to us, nor how much more is presently available. We cannot tell how much land is in any colony, nor how much has been supplied to each individual refugee for his cultivation, without a survey of some character; such surveys as we need are likely to take a long time—two or three years at least, and possibly twice that—and cost at least 250,000 pounds. Until we can bound the land given to a refugee and estimate its extent, we cannot compute its value, charge him with that value and begin to collect from him, even under conditions favouring such payments by the agricultural refugees. This may prolong the work of the Commission for a period not presently calculable, for it is not likely that the Commission could cease its functions and turn over its assets to the International Financial Commission until those assets are in shape for prompt and easy collection.⁷

All the foregoing difficulties were attributed, apart from the inherited problems mentioned above, to changes in the administrative sector which postponed the adoption of efficient measures of co-operation between the Commission and the government in office at the given time.⁸ ⁷ FO 371/10765, Charles P. Howland to Sir J. Arthur Salter, 12 Aug. 1925. ⁸ Ibid.

Agricultural Land Distribution

147

Lack of a cadastral survey of the lands retarded the advance of the economic condition of refugee settlers. It was essential for the allotment of a definite area to each refugee which he knew that he could retain. In 1926, when most of the refugees had been resettled in rural Macedonia, the Chairman of the RSC remarked: There can be no doubt that, despite the spur of necessity, the refugees are not at present exploiting their land to the fullest possible extent. I have attempted to give them this feeling of security by a communiqué I issued recently; but in fact nothing will secure the fullest possible exploitation of their holdings except the certain knowledge that they will obtain them definitely, and that they are definitely marked out in such a way as to admit of no doubt as to their position and area. For that a survey is essential. Whether we get paid or not—and I doubt very much whether such payments will ever be made—the survey is still a necessity.⁹

In 1927 the process of surveying and distribution of plots to farmers by the Land Registry Department (Ktimatographiki Ypiresia) of the General Directorship for the Colonization of Macedonia commenced. Alexandros Papanastassiou, as Minister of Agriculture in the 1927 Coalition government, laid the foundations for the permanent distribution of holdings to settled refugees and to native landless peasants by the issue of the Decree of 17 March 1927. Before that date, various settlement bureaux had carried out work preliminary to the final distribution (surveys, adjudication upon several land property questions, etc.) but this had to be completed or revised.¹⁰ In October 1928, the question of the preparation of a cadastral register of all the properties of the Commission was once again put to the members of the Council in Geneva for their opinion. Though it was understood that the preparation of the register would be a long and difficult process, because the number of the properties was very large, it was considered vital at that time if the work of the Commission was to be sound. It is essential now that the Commission should be in possession of a list of these properties and that their titles should be examined and defined, for two reasons: In the first place in order to protect the interests of the Commission itself as owner of this property, while it remains owner, and, even more important, to ensure that when the Commission transfers property to refugees it shall do so ⁹ LNA, C 127, Letter to Felkin, 14 July 1926. ¹⁰ GAK, ATYYG, F.268, ‘Peri tou tropou dianomis ton apallotriothenton kata ton agrotikon nomon agrotikon ktimaton kai ton en avtois synoikismon’ (Regarding Distribution of Expropriated Properties and of Settlements within them in Accordance with the Agrarian Law).

148

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

under an undoubted title, as otherwise the refugee is exposed to the possibility of vexatious legislation and, in extreme cases, the loss of his property.¹¹

The RSC was soon authorized to assign part of its budget in order to establish a technical service to conduct topographical surveys in the areas of refugee settlements. The work covered not only the lands distributed to refugees but also the lands of native peasants. Although the surveying teams employed by the Commission covered a total area of 1,261,126 hectares (1,067,100 in Macedonia, 147,000 in Thrace) before its liquidation in 1930, their work encountered various problems because of a lack of trained engineers. This, in combination with other complications, impeded, as we shall see, the finalization of distributions to refugees.¹² During the process of distribution several problems of a technical, administrative, and particularly ownership character had to be sorted out. In Macedonia great uncertainty over land properties prevailed, on account of either loss of title-deeds, or encroachments and irregular transactions Table 5.2. Surveyed and distributed lands in Macedonia up to 1931 Districts

Surveyed lands Villages

Kavala Drama Serres Sidirokastro Kilkis Lagadas Salonica Chalkidiki Yianitsa Veroia Pieria Florina Kozani Kastoria

82 125 70 61 104 58 58 27

TOTAL

Extent (str.)

Distributed lands Villages

Extent (str.)

59 18 52 95 33

619,000 1,296,000 970,000 734,000 1,114,000 868,000 861,600 375,200 1,074,000 681,600 427,000 888,000 1,036,000 259,000

35 54 43 17 59 19 15 13 57 23 5 6 73 29

352,200 722,100 373,000 162,700 374,900 291,700 217,000 178,400 480,600 369,000 43,000 71,000 505,400 113,000

933

11,207,400

448

4,254,000

Source: GAK, TYYG, F80, Lists of surveyed and distributed lands, Cadastral Service (Ktimatographiki Ypiresia), C. Papastratos, Thessaloniki 18 February 1931. In the whole region of Macedonia, 3 million more stremmata were surveyed additionally by military surveying teams.

¹¹ LNA, C 127, Note to the ‘Members of the Council’, unsigned, 9 Oct. 1928. ¹² Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 105.

Agricultural Land Distribution

149

committed before and during the exchange of populations, or occupation of lands by refugees. The complex situation was made worse by the scarcity of arable land, which did not permit the allocation of viable plots either to refugee or landless native farmers. The urgent need for the immediate settlement of refugees during the early years left little room for careful enquiries as to whether the lands assigned to the Commission were government domain or not. In 1930, about fifty cases were brought against the Commission concerning lands in the region of Serres which had been used for the settlement of refugees in the early days of the settlement. These lands were supposed to be Turkish lands to which the Greek government had rights according to the Convention. That assumption, however, appeared to be wrong when the survey of these lands was concluded and a definitive distribution was made. The Commission was sued by private individuals who alleged that the lands given to refugees were in fact private property, and most of the cases heard went against the Commission. The sum of about 500,000 drachmas was required for the settlement of these cases. As funds were not readily available in the reserve, the Commission was obliged to draw from the infrastructure budget (in this case from the savings on the allotment for the construction of the Drama–Ossenitsa road) in order to meet such unforeseen expenses.¹³ When the provisional distribution of lands began, little thought had previously been given to detail concerning the exact size of holdings and the process of granting permanent title-deeds. This and the fixing of the price of agricultural land distributed to refugees were left to be sorted out at a later date. But such omissions led to serious problems when the time came for finalizing distributions. When the Resettlement Accounting Department responsible for debiting the refugees had at its disposal all the survey charts and cadastral registers of the distributions which had been made up to 1930, they discovered serious divergences between the two sets of documents. Many were attributed to clerical error during transcription, as in fact was the case, while many others were obviously due to negligence during surveying and plotting. The result was a long-drawn-out and cumbersome inter-departmental correspondence which left the finalization of land distribution unresolved for the whole inter-war period. ¹³ See A. Domestichos’s report to the RSC headquarters: LNA, Note—Urgent, JHS/GHS (John Hope Simpson/General Headquarters) to Eddy, Lambros, and Pallis, 26 Feb. 1930.

150

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

Many allocations were not ratified during the final distribution because the committees which dealt with the finalization of a distribution realized that the information they had been provided with by the Department of Cadastral Register (TYYG) at the Ministry of Agriculture—which kept all survey and cadastral records—did not correspond to the actual situation in the rural districts. Representative of a number of such cases to be found in the correspondence of the TYYG and the communities of many regions in Macedonia is the following. In the surveys of four estates (Cheimaros, Trias, Kapnotopos, Promachon) in the Sintiki region of the Prefecture (nomos) of Serres, considerable discrepancies were ascertained between the initial cadastral surveys executed by the military surveying teams and those made by the Fifth Surveying Team just before the permanent distribution. In the case of the Trias estate, for example, the first survey registered 3,600 stremmata of arable land, whereas, according to the survey of the second team, only 2,500 stremmata were deemed suitable for cultivation. Similar problems were encountered in the estimates of Zevgolatio, Makriotissa, Strymoniko, etc. New surveys had therefore to be made to ensure that cultivators were not settled on infertile or tiny plots, as had happened before.¹⁴ The teams inspecting expropriated properties in western Macedonia ascertained that the military surveying teams had surveyed the formerly Muslim estates piecemeal, neglecting to depict the exact size of each tract of land within the estate owned by native farmers. Instead, they had simply noted that a portion of the estate was ‘property owned by various indigenous inhabitants’. Serafeimidis, Supervisor of the Agricultural District of Kozani, claimed that as the military survey teams were paid per stremma surveyed, they were all too eager to survey as many properties as they could in as short a time as possible in order to maximize their earnings.¹⁵ In other cases, small plots within tracts belonging to native residents, but which were to be allotted to refugees, were similarly not specifically delineated on the survey charts and the natives promptly exploited the ensuing confusion by cultivating such lands themselves. Consequently, ownership could not be established with precision by those teams responsible for the final distribution and ¹⁴ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.413. ¹⁵ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.373, Serafeimidis, Supervisor of the Agricultural District of Kozani, to GGACMT, 26 May 1934.

Agricultural Land Distribution

151

the granting of titles of concession (parachoritiria) was subsequently withheld.¹⁶ Characteristic of the general state of affairs in western Macedonia is the example of the Agalaioi estate, a former Muslim property on which thirtyone refugee families had been settled.¹⁷ Small plots proposed for distribution to refugees were lumped together in a wholesale manner with equally small holdings owned by indigenous inhabitants of two neighbouring villages, Itea and Sarakina. The land in question appeared on the survey charts as plot number 4 (5,454,717 sq. m.) and plot number 38 (746,213 sq. m.) with the accompanying vague description ‘land under dispute between inhabitants of Itea, Sarakina, and refugee settlers’. The inspecting authorities had no alternative but to postpone the distribution until the disputed land could be surveyed anew, and each plot denoted individually.¹⁸ The discrepancies in the survey charts of the estates resulted in bitter conflicts between refugees and native farmers, who often had recourse to the local courts in order to safeguard the concession of a plot which in many cases was vital for the mere survival of both of the two claimants. In order to illustrate this situation, quite common in all rural areas, it is worth citing a part of the correspondence between a plaintive refugee and the Ministry of Agriculture: I happen to be a refugee inhabitant of Vatolakos, Grevena, and during the distribution of lands by the 6th Surveying Team I was allotted a plot of third-category land of an extent of 18.5 str. which had been fallow land, but which, having toiled to cultivate, I rendered fertile, having indeed sown part of this land with wheat. Because, however, one Sarantis Adamos of the neighbouring community of Milea claims ownership rights to the afore-mentioned land and the case is currently being reviewed by the Court of First Instance (Protodikeio) of Grevena, which has postponed the trial in order that I may procure an extract from the distribution map wherein the exact situation and extent of my lot is indicated, I beg you to send me such in time for the proposed hearing in order that I may defend my indisputable right to the said land, without which my agrarian existence is not possible.¹⁹ ¹⁶ See in GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.373, the reports of the Inspection Teams of exchanged properties in Kozani and Florina, concerning the need for supplementary plotting of individual properties. Representative cases are those of the estates belonging to Kastro and Kyrakali in the eparchy of Grevena. These estates were former Muslim settlements and after the exchange they were inhabited exclusively by refugees (Kastro: 72 persons, and Kyrakali: 249 persons, according to the 1928 census). ¹⁷ According to the 1928 census. ¹⁸ For similar occurrences (e.g. estates of Kastoria and Kolokythakion ) see GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.373. ¹⁹ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.280, Application by G. Dimitriadis to Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Technical Service for the distribution of lands, 8 Feb. 1934.

152

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

Moreover, the teams of surveyors responsible for the distribution of lands kept imprecise records, neglecting to include such details as father’s names of ‘beneficiaries’, which led to problems in the drawing up of the final titles. Since 1927, when the distributions began, there had occurred numerous transfers of lots in various regions without the records being updated.²⁰ This led to further confusion in the finalization of titles, particularly as the authority responsible in such matters concerning indigenous beneficiaries was the ‘Directorship of Colonization’, whereas in the case of the refugees, neither the Agricultural Bank of Greece (ATE), which undertook to complete the work of the RSC after its liquidation in accordance with the Papadatos–Eddy Agreement of 1930, nor the Ministry of Agriculture, which co-ordinated the whole process, had undertaken to correct the records. As a result, distribution of lands to their farmers actually was pending in many districts of Macedonia up to 1940. Although we have no precise data for the exact extent of the problem, the sources available indicate that it was more acute in the drained lands as well as in mountainous regions of western and eastern Macedonia. The consequences were inevitably disquieting for the socioeconomic status of the new settlers. During the final distribution of lands to refugees, lots which had been previously allocated to groups of related persons had to be reconsidered, as some members within these groups constituted separate households because of marriages which had been contracted in the mean time. When the time came for the permanent distribution, the granting of personal titles and their legal transfer to the ‘beneficiaries’ could not be finalized before a distinction was made between the original family-group lots and to individual lots, and before the plots that each was entitled to were determined. This task was undertaken by the expropriation committees but, as late as 1940, relatively few cases had been settled. The issuing by the Agricultural Bank (ATE) of title-deeds to farmers who had been settled on Muslim or expropriated estates by the RSC—in accordance with the Papadatos–Eddy Agreement in 1930—was retarded in 1939 when, by enactment of law, the division of family lots preceded the issue of personal titles.²¹ The Distribution Teams were obliged in refugee settlements where available lands were limited to reduce lots proportionally during the final distribution. In many cases these reductions were so extreme that the ²⁰ See GAK, ATYYG, F.268, (n. 10 above). ²¹ See GAK, ATYYG, F.47, Diefthynsis Agrotikis Apokatastaseos (Department of Agricultural Settlement), S. Petropoulos, 13 Aug. 1947.

Agricultural Land Distribution

153

distributions were deemed invalid by the ratification committees. What hampered the settlement of the distributions was in fact the lack of organization on the part of the authorities responsible, including the surveying authority (TYYG) of the Ministry of Agriculture, the slow pace at which preliminary tasks were undertaken, and in particular the omission of vital information from the cadastral registers. It must be added, however, that the inability or the reluctance on the part of the beneficiaries to pay off their debts and so acquire permanent title-deeds further delayed matters. Despite the fact that, by means of a special reform of the agricultural law just prior to Second World War, farmers were able to secure their lots, the finalization of land distribution was deferred to the post-war period. Deeds had not been provided in some cases even as late as 1950.²² Accurate surveying, plotting, and delineation of all lands available were a prerequisite to the finalization of any distribution. These jobs were undertaken by the surveying teams of the TYYG. The GovernorshipGeneral of Macedonia had requested plans and cadastral surveys to be forwarded to the local committees by the TYYG, but much of this information was delayed because of the great number of estates involved and, as a consequence, many distributions were deferred resulting in a massive backlog. The necessity of creating copies of all relevant documents added to the burden of the already overloaded clerical staff, who were taking literally years to complete such a task. Thousands of letters of protest accumulated from all parts of Greece, flooding the TYYG (where all the original documents were kept) with even more paperwork to cope with. This encumbrance on the bureaucracy in turn taxed the tolerance and resilience of the peasants, who in many situations were reduced to a state of destitution, as exemplified by the case of Vladovo, whose inhabitants were required to wait for ten years before a copy of the cadastral chart was sent to them in order for their lots to be allocated.²³ Many estates which had been surveyed and deemed expropriated by the local committees could not be distributed because the relevant ‘resolutions’ were not issued on time. To cite just one example, four expropriated estates (Alistrati, Banitsa, Koumanitsi, and Latsista ) in the twenty-first agrarian sector of Drama were not distributed to their cultivators until as late as 1931.²⁴ ²² GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.66, ‘Memorandum regarding the allotment of permanent titles to settled peasants’, by G. Xenos, Director of the TYYG, 20 May 1943. ²³ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.413, No. 32, Agricultural Association of Landless Farmers from Agra (Edessa) to Ministry of Agriculture, 21 Oct. 1932. ²⁴ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.358, Agricultural Bureau of Drama to TYYG, 4 Apr. 1931.

154

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

A further cause of delay was the fact that the surveyors of necessity worked seasonally: in the field during the summer months and recording their findings on the drawing-board during the winter. As a result, much fieldwork had often to be left incomplete, interrupted by the untimely coming of winter. Disputed claims were consequently often left unsettled for the following year or even years. As a result, allocations of plots remained temporary. This had a twofold effect. Uncertainty about their property did not encourage the refugees to cultivate their entire plot, nor would they exert themselves to make improvements in view of the possibility that someone else might profit from their labours in the event of its transfer. Agricultural output was consequently low.²⁵ In certain densely populated areas and especially in those areas where there happened to be a relatively large number of landless inhabitants, serious social problems developed. In a telegram dated 15 May 1930 to the Ministry of Agriculture, addressed to the Under-Secretary Achilleas Papadatos and Sp. Nikolaidis, both Liberal deputies of Kavala, a group of farmers from Eleftheroupolis deprecated the exclusion of their region from the distribution programme for 1930. They further complained that the local population was destitute, particularly the refugee farmers who had been allocated no more than 3–5 stremmata, and requested the immediate distribution of lands so as to avert unjust treatment of staunch supporters of the Liberal Party and also to curb the demagogy of the opposition.²⁶ The extent to which the distribution programme was exploited on a party political level can best be made evident by comparing the context of the above letter to a similar one written three years later by supporters of the rival Populist Party, which came into power after the defeat of Venizelos in the elections of 1932. The permanent distribution of lands of [Eleftheroupolis] has been deferred and continues to be deferred because of the actions of certain local farmers who happen to be significant supporters of the Liberal Party and who, furthermore, have received the lion’s share of the provisional [land] distribution of 1926. The permanent distribution remains pending despite all efforts of the local supporters of both the People’s Party as well as the National Radical Party and in spite of the irrefutable facts: (1) That the suspension of land distribution is most detrimental to both the agrarian sector and to the national economy in general, as farmers, bearing in mind that the ownership of their land is provisional, do not exert the ²⁵ LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 52–3; Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 105. ²⁶ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.358, Telegram from the refugee farmers of Eleftheroupolis to Ministry of Agriculture, A. Papadatos and S. Nikolaidis, 15 May 1930.

Agricultural Land Distribution

155

required effort for the fuller exploitation of their fields and, as a result, yields are low. (2) We cannot but attribute this deplorable state of affairs to the Agrarian Bureau of Kavala which, being obviously under the influence of the local Liberal supporters, is neglecting the pressing issue of land distribution although it is fully aware of the pitiable state of rural society. (3) We extend our most bitter complaints to the Minister, as he has turned a deaf ear to the pleadings of the local friends of the government and by so doing encourages our political rivals. (4) If the Ministry does not satisfy our plea, we cannot but conclude that it lacks both the strength and the courage to satisfy the most justified and rational demands of 200 farmers without first obtaining the consent of the Liberal gang . . . The local rural society is justifiably up-in-arms as the issue at hand is of the utmost urgency.²⁷

As there was still a large number of estates in Macedonia which had not been distributed by 1934, a joint effort was made by the TYYG and the General Directorship for Agriculture and Resettlement in Macedonia and Thrace and a table was drawn up with the prospect of distributing such lands in the current and following years. Besides the occasion for ‘colonization’ of the particular regions in question, much consideration was given to the feasibility of completing the undertaking, given that verification of ownership and checking of interchangeable lots as well as vouchsafing fair sharing out of the available tracts of land had to precede any distribution.²⁸ By 1937 a total number of 1,233 allocations had been made to refugee settlers by the TYYG. Of these 1,116 were deemed valid, the remainder being subject to review either because they lacked essential information or because ownership and the extent of boundaries were questioned by native smallholders. In Macedonia all allocations made under the supervision of Barbanos in western Macedonia (22 in Kastoria, 20 in Florina, and 48 in Kozani) and Georgiadis in central Macedonia (30 in the districts of Ardea and Almopia) were cancelled because of their ‘bias in favour of the refugees’.²⁹ In the same ten-year period, 848 allocations were made to landless native inhabitants. A further 1,105 allocations remained to be finalized, of which 222 were for natives and 883 for refugees.³⁰ ²⁷ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.125, Petition by the ‘Agios Tryphon’ and ‘Agricultural Bank’ agricultural co-operative societies of Eleftheroupolis to the Ministry of Agriculture, 12 June 1933 and Petition by the Agricultural Co-operative of Eleftheroupolis to the President of the Greek Government, the Minister of Defence, and the Minister of Agriculture, 4 Sept. 1933. ²⁸ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.426, 23 Apr. 1934. ²⁹ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F. 411, Report to the Ministry of Agriculture No. 77066, 4 July 1931. ³⁰ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.80 and 280.

156

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia Table 5.3. Distributions to refugee settlements 1930

1934

1937

Total

Pending

Salonica Kozani Drama Komotini Old Greece

124 26 114 50 62

208 67 168 129 —

67 33 71 32 —

399 126 353 211 62

198 106 139 15 185

TOTAL

376

572

203

1,151

643

Source: GAK, TYYG, F 80.

Table 5.4. Number of estates distributed permanently, 1927–1937 Districts

1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 Pending

Edessa Salonica Katerini Kilkis Veroia Lagada

1 1 — 1 — —

1 2 — —

9 8 — 13 3 3

5 25 — 21 20 11

7 32 4 2 14 13

9 22 7 14 8 9

15 5 1 5 7 1

8 16 4 2 3 —

7 10 5 3 10 5

— 7 — 9 — —

2 1 — 3 — 5

63 127 22 75 65 47

CENTRAL

3

3

36

82

72

69

34

33

40

16

11

399

Kozani Kastoria Florina Grevena

— — — —

— — — —

— — 13 —

13 — — —

15 — 1 —

10 — 4 —

8 8 1 8

2 4 3 3

5 7 4 1

4 2 1 2

— 2 1 4

57 23 28 18

WESTERN

—

—

13

13

16

14

25

12

17

9

7

126

Nigrita Elefth/LIS Kavala Drama Serres

— — — — —

— — — 14 —

— 1 12 17 6

— 2 20 29 13

— 27 — 29 17

5 9 5 15 9

1 — 1 9 18

— — 8 6 9

3 1 10 4 10

— — 16 4 6

1 — 3 7 6

10 40 75 134 94

EASTERN

—

14

36

64

73

43

29

23

28

26

17

353

Alexandroupolis — Komotini —

— —

— —

— 28

— 17

19 —

1 2

2 1

1 —

4 2

2 —

29 52

MACEDONIA TOTAL

MACEDONIA TOTAL

MACEDONIA TOTAL

157

Agricultural Land Distribution Districts

1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 Pending

Xanthi — Soufli — Didimoteicho —

— — —

7 — —

15 — —

19 — —

7 11 26

— — 13

1 4 5

1 3 2

6 3 —

1 1 6

57 20 53

—

—

7

43

36

63

16

14

7

15

10

211

1 — — 1

— — — 1

13 — — —

11 4 — 2

1 — — 12

2 2 9 10

— 8 6 3

3 0 3 3

— — 13 3

1 — 1 2

— — — —

37 14 32 6

2

1

15

37

13

23

17

9

16

4

—

144

THRACE TOTAL

Larisa Ioannina Chania Athens REST OF GREECE TOTAL

Source: GAK, TYYG, F.80.

DEMOGRAPHIC IMPLICATIONS OF AGRICULTURAL RESET TLEMENT: THE EFFECT OF DISTRIBUTION ON MARRIAGES The system employed for the distribution of plots among the refugees often affected the very family structure pattern which had developed in their country of origin. Especially in Anatolia, two or three families related by blood bonds would make up one extended household. In some regions marriage traditions were matrilocal, whereas in others they were patrilocal. On settling in Greece, young refugee couples within such extended families established in rural areas opted to set aside tradition and to form independent households in order to obtain a plot and tools of their own.³¹ According to the law, only married couples were eligible to partake in the land distribution. Consequently, after 1925 the number of marriages increased in villages where distribution of land was to take place; in some cases weddings were arranged and occurred hastily one or two weeks before the distribution; in some cases youths were not loath to marry women considerably their senior, and sometimes the bride and the groom met each other for the first time virtually on the eve of the wedding.³² ³¹ LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 45. ³² Traditionally marriage of men to women older than themselves was generally frowned upon in Greek society, as on the whole it still is. Only in the Slavophone villages

158

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

The large number of marriages among refugees between 1925 and 1935 seems to be a plausible explanation for the high birth rate during the same period and for the fact that, despite heavy losses suffered by them in the 1920s—owing mainly to malnutrition, malaria, tuberculosis, and dysentery—illustrated in the increase of death rates during the same period, the refugees finally affected positively demographic trends in all areas where they were settled. Valaoras, who made detailed studies of the demographic impact of refugee settlement on the population of Greece between 1921 and 1936, observes that in the prefectures (nomoi) of Macedonia and Thrace, Attica-Boeotia, and Lesvos, where the percentage of refugees was between 20.2 and 59.2, there was a remarkable rise in the birth rate, which far surpassed the average birth rate in all other prefectures of the country.³³ His observations, which begin sixty years before the settlement of the refugees, clearly show a constant decline in the annual number of births in Greece, and in fact, before the coming of the refugees, Greece had one of the lowest birth rates (fourteenth) among the European countries included in his study. After 1923 he observes a steady upward trend in direct proportion to the increase in population through the settlement of refugees, in particular in the prefectures where refugees were settled. By the end of the third decade of the century Greece’s birth rate was the third highest.³⁴ A decline in births among refugees, however, becomes evident after 1934, and the rate of births of native inhabitants and refugees gradually tends to equalize. Valaoras, at a loss to account for such a sharp increase in birth rates but observing that it was definitely related to the influx of refugees, puts it down to a high fertility among the newcomers and praises the ‘superior biological characteristics’ of the refugee population. The decline of births after 1934, however, tends to invalidate this argument.³⁵ It would seem more plausible to conclude that the increase in birth rates was rather a result of socio-economic factors which led to an increase in marriages at relatively earlier ages, as mentioned above. within the zadruga system was it commonplace for marriages to be contracted between younger men, 17–19 years old, and older women in their mid-20s. These marriages were directly related to the unique socio-economic structure of the zadruga. For details on the role of women in the zadruga system see Karavidas, Agrotika, 237–40. ³³ V. G. Valaoras, To dimographikon problima tis Ellados kai i epidrasis ton prosfygon (The Demographic Question in Greece and the Impact of the Refugees) (Athens, 1942), 24–33. ³⁴ Ibid. p 33, 55, 59–61. ³⁵ Ibid. 28–9.

159

Agricultural Land Distribution

Table 5.5. Marriages and births in Macedonia from June to December 1924 Month

Refugees settled

Marriages

Per 1,000

Births

Per 1,000

Deaths

Per 1,000

June July Aug. Sept.

302,398 310,792 320,499 345,281

480 390 298 367

1.55 1.23 1.00 1.00

447 441 491 475

1.48 1.41 1.53 1.37

393 438 772 1,080

1.30 1.41 2.4 3.12

Source: LN, Fourth Quarterly Report on the Operations of the RSC, Athens, 25 November 1924, 4.

Extensive research into the rates of marriages, births, and deaths among refugees, particularly in the first decade of their settlement, requires a study of its own. Records of marriages, particularly in the northern provinces of Greece, are not readily available, many having been destroyed during the Occupation. For the purposes of the present study, let it suffice that the reports of the RSC and studies of agrarian society by contemporary researchers confirm an increase in marriages and births among refugees during the decade in question, even though they do not correlate this phenomenon with the concurrent distribution of lands. Anagnostopoulos observes in the province of Serres an average annual increase in population of 0.9 per cent between 1928 and 1933. This percentage varies from village to village in accordance with the prevailing sanitary conditions, from 2.6 per cent in Paralimnion to 0.13 per cent in Skotousa, and in five of the total number of villages he even observes a decrease in the population. The increase in the number of refugee households, which resulted from the mass marriages contracted between 1927 and 1933 in settlements where a distribution of lands was to take place is reflected in the smaller number of persons per refugee family when compared to the average number of persons per family in mixed or non-refugee settlements. In the Prefecture of Serres, for example, the average number of persons per family was higher in villages with indigenous land-owning populations where there was no distribution of lands to be made, as well as in mixed villages with a large number of indigenous smallholders.³⁶ In Sarakatsaneiko, a village inhabited by Sarakatsan herdsmen, as its name indicates, the average number of persons per family was 7; in Melenikitsi, an old kefalochori inhabited by natives, it was 6.1; in ³⁶ N. Anagnostopoulos, O Kampos ton Serron (The Plain of Serres) (Athens, 1936), 42 and 63–5.

160

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

Bambakophyto and Sidirokastro, both with mixed populations, the average was respectively 5.8 and 5.7. In contrast to these, in refugee settlements in the plains where land had been or was to be distributed, the average number of persons per family was noticeably smaller and the number of childless and newly formed families was greater. The average number of persons per family in those settlements was as follows: in Gonimon 2.7, in Neochori (Irakleia) 3, in the villages of Konstantinato, Aghia Eleni, and Kouvouklion 3.1.³⁷ It is worth mentioning that during the inter-war period mixed marriages between refugees and natives were very rare. The predominant reason for this is that among all refugee groups, and in particular the Pontics and Cappadocians, there was a tendency towards intermarriage. The natives, on the other hand, regarded the newcomers as a sickly lot and looked upon them with contempt and suspicion. The refugees were more prone to illness because of the ordeals and vicissitudes they had suffered, which had affected them both physically and psychologically, and were more vulnerable to the local scourge—malaria—and to tuberculosis. As a consequence, the locals often avoided contact with them altogether. However, it seems that mixed marriages were restricted for another reason as well, related to the land question. Because of friction which had resulted from the few mixed marriages contracted in the first decade of resettlement, archival evidence indicates the intervention of authorities concerned to dissuade refugees from marrying with natives. However, such intervention, although limited, was deemed a precautionary necessity aimed at eliminating friction between natives and refugees in mixed settlements. Opportunists among indigenous males saw prospects of attaining land by marrying refugee women. Sir John Hope Simpson, the Vice-Chairman of the RSC, cited one such case in the village of Ostitsa (Mikromilea), north of the Nestos, in late 1927, where the inhabitants were very much disturbed owing to the marriage between a native man and a refugee woman. The whole village was disgruntled and unhappy. The native man who had married a refugee and so obtained a lot, was of a bad kind, and the example of the possible evil effects of a marriage of this kind were very evident. The D.G.C.M., Karamanos, found it necessary to issue orders at once ejecting the native man from the village with his wife in order to restore harmony, and give the village a chance of success.³⁸ ³⁷ O Kampos ton Serron, p 42–3. ³⁸ LNA, C 124, No. 4, Note 1601, Bordereau, John Hope Simpson, 6 Feb. 1928.

Agricultural Land Distribution

161

He goes on, however, to express his doubt as to the desirability of such measures becoming the norm.³⁹ Subsequently, the Council of the RSC at its meeting of 2 June 1927, authorized the Agricultural Colonization Department (ACD) ‘to grant full agricultural lots to refugee women married to landless native men’ during the remainder of the year 1927. This measure, however, was experimental and subject to renewal. The next year the ACD recommended renewal of the rule for 1928 on the basis of ‘incomplete returns for 1927’. In Macedonia and western Thrace, eighty-seven cases of such marriages, in which native men had come to share in refugee holdings, were reported. In some cases this caused friction, either because of the character of the native man or, more often, because the limited area of land at the disposal of the RSC rendered any addition to the number of the claimants unwelcome. The RSC deferred immediate action and asked for the opinion of the directors of the Agricultural Colonization Bureaux. Karamanos, Krimbas, and Petropoulos favoured continuation of the rule, while Domestichos said that from the experience in western Thrace the measure was not necessary. The cases of mixed marriages were classified by the RSC as follows: 1. A refugee girl marrying a landless native ceases to be counted as her father’s family and establishes a family of her own, entitled to one regular share in the holdings of the community. The effect is the same as when a son leaves his father’s house and establishes a family of his own. 2. A refugee widow entitled to only a fractional share in the community holdings marries a landless native, and they may then take a full share as a regular agricultural family.

(In both the above cases the settlement bureau of the RSC had the authority to classify the new family as agricultural, semi-agricultural, or urban, according to the qualifications of the husband.) 3. A refugee widow with children, entitled to a full agricultural lot, marries a landless man. The increase of one in the membership of the family may in some instances result in an increase in the holding to which the family is entitled. Otherwise the marriage has no effect at all on the allotment of land.

There were some cases in which the following rules had been applied: 1. A refugee widow marries a native who is himself entitled to an allotment under the agrarian law and both holdings are retained. ³⁹ Ibid.

162

Refugee Resettlement in Macedonia

2. A refugee widow marries a native who has property of his own, or resides and carries on a trade outside the refugee settlement. In some instances she is allowed to retain her right to a refugee allotment. Such cases as these have to be handled on their individual merits with very careful attention to fairness to the Community as well as to the families directly concerned. 3. A refugee woman married to a native dies, leaving him heir to a part or the whole of her property. Whether he shall be her full successor so far as relations with the RSC are concerned remains still to be decided, both in general and in the one case hitherto reported.⁴⁰

The RSC decided not to intervene in the case of mixed marriages and to continue a policy permitting allocation of houses and land to refugee women married to landless native men, with the reservation that the rule would be ‘permissive, not obligatory’ and where the land available for distribution was scarce, the Commission would retain the right to avoid giving unfair advantages to the families concerned.⁴¹ Venizelos in 1930 saw the settlement of refugees in ‘quarters’ according to their place of origin, as well as the tendency to avoid mixed marriages, as detrimental to social integration and proposed measures which would encourage intercourse between natives and newcomers and so lead to a better understanding between the two groups.⁴² In conclusion: the terms of land distribution to a large degree dictated demographic trends during the resettlement period. Although the mortality rate was as high as 80 per cent in certain circumstances, the number of marriages and births was equally high. These were encouraged, to a large degree, by the fact that married refugee men were entitled to receive a whole share, whereas unmarried men were excluded from the land distribution and, furthermore, could not even inherit their due portion of their fathers’ lots for the whole period under study.⁴³

⁴⁰ LNA, C 129, No. 40, ‘Refugee women married to native men’, 29 Dec. 1928. ⁴¹ Ibid. ⁴² Ibid. ⁴³ The issue of the inheritance rights of the members of refugee families is presented in Ch. 10. See also Notaras, Agrotiki Apokatastasis.

PART III THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND ETHNOLOGICAL IMPACT

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6 The Social and Political Impact CONFLICT BET WEEN REFUGEES AND NATIVE PEASANTS OVER L AND DISTRIBUTION The settlement and integration of the refugees into Greek society has been judged, as indeed it was, the greatest peaceful achievement of the modern Greek state and nation.¹ However, their gradual integration into the economic, social, and political life of the country did not follow a smooth pattern and was characterized by tension. A number of anthropological studies have shown that although common cultural characteristics, such as religion and language, are prerequisites for the integration of outsiders into a society, they are not in themselves enough to guarantee it. In fact, the most important condition for integration is considered to be the availability of resources in the host society, an adequate income, and the availability of jobs for both locals and newcomers.² The refugees and the local Greeks had a number of things in common that made it easier for them to live together. They undoubtedly shared the same religion, national consciousness, and national ideals. The majority of refugees also shared the same education and language, although the Black Sea Greeks (Pontics), who made up a large percentage of the refugees, could not communicate with local people very easily, and there were numerous Turkish-speaking groups among the refugees as well ¹ G. T. Mavrogordatos, ‘To anepanalipto epitevgma’ (The Unrepeatable Achievement), DKMS, 9, special issue: Mikrasiatiki Katastrofi kai Elliniki Koinonia (The Asia Minor Catastrophe and Greek Society) (Athens, 1992), 9–12. ² Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid, 7–8. According to the author, ‘a very simple definition of integration would be of a situation in which host and refugee communities are able to co-exist, sharing the same resources—both economic and social—with no greater mutual conflict than that which exists within the host community.’ Cf. M. Bulcha, Flight and Integration: Causes of Mass Exodus from Ethiopia and the Problems of Integration in the Sudan (Uppsala, 1988).

166

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

(e.g., the Karamanlides).³ Even though the two groups involved had common ethnic bonds, they constituted two different worlds. The historical evolution of communities in Asia Minor, their culture, and their outlook were generally different to the local people’s cultural patterns (way of life, customs and mores, dress, homes), since each group had developed as a separate entity within the Greek world—in the widest sense of the word—and under radically different historical and social conditions. Furthermore, there were clear and significant differences between the refugees—who can be roughly separated into five groups, depending on the area from which they had come. This is why when locals and refugees first came into contact and realized how very different they were, they suffered what Mavrogordatos describes as ‘a traumatic cultural shock’.⁴ The differences between refugees and hosts were sufficient to cause strife and prejudice, particularly as competition for land and livelihood lowered the standard of living for everyone. In this chapter the relationship and the stereotypes which developed between the two groups will be considered in the context of their social interaction. From the first year that refugee waves flooded the country it became clear that symbiosis between the two groups would not be an easy matter. Most firsthand accounts stress that the refugees’ new physical and social environment was generally unhappy and unwelcoming. Moreover, Turkish-speakers and Pontics mention that they faced more difficulties, rejection, and discrimination, from the local population than Greekspeaking refugees, since, culturally speaking, they stood out more. Odysseus Lampsidis ascribes the ‘hostile stance adopted by the local ³ The Chairman of the RSC, C. P. Howland, wrote on that: ‘In their background and characteristics, then, the “refugees” driven into Greece proper from the Aegean littoral, the Pontus, and Eastern Thrace were folk whom Greece had always regarded as her own children; there were no profound differences of sentiment in the way of their assimilation. But . . . the gradual absorption of these way-farers into the life of the country were tasks of heroic proportions.’ Howland, ‘Greece and her Refugees’, 619. Eddy also pointed out that the refugees should be viewed ‘as Greek immigrants, coming to Greece not as aliens upon a foreign shore’. Eddy, Greek Refugees, 14. ⁴ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 193; Fotiadis, a refugee who experienced the situation in the north of Greece, has this to say: ‘The fact that these two groups [natives and newcomers] had lived apart for so long in a different environment created such a gulf between them that the Pontian preferred a Lazos for a neighbour, the Caucasian a Kardouchos, the Thracian a Pomak, and the locals a Bulgar.’ P. Fotiadis, Oloi klevoun ma poios ftaiei? Apo to imerologio enos prosfyga (Everybody Steals, but Who is to Blame? From the Diary of a Refugee) (Thessaloniki, 1928), 55, cited by Iakovos D. Michailidis, ‘To prosfygiko problima ston himerisio elliniko typo (1922–1930)’, (The Refugee Question in the Daily Greek Press 1922–1930), MA dissertation, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1992, 58.

The Social and Political Impact

167

inhabitants’ towards the Pontian refugees to the latter’s specific character, a product of their geographically isolated position on the shores of the Black Sea, as well as to their dialect, which made it very difficult for them to communicate with the local people and prevented them from adopting standard Modern Greek ‘swiftly and correctly’. He makes no mention of other social, economic, or political factors, which played a decisive role in creating cleavages between the natives and the newcomers.⁵ The refugees on their arrival in Greece found themselves in an unfamiliar and rather hostile society. Even before the 1922 population exchange, refugees from Thrace and Asia Minor who had arrived in Greece following the large-scale persecution of 1914–17 had been met with hostility, indifference, and heartlessness on the part of the local population, who felt that their own survival was threatened by the presence of the refugees.⁶ On 21 August 1914 the Athens Workers’ Centre, which was made up of the governing bodies of over twenty labour unions, voted to address the following demand to the Prime Minister and the trade unions of the free Greek state: ‘The refugees should not be permitted to take the jobs of local workers because they already receive an allowance from the government, and because they are taking the bread from the mouths of the local workers, the future liberators of these self-same refugees.’⁷ Following the population exchange and the arrival of one and a half million refugees, it could only be expected that local workers, tradesmen, and merchants would feel their own livelihood and social position to be under threat, and that they would do what they could to rally together to meet the danger. The refugees’ sorry state might initially have provoked compassion and pity, but these feelings were quickly replaced by feelings of repugnance, offence, and hostility when the local Greeks found their own livelihood and progress to be under threat.⁸ In an attempt to prevent native Greeks from expressing hostile feelings, as had happened in the past, the refugees expressed ‘their gratitude to the Greek nation for its sympathy, and their own unalloyed desire to live in a state of complete harmony and brotherly love with the native Greeks on ⁵ Lampsidis, ‘Black Sea Greeks’, 21–2; cf. R. Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge, 1992), 103. ⁶ A. Rigos, I B Elliniki Democratia 1924–1935. Koininikes diastaseis tis politikis skinis (The Second Greek Democracy 1924–1935: Social Dimensions of the Political Arena) (Athens, 1988), 227. ⁷ The Persecution of the Greeks in Thrace and Macedonia, Original essays and official documents, A Call to all Greeks and Public Opinion in the Civilized World (Athens, 1915), 15. ⁸ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 193–8; Liakos, Ergasia kai Politiki, 43–50.

168

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

the basis of mutual respect for the others’ rights’.⁹ However, their differences, emanating from economic and political causes, soon led to open conflict in several regions. The refugees’ ‘Greekness’ was called into question by anti-Venizelist locals who resented their presence and wanted their repatriation.¹⁰ Although the refugees were not a homogeneous entity, since they included groups with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, they had nevertheless all been considered members of the same group in the Ottoman Empire (they were all Rum millet), and had considered themselves Greek on their arrival in Greece. The names they were called—‘sons of Turks’, ‘those who were baptized in yoghourt’, or simply ‘Turks’— clearly illustrate the views held by natives on the refugees’ national identity.¹¹ The refugees in their turn replied via the Press and their own organizations that they were more ‘Greek’ than the Greeks of mainland Greece, and the natives in the New Lands in which they had been resettled. A refugee writes in the Newspaper of the Balkans: Demonstrators in Athens the day before yesterday marched past the refugee settlement in Syntagma Square, jeering at the refugees, and shouting ‘Down with the sons of Turks! Down with the Turks!’ This is not the first time voices like these had been heard, Greek voices shouting abuse. This is not the first time that the hatred of the Greeks has erupted at the expense of their less fortunate brothers . . . nor the first time these unfortunates have been jeered at . . . or beaten or imprisoned or persecuted for having different views on matters Greek, for having imagined a different Greece, and nurtured other hopes and other dreams. The ‘sons of Turks’ will not be intimidated by these threats and insults. Sons of this land now, they will exercise the rights they have won with their blood, sacrifices, losses, catastrophes, and disasters. They will show who the real ‘sons of Turks’ are: those who were ousted from their homes by the Turk or those who shamefully betrayed Greek territories and Greek honour. Those that curse and provoke us have no conscience, only impertinence and hardness of heart. They have shown us their true colours, and that is good. Now we will show them ours. Let us each show our true mettle . . . Since they asked for it, let us show them who the ‘sons of ⁹ Extraordinary Refugee Conference, May 1924. ¹⁰ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 201–6. ¹¹ During the same period in the cities, the word ‘Smyrnia’—meaning a female inhabitant of Smyrna—was identified with an ‘easy’ or ‘available’ woman. The formation of stereotypes based on refugees’ relaxed morals and the looseness of their women is a common element in a syndrome discernible in many societies by which refugees are held responsible for outbreaks of antisocial and unwholesome phenomena such as prostitution, drug use, and vagrancy. See C. Samouilidis, ‘Social and Cultural Problems Faced by the Pontians, and How they Dealt with Them’, First World Pontian Conference (Thessaloniki, 1986), 134.

The Social and Political Impact

169

Turks’ really are, and who no longer have a place in this place called Greece. Greece, land of dreams, and responsibilities, and civilization.¹²

Life changed overnight for the local population when hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived during 1922–3. Measures introduced by the Revolutionary Government to deal with the enormous refugee problem included forcing the local population to open up their houses to the refugees, and on many occasions to share their food and their crops with them.¹³ In Macedonia the government requisitioned houses, barns, fields, seeds, and pasture land to help settle the refugees.¹⁴ In many cases, the immediate need to house the refugees and provide them with medical care was funded by additional taxes on farm produce. In eastern Macedonia and western Thrace, and in particular in the Drama and Komotini regions, where the government was resettling refugees as a matter of urgency to replace the Muslim tobacco workers who had left in the population exchange, the tobacco tax was raised from 10 to 13 per cent to facilitate the resettlement of refugees.¹⁵ The process of resettlement of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the northern rural areas was a traumatic experience for both the newcomers and those who had to receive them. Not only were the natives obliged to share their houses, their bread, their water, and their land, but they also had to bear the financial burden of refugee relief, settlement, and compensation.¹⁶ As the settlement of the refugees had important social, economic, and political repercussions on the rural society of Macedonia, a certain amount of hostility had developed in the countryside in the 1920s and, in some cases, clashes between native cultivators and refugees were inevitable. The expropriation and redistribution of land requires some measure of force. It is undoubtedly a political issue, since it involves a conflict of interests between owners and claimants. In Macedonia and ¹² Efimeris ton Balkanion (Newspaper of the Balkans), 13/12/1923, an anonymous refugee. ¹³ Vika D. Gizeli, ‘Epitaxis akiniton katoikoumenon i oposdipote chrisimopoioumenon’ (Requisitioning of Immoveable Properties Inhabited or in Use in any Way) in O Xerizomos kai i alli Patrida. Oi prosfygoupoleis stin Ellada (The Uprooting and the Other Homeland: The Refugee Urban Centres in Greece), Proceedings of the Academic Symposium held by the Research Society for Modern Greek Culture and General Education (11–12 Apr. 1997) (Athens, 1999), 69–87. ¹⁴ FEK (Government Gazette), No. 259, 14 Sept. 1923, Royal Decree ‘regarding requisitioning in Macedonia to assist in the settlement of the refugees’. ¹⁵ Ibid., No. 361, Dec. 1923, Ministerial Decree ‘regarding an additional tax on tobacco leaves to cover the cost of providing medical care and housing for refugees in Drama and Komotini’. This measure had already been applied in Xanthi on 20 Sept.1923. ¹⁶ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 160.

170

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

other regions of Greece where refugees were settled, it acquired an additional dimension as those eligible to receive land were divided into two distinct categories: the indigenous landless peasants, who had for a long time nurtured expectations of becoming owners of the land which in many cases they had been cultivating for generations, and the refugees, who had the right according to the Convention of Lausanne to receive all the land of the former Turkish estates. The refugees were furthermore entitled to receive the same amount of land in Greece as they had abandoned in Turkey. During the 1920s the refugees and their political representatives never ceased their claims to this right. Nevertheless, this stipulation of the Convention was not met, as also was the case with the compensation for the properties they left in their place of origin. In rural areas the refugees continued to be considered as a threat by the native population throughout the inter-war period, in spite of the fact that alongside the former all landless natives had received lands. Moreover, a considerable portion of the funds provided for refugee resettlement was invested in infrastructure projects (such as health, irrigation and drainage works, construction of roads, etc.) which contributed to the development of the whole region and benefited both refugees and natives. Moreover, the arrival of refugees from Thrace proved a boon for native landowners, since those refugees that had managed to bring their agricultural tools and equipment with them proved a useful addition to the pool of labourers available at critical phases of the farming year, while others worked as shepherds for large-scale stockbreeders.¹⁷ The natives, however, as they bitterly complained, did indeed bear the brunt of the burden of the refugee resettlement for the whole of the interwar period. As a consequence, there were continual clashes between these two groups in many regions of Macedonia, particularly in areas where the majority of the population was native and wherever the problem of land scarcity was worse. In regions inhabited by Slav-speaking peasants, where cultural and ethnic variations between the two groups were manifested by adherence to the two opposing political worlds, Venizelists and antiVenizelists, there was constant latent strife during the period under examination. Indeed, very few native villagers provided the refugees with food and shelter of their own free will or showed any concern for the plight of the newcomers. Percy Alden, Chairman of the Save the Children Fund, after ¹⁷ A. N. Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood (Chicago and London, 1997), 154.

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171

a tour of several months in the Near East, remarked on the attitude of the locals: Macedonian Greeks are not favourably disposed towards the incomers, and in many cases steal the land vacated by the Turks, which has been earmarked for the refugees. As there is no land registration it is difficult to prevent this . . . Some of the people I saw in Macedonia have been on the trek for five years. First they were harried about in Asia Minor by the Turks, and now, in their new home they are still homeless.¹⁸

The refugees who flooded into every part of Macedonia imposed further limitations on the local inhabitants’ use of already limited resources, and put paid to their hopes of appropriating for themselves the fortunes left behind by the Muslims. The landowners, tenant farmers, and landless farm workers who had seized Muslim land reacted violently throughout the region. None of them was willing to relinquish rights or claims to the best, and most lucrative, land in their area. The police had to be called in on a number of occasions to make the work of the RSC easier, and to enforce government policy. One such example is that of fifty refugee families who required police assistance to settle on the Karadjali estate in the Drama region.¹⁹ In those villages which had been mixed, native villagers did whatever they could to stop refugees settling on the land vacated by the departing Muslim population. Mavrogordatos cites the petition addressed to the Fourth Constituent Assembly by a committee of residents of Pourlia requesting ‘that the settlement of the refugees in their area be averted.’²⁰ Karakasidou records another example of this common attitude of the natives towards the newcomers: when refugees from Krithia (Kallipolis— eastern Thrace) arrived in the Guvezna (Langadas) area in late 1922 in search of a suitable place to settle, they chose the former Muslim chiftlik of Palehora. However, native villagers from the nearby village of Drimos had been nurturing hopes of acquiring Palehora ever since its Muslim inhabitants departed, and by cutting off the newcomers’ water supply upstream they succeeded in forcing them to abandon the fertile lands of the former chiftlik and to move on once again.²¹ The natives, the local élite of tzorbadjides, did everything within their power to prevent refugees ¹⁸ FO 371/10663, Evening Standard, ‘Three Nations on the Move’, 19 Feb. 1925. ¹⁹ AYE 1915/A/15/1940, D. Kaklamanos to the Ministry of Finance. The Karadjali estate had been leased by a landowner to Conrad von Willes, an Austrian citizen. ²⁰ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 195. ²¹ Cited by Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, 154.

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settling on lands already under their control or which they were set on acquiring, as well as on those former grazing areas—now communal property—that had become indispensable to local stockbreeders and earned a significant income for community councils.²² As has already been mentioned, the great bulk of the refugees were to be settled in Macedonia, where there were many formerly Muslim villages whose lands and houses were almost entirely available for this purpose. Nevertheless, in certain villages where the population had been mixed, the situation was very complex, owing to the fact that native Christian tenants had taken possession of abandoned Turkish properties, claimed the most fertile portions of these lands, and tried to prevent any attempt on the part of the RSC to settle refugees on them, thus causing serious dissension and disturbances. Administratively speaking, it was very difficult for the RSC to dislodge these indigenous farmers from these lands which they had been cultivating for many years from father to son. Apart from the inevitable local friction and social disorder that such action caused wherever attempted, it also had serious political implications.²³ Moreover, refugee groups which had received permission from the Ministry of Agriculture to settle in a particular place, often found other groups of refugees settled there on a provisional basis, and disputes inevitably ensued.²⁴ It is true that the native population in rural areas were frequently just as poor as the refugees, and that the fact that the newcomers would be allotted land was the cause of a great deal of resentment. The personal testimony of one refugee clearly illustrates this problem: ‘The locals mocked us and called us “sons of Turks”. They said that since we’d come their land had become over-crowded (‘o topos tous stenepse’). They were poor people’.²⁵ Limited resources led the native peasants and the refugees to perceive each other as opponents, and this hostility made it very difficult for the two groups to communicate, and very easy for rival political parties to exploit the situation. Threats were formulated and affected the attitude of both sides during the land reform process.²⁶ The general terms of the agrarian reform law meant that in mixed native and refugee communities not only native landowners owning ²² Cited by Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, 156; see Ch. 10 below. ²³ LN, C.274.M. 87.1924.II Athens, 25 May 1924: Report on the Operations of the RSC for the second three months, p. 4. ²⁴ LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 43. ²⁵ Abraham Elvanides (from Pontus), interviewed by the CAMS’s Researcher, Ermolaos Andreadis, in Yiannakopoulos, Prosfygiki Ellada (Refugee Greece), 132. ²⁶ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 209; Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 193–8.

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estates larger than 100 stremmata, but peasants owning less were often required to hand over part of their land to refugees. In many cases, the local peasants had invested a great deal of effort in bringing under the plough previously uncultivated soil (niamata), which they had fully expected eventually to acquire. However, in some regions rural settlement was only possible by settling refugees on such reclaimed land; the locals felt that their hard-won land was being ‘occupied’ by the newcomers, and that while the government was giving top priority to rural refugees, they themselves were being deprived of what was rightfully theirs, without compensation.²⁷ On the other hand, the refugees constantly accused the native peasants of having illegally seized some of the lands provided for the resettlement of refugee families.²⁸ The resentment of refugees for not having been reimbursed for their abandoned properties made them more militant. The refugees’ right to land in Macedonia and to ‘put down roots’ in their new homeland did not stem solely from their right to Muslim land, as guaranteed by the Convention on population exchanges and the Protocol of Geneva regarding their settlement. The very experience of fleeing their homes had made the refugees feel Greek, and consider themselves part of the ‘imagined community’ of Greeks, and they therefore believed they had every right to settle on land in the Greek nation-state.²⁹ The paying of compensation to the refugees in a period of intense recession was yet another source of local displeasure. Although the government was required to do so by the Treaty of Lausanne, the local faction considered it as further evidence of favouritism towards the refugees. The refugees answered back with letters to the Press and papers which stressed the positive contribution of the refugees to the Greek economy, and attributed local hostility and accusations to a ‘greedy desire’ to seize everything left behind by the Muslims for themselves. F. Nikolaidis’, article entitled ‘Who does not love the refugees, and why’, published in the Newspaper of the Balkans on 16 May 1927, is a good illustration of these arguments: We do not know why it is that some of our Greek-born brothers hate us so . . . For many years now, we have remained without a roof over our heads, and it is only in this, the fifth year of our ordeal, that we have started to receive the tiniest fraction of our abandoned fortunes . . . Why is it that some merchants and ²⁷ AKDK, F.19; see also ESV, 189 and 190 sessions, of 23 and 25 May 1925, 185–6 and 223–4. ²⁸ See AKDK, F.19 for such charges expressed by the representatives of refugees in the All-Refugee Congress held at Thessaloniki in 1924. ²⁹ Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, 148.

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industrialists hate us, when they have benefited substantially from our flight, since their own businesses have expanded on account of the increase in the number of their customers? Why is that a number of financiers hate us, when it was the gold which some of us managed to keep out of Kemal’s clutches for three long years that enabled the nation to shore up the value of the drachma to the point where all the refugee gold has now found its way into the accounts of the nouveaux riches? Why is it that some landowners hate us, when the value of land and rent has risen since our arrival? The only people who can justly hating us are those who thought the Muslims would be obliterated and that they would inherit their lands.³⁰

The inter-war period was one of bitter disappointment, frustration, and quarrels over disputed lands in many mixed villages. Henry Morgenthau’s account is revealing: The native Greeks had used a good deal of these open lands as common pasture for their domestic animals. When they were required to limit their small cultivated plots, they naturally felt themselves deprived of an immemorial right. Some of the more ignorant were disposed to resist the innovation. The best efforts of the more intelligent leaders, both of the natives and the refugees, were required to accommodate the innumerable quarrels that arose over such details of the distribution of the land.³¹

Nevertheless, in many cases such quarrels could not be resolved by peaceful means and often led to violent and bloody friction between the natives and the refugees. The police intervened to keep the peace on many occasions in eastern Macedonia, where conflicts between the two sides were frequent during the first years after the arrival of the refugees and culminated in the events at Kioup-kioi in the Prefecture of Serres. For instance, the police clashed with native peasants in the village of Plevna (Drama), when they attacked refugees in the fields. Eighteen refugees were arrested on the charge that they had attacked police officers during the general mêlée.³² After 1913 all proprietary rights to both urban and rural properties in the New Lands were declared inviolate and inalienable, given that their owners held the deeds of title, and that these had been issued by the Ottoman authorities prior to the Greek military occupation of the New Lands.³³ The Greek state acted in accordance with Greek agrarian law by ³⁰ Efimeris ton Balkanion (Newspaper of the Balkans), 16 May 1927. ³¹ Morgentau, I Was Sent to Athens, 264. ³² ESV, 63rd session, 25 June 1924, 479, where reference is also made to similar events in Nigrita, where the natives burnt all the huts of the refugee settlement. ³³ According to Law ∆EIΓ [4513] (Articles 5, 6)—which served to ratify the Treaty of Athens, signed between Greece and Turkey in 1913.

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fully recognizing the ownership rights of those holding deeds of title to what were formerly called merigie (public estates)—a category into which the estates of Macedonia and Thrace fell—and considering one-fifth of this land to belong ipso facto to the state.³⁴ The majority of local smallholders, however, were not in possession of legal title-deeds for the properties which they cultivated, either because such documents had been destroyed in the continual hostilities and social turmoil, or because such documents had never existed as the properties in question were uncultivated state lands which had been occupied and made arable by these claimants. Resentment and reaction on the part of the native smallholders was sparked off when the RSC and the colonization bureaux sought title-deeds so that proprietary rights could be ascertained legally. The first serious clash over land distribution occurred on 5 November 1924, in the Prefecture of Serres between the native peasants of the village of Kioup-kioi (Proti) and the refugees of the settlement of Nea Bafra. The natives claimed certain cultivable lands of which the refugees had taken possession. During the strife, fifty people were wounded, twelve houses were burned, and almost the entire refugee settlement was destroyed. This event, which excited public opinion and the Press, was discussed in three successive sessions of Parliament on 10, 11 and 12 November 1924 in a bid to bring to light the causes of the conflict and to make proposals to the RSC as to the measures which had to be taken in order to avoid similar eruptions of social disorder. Refugee deputies pointed out that the Kioup-kioi disturbances were an extreme example of a widespread state of affairs in rural areas throughout Macedonia. The latent animosity between refugees and natives, which was fanned by subversive actions of anti-Venizelist extremists, had resulted in the expulsion of refugee groups who had been settled in other villages as well (e.g., in the Karatzova district). The anti-Venizelists, having realized that the mass settlement of refugees would unbalance their political hold, particularly in Slavophone areas in northern Greece—where they had won a majority in the elections—were against the distribution of Muslim lands to refugees. Doxiadis retaliated by emphasizing that the refugees had come to Greece as a result of the policies of previous Greek governments and that they were entitled to the Muslim properties in fair exchange to their own which they had left ³⁴ AEV, F.128, No. 10235, N. Eleftheriadis, Special Legal Counsel, Ministry of Agriculture to Political Bureau of the Prime Minister, 18 Sep. 1932.

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behind. G. Kafantaris further added that it was imperative for the refugee question to be left out of political rivalries. Although opinions varied as to the real causes of such disturbances, the fact that the government had not handed over to the RSC sufficient arable lands to cater for the large number of refugees congregated in Macedonia was generally accepted as the major cause. As Gregoriades pointed out, had the number of refugees sent to each region not been greater than the number of Turks who had departed, the task of settlement would have been accomplished much more smoothly. As it was, matters were made worse by major delays in the process of expropriation of large non-Muslim estates in Thessaly, which further added to the concentration of refugees in Macedonia, where refugees and natives wrangled over the Muslim estates. Parliamentarians generally resented the autonomy of the RSC, being of the opinion that the latter’s role should be executive and not administrative. As Prime Minister A. Michalakopoulos made clear, Greece was bound by the terms of the Geneva Protocol to acknowledge the authority of the RSC, but urged the latter that they too were bound to acknowledge that the settlement of the refugees had to be carried out within the broader economic and strategic policies of Greece as a nation-state. As a result of the Commission’s autonomy, the low-ranking Greek RSC officials all too readily overstepped their authority mostly in favour of the refugees and were insensitive to the repercussions on the local population.³⁵ It should be kept in mind that former Muslim lands came to about 25 per cent of the total amount of land which was to be allocated to both refugees and native landless peasants. Despite refugee claims that they had absolute rights over these lands—according to Article 14 of the Convention of Lausanne—part of the former Muslim estates was in the end not distributed to them. In order to understand the complexity and gravity of the situation, one needs to examine the extent to which irregular transactions (anomales dikaiopraxies) of former Muslim lands added to the already existing confusion over ownership. When Macedonia became part of Greece in 1913, the government, by a series of laws, banned in the newly annexed territories any sales or purchases of immovable property belonging to Muslims who migrated to Turkey. None the less, such transactions, which could only be regarded as ‘irregular’ by the Greek authorities, continued well into the 1920s in spite ³⁵ Ai Agorevseis tou Ellinikou Koinovouliou 1909–1956 (Speeches Delivered at the Greek Parliament 1909–1956), Period B⬘, ii (Athens, 1959), 314–23; ESV, Fourth Constituent Assembly, sessions of 11 and 12 Nov. 1924.

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of these prohibitions. These measures were taken with the aim of restraining the migration of Muslim cultivators—who were expert in producing tobacco—and deterring any foreigners from establishing themselves in the northern provinces. Furthermore, it was a means of retaining currency within the country and ensuring the collection of taxes on agricultural production.³⁶ Christian landowners and native peasants, however, did not take such measures seriously, regarding them as temporary owing to the political instability during that period. They bought Muslim lands and houses by contracting private bonds (senetia), as they were accustomed to doing during the Ottoman period, hoping that these transactions would eventually be recognized as legal.³⁷ The arrival of the refugees after 1922 and the immediate need for land for their settlement foiled such expectations. In order to forestall transactions involving Muslim properties which were indispensable for the resettlement of Asia Minor refugees, Venizelos telegraphed the following message to the Revolutionary Government from London on 7/20 October 1923: ‘I am informed that Turks are selling their estates in Macedonia. Recommend that all such sales be stopped by special order.’ All sales of both urban and rural Muslim properties without special permission from the Ministry of Agriculture were subsequently brought to a standstill by the issuing of a government legislative decree (ND [legislative decree] 10/23 October 1923) three days later.³⁸ However, many Muslims continued to either lease or sell their properties to natives with nominal or predated deeds of sale even as late as 1924.³⁹ The problem of irregular transactions was more acute in western Macedonia, where a considerable number of Muslim lands were claimed by Slav-speaking native cultivators.⁴⁰ After the conclusion of the Convention on the exchange of populations, a series of draft laws attempted to solve the problem of ‘irregular’ transactions. The Royal Decree of 26 April 1923 entrusted the evaluation of irregular transactions to County Court Committees (Protodikeiakes ³⁶ APD, F.11.1(11). Similar measures were introduced by Serbia after 1913. ³⁷ An additional reason for the irregular transactions in lands was the ignorance of the law by many illiterate peasants of the New Lands who could not understand the bureaucratic formalities. APD, F.11.1 (10), p. 5. ³⁸ See AYE, 1922/A/5(13): Telegr. No. 3524 from Venizelos, 7/20 Oct. 1922. ³⁹ ESV, Fourth Constituent Assembly, session of 26 May 1925. ⁴⁰ LN, C.569.M.181.1928.II Geneva, 21 Nov. 1928: Twentieth Quarterly Report of the RSC; also see I.M. of Kozani, 26 Oct. 1926 and 23 Sept. 1928, for problems in Amyntaion, cited by S. Pelagidis, I Apokatastasi ton prosfygon sti Dytiki Makedonia 1923–1930 (The Settlement of Refugees in Western Macedonia 1923–1930) (Thessaloniki, 1994), 111.

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Epitropes). The decrees of 21/25 August 1923 and of 17/24 July 1924 completed the earlier legislation granting an extension of time to smallholders for the recognition of their properties. Title-deeds were a prerequisite for the recognition of all purchases, but in some cases even such documents were not sufficient. In the mean time, lands had been requisitioned by the various bureaux of the Colonization Department and refugee settlements were already established there. It was not practical, on account of the economic sacrifices it involved, apart from the humanitarian aspect, to remove those refugees from there. In border areas considerations of national security played an important role in maintaining refugee villages on such properties in disputed ownership. This was, for example, the case of the villages of Koumpalista (Kokkinogeia), Plevna (Petroussa), and Visotsani (Xiropotamos) in the region of Drama.⁴¹ Refugee deputies complained that in certain regions, particularly in western Macedonia, up to 50 per cent of former Muslim lands and properties were involved in irregular transactions. As this rendered any permanent establishment of refugee families impossible, they demanded that the government take immediate action on the matter. Local landowners did what they could to prevent the implementation of the land reform and of the RSC programme in a number of Macedonian districts with the help of native smallholders who were manipulated by the anti-Venizelists. They formed associations whose publications aimed to turn public opinion against the resettlement programme and the refugees, and which flooded Parliament with memoranda every time the thorny issue of agrarian reform or resettlement came up for debate.⁴² As Mavrogordatos has pointed out, That Greek landowners were a constitutive element of the Anti-Venizelist bloc was amply demonstrated by its obstructionist tactics once Liberal land reform was initiated and became politically impossible to reverse. . . . Subsequently, when confronted with the rapidly accomplished facts, Antivenizelism could only exploit politically the manifold flaws of agrarian reform and the related conflicts between natives and refugees, while focusing concretely on the inadequate compensations paid to dispossessed landowners. Quite significantly, after its rise to power in 1933, its immediate priorities included the speedy payment of such ⁴¹ APD, F.11.1 (10). ⁴² Pelagidis, ‘Prosfygika problimata tou Boreiohelladikou kai loipou chorou sto Elliniko Koinovoulio (1924–1928)’ (Refugee Issues of Northern and Other Regions of Greece in the Greek Parliament (1924–1928), Makedonika, 26 (1987–8), 63–97.

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compensations and the urgent restitution of those parts of large estates which had eventually been exempted from expropriation.⁴³

When A. Bakalbassis, Under-Secretary of Agriculture, submitted a draft law to the Parliament in 1926 regarding settlement of irregular transactions, the unions of landowners (georgoktimaties) from various regions in Macedonia strongly opposed it.⁴⁴ One of the memoranda submitted to Parliament by the ‘Macedonian Struggle Association’ from the Prefecture of Drama during the debate on the bill (regarding irregular transactions in the New Lands) contained this warning: ‘Please do not misinterpret the calm stance adopted by the people of Macedonia when they see their rights being trampled underfoot for years now either by the refugees or by others acting for them. Not for a moment have we stopped considering the abnormal situation of recent years to be anything but temporary, nor have we ceased to hope that it will quickly be resolved.’⁴⁵ The demand of the landowners and native peasants in eastern Macedonia was as follows: recognition of the native farmers’ ownership of land they cultivated, even in the absence of the title-deeds required by agrarian law to prove it. The division of Muslim land left vacant following the population exchanges, and its distribution by lot to refugees and landless locals alike. The natives also demanded that they themselves be allowed to draw up the lists of landless farmers on a village by village basis, based on the size of the refugee plots in the locality and not in the manner laid down by law. Should there be insufficient plots for both groups, it was considered ‘obvious . . . that the refugees would move’ to areas close to ⁴³ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 161. ⁴⁴ APD, F. 11.1 (10): ‘Ypomnima kai tropologiai epi tou proschediou tis Epitropis pros syntaxin tou Nomou peri kyroseos ton anomalon dikaiopraxion, k.t.l.’ (Memorandum regarding the draft legislation submitted by the Committee for the Formulation of the Law ‘concerning the ratification of irregular transactions etc.’), from C. Tentzos, lawyer in Drama and President of the Macedonian Struggle Association of the region of Drama, 1928. The societies of native smallholders from central Macedonia (Chalkidiki) and western Macedonia (Kastoria and Florina), as well as individuals, submitted their suggestions to the government and during 1926–28 sent letters to P. Dragoumis and to deputies of the Populist Party asking for support for their case. ⁴⁵ The association was formed in Drama in 1926 with the aim of ‘finding a final and just solution to the issues that have arisen between native Greeks and refugees so as to remove any trace of enmity between them; bringing a sense of internal balance back to the nation, and bringing an end to the civil insurrection and other friction so disastrous for the nation; and to restore our own shattered faith in a State whose representatives, concerned solely with votes, refuse to assign rights where they have always existed’ (Memorandum and suggested amendments to the Committee’s draft legislation for inclusion in the law ‘concerning irregular transanctions etc.’) from C. Tentzos (see n. 44), published by Kyriazopoulos Pentzikis (Drama, 1928), 1.

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Greece’s national borders and uninhabited areas. The natives did not fail to point out the benefits to the nation of the refugees moving to such areas and to repudiate the policy of the RSC and the government, which they accused of settling refugees in particular areas for their own political benefit.⁴⁶ In western Macedonia the natives characterized the law of 1913 as ‘illconsidered and ignorant of the psychology of the Macedonian peasants’, who believed that they would be truly free citizens only when they were also owners of the land they cultivated. In a letter submitted to deputies of the Populist Party (e.g. to Bousios) and Agrarians from western Macedonia, such as Philippos Dragoumis, they pointed out that the draft legislation has put a stranglehold on the interests of the Macedonian peasants and petit-bourgeois, while it benefits shrewd men who have managed to buy extensive lands. It increases the menace and the differences between natives and refugees. How can a native be expected to offer a refugee his holding which he turned into cultivable and fertile land with his sweat and his money? The peasant of Macedonia seeks his rights, he is well aware of the fact that all the fertile lands were in the possession of the Turkish beys and today are transferred to . . . refugees. He patiently expects a policy from the government which would treat equally and without discrimination both refugees and natives; but if he realises that he is treated unfairly—as so far has been the case—then those who created this situation will be responsible. We are not asking the government to be indifferent to the refugees’ rights; they are now our brothers; but we do request that our rights should be recognised and that we should be allowed to live on the soil of our motherland (patroon choma) as equals with them, and not that the refugees to live like beys and we like white slaves.⁴⁷

From the above text it is obvious that refugees were perceived as privileged by those groups of natives who were affected by the policies of the RSC. This ‘privileged position’ of refugees was no more than a misconception, given the loss of all their properties and their right according to the Protocol of Geneva to be established on Muslim lands. Nevertheless, the belief on the part of the natives that those refugees who were established on Muslim or requisitioned lands were in a better position than they were led to an escalation of tension between the two groups, and the general uncertainty over property rights provided even more cause for strife during the period under study. ⁴⁶ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 161. ⁴⁷ APD, F.11.1 (11): Georgoktimatikos Syllogos Kastorias (Landowners’ Society in Kastoria), Letter signed by a ‘native’, 1928.

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The thorny question of irregular transactions was resolved by Law 4399 of 1929, a few months before the liquidation of the RSC. This law, however, asserted the right of possession only for those native cultivators who possessed smallholdings. A provision for mutual exchanges of plots between refugees and natives in cases where questionable parts of estates had been ceded to refugees—and cultivated by them in the mean time— was included in order to secure the Commission’s work.⁴⁸ Problems of ownership which ensued from irregular transactions often obliged the authorities responsible to retract former decisions in order to appease claimants whose ownership rights came under question or were nullified by the settlement bureaux. A typical case is that of (Katranitsa) Pyrgoi in the Kozani region, where an estate of 250 str. was claimed by both locals and refugees. Initially, the RSC had distributed it to the refugees as former Muslim lands, but on presentation of titledeeds by native farmers they decided that the latter were the rightful owners, and the refugees had to be settled elsewhere. On appeal, however, the land was restored to the refugees. Strong reactions on the part of the natives, who had already tilled and sown the fields, obliged the settlement bureau to once more revoke its last decision and attempt to reach a compromise, which eventually left both interested parties dissatisfied. In many cases, provisional allocations of lots by the RSC were similarly reversed on the presentation of title-deeds, many of which were in fact spurious.⁴⁹ In other cases the same happened because the natives had destroyed the Commission’s boundary demarcations on cultivated lands which they claimed as theirs. In the Greek Parliament many MPs put the blame on the RSC’s agents as being responsible for the tension.⁵⁰ Karavidas in his review of the overall situation in the Macedonian countryside writes: ‘in Macedonia anarchy presides with regard to individual pursuits, each fervently seeking after the most irrational things. ⁴⁸ LN, C.363.M.133.1929.II Geneva, 22 Aug. 1929: Twenty-third Quarterly Report of the RSC, 10–11. ⁴⁹ HAM, GGWM, F 8.5, Report by T. Goulas, Lieutenant of the Army, to the Tenth Division, 25 April 1926; ibid. F 13A.1, Letter from the Prefect of Kozani, I. Kozyris, to the Gendarmerie of Kozani, 18 May 1926; GGM, F 89.B, Report by G. Tzinis to the Tenth Division about the relationship between refugees and natives in several villages in the Edessa district (Tsegani, Zervi, Rosilovon, Ostrovon), 16 Sept. 1925. ⁵⁰ I. D. Michailidis, ‘Problimata ensomatosis prosfygon ston agrotiko Makedoniko choro: prosfyges kai gigeneis’ (Problems in the integration of refugees into Agrarian Macedonia: refugees and native inhabitants), Praktika tou Epistimonikou Symposiou ‘Opseis tou Mikrasiatikou Zitimatos’(Proceedings of the Academic Symposium. Aspects of the Asia Minor Question) (Thessaloniki, 1994), 130.

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Furthermore, there exists an unimaginable incredulity and unbridled blind pursuit of personal gain.’ He further remarks that: There can be no progress unless there is a change in the philosophy underlying the RSC’s actions. What we have to do is to get the public on our side, and the same goes for those departments lower down in the organisation which actually apply its policies . . . We must make it crystal clear to all what they can dare and hope for . . . It is a question of discipline . . . We need to impress upon the masses that the work of settlement, the division of land, and everything else we may do is irrevocable. . . . Moreover, there is an absence of clarity and complete understanding of the practice of what we do. Although we have made our theoretical position clear enough—that settlers and local landowners and smallholders have common interests—the employees in a good many of our local offices continue to say that these interests are independent of one another, and that they are there to serve the interests of the refugees alone . . . which, of course, keeps the locals in the dark and ready to throw in their lot with the devil himself.⁵¹

The resentment of the natives, which found its political expression in anti-Venizelist propaganda, called for the expulsion of the refugees and the redistribution of the land among themselves. This was particularly the case in border villages inhabited by Slavophone Macedonians, who sided in their majority with the Populist Party, and Pontic refugees who supported the Liberal Party of Venizelos, where opposition by the natives to all schemes being carried out by the RSC and supported by the candidates of the refugees, incited a number of outbreaks of violence.⁵² In many other places in Macedonia such quarrels led to violent and sometimes bloody friction between the natives who had taken possession of lands without obtaining title-deeds and the refugees who had been settled on them. Many of these quarrels attracted the attention of the newspapers of the time: for example, the Eleftheron Vema of 4 January 1926 reports clashes between refugees and native farmers in Kapoutzides, a village near Thessaloniki, due to 500 native villagers occupying lands destined for distribution to refugees; and the Akropolis of 18 May 1929 records a brawl between natives from the village of Semalto and refugees from the village of Sdravikion over land distribution issues in which four ⁵¹ AKDK, F. 11.7, see Karavidas’s article published in the newspaper Demokratia, 20 Nov. 1924. This is common in most societies receiving refugees. E. Colson has pointed out that: ‘The reactions of refugees appear as “displaced people strive to maintain whatever power they can” in an attempt “to recreate a social world which would offer the highest degree of safety and control” ’. Elisabeth Colson, ‘Overview’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 18 (1989), 1–16. ⁵² USNA, 868.00B/39, ‘Political and Economic Effects of Refugees in Greek Macedonia’, 23 Dec. 1929, p. 63; Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 199–207.

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people were injured. New clashes were reported to be imminent. The Eleftheron Vema of 9 January 1930 tells of ‘a bloody conflict between refugees in a village near Grevena over what was perceived as unfair land distribution in which thirty refugees were injured’. The Eleftheron Vema of 20 January 1930 reports hand-to-hand fighting between refugees and natives in a village in the vicinity of Sidirokastron, while refugees and Vlach shepherds had clashed in the village of Inavli over the borders of communal pasture lands. The police were forced to intervene in all such cases, not only to restore order, but also to make it quite clear to all concerned that the government was determined to impose its will and to see the land reform programme through to the very end. Nevertheless, as long as distribution had been provisional, hostility between natives and refugees had remained latent in most areas. With the coming to power of the anti-Venizelists in 1933, great efforts were made by a high proportion of natives in all provinces to reverse the distributions already effected, and particularly in the anti-Venizelist strongholds of Florina and Kastoria. Hundreds of applications and petitions were lodged asking for the reconsideration of temporary and final distributions effected by the RSC and the previous governments.⁵³ There were, however, many outbreaks of violence, and even blood was shed when natives, convinced that they would be supported by the new antiVenizelist government, attempted to take back lands which had been deemed Muslim or state lands and had been allotted to refugees by the permanent distribution of 1932. It is worth citing a characteristic example from the region of Florina. In a petition to Philippos Dragoumis, Governor-General of Macedonia in 1933, the natives of a number of mixed settlements (Polyplatanon, Ano Kalinniki, and Niki) in the Florina region complained that many landless cultivators had been excluded from distribution even though according to Article 165 of the Agrarian Code they were entitled to the acquisition of a plot. Furthermore, they claimed that many of the Muslim lands which had been distributed among the refugees were in fact their own rightful property. In some cases title-deeds were not duly forwarded to the authorities because the holders were ignorant of the fact they had to do so. In most cases it was claimed that the title-deeds had been lost in the great upheavals between 1912 and 1922, and that it was impossible for the peasants to acquire copies as the cadastral register was located in Serbian Monastir, which was the administrative centre for the region ⁵³ Such documents could be found in APD and especially in GAK, TYYG.

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under Ottoman rule. Others claimed that, even though they were in possession of title-deeds, part of their properties adjoining Muslim or state lands were encroached upon and included within the latter when the surveying teams were making their cadastral maps. In all probability, of course, the survey would have simply restored to their original extent Muslim and state lands which had been gradually encroached upon by native cultivators. Those who had suffered the worst treatment, according to the petitioners, were cultivators who, in accordance with the provision of Law 4399, had acquired ownership rights on the payment of a sum of money to local committees established by that law. During the final distribution of 1932, however, the resettlement authorities annulled such titles and redistributed the land to refugees.⁵⁴ Following an inspection tour by Philippos Dragoumis and a team of ministers and local officials, it was concluded that although the government was in general obliged to respect the distribution which had been effected for economic reasons and in recognition of the difficulties that the settlement and topographic teams had to solve, there were individual instances where claimants had indeed been unjustly treated. The Governor-General subsequently recommended the formation of a local Committee, consisting of the head of the Department of Colonization of the GGACMT (Governorship-General for Agriculture and Colonization of Macedonia and Thrace) and the directors of the agricultural district of Florina and the Bureau of Exchange, whose function would be to investigate the claims in situ and to make proposals for the settlement of the differences. Following the findings of these committees, surveying teams were to be dispatched to the area with the purpose of finalizing cases of questionable distribution.⁵⁵ The petitions of the natives for re-examination of land distribution and even expulsion of refugee settlers from certain areas in most cases revealed genuine economic hardship brought about by the demographic imbalance in areas which could hardly sustain the local population and rendered even more severe by the impact of the economic crisis after 1930. A characteristic case is that of the native village of Velvendos and the refugee settlement of Imera, in the mountainous region of Kozani. Even before the arrival of the refugee settlers, the limited resources of the natives were supplemented by migrant remittances mainly from Romania and North America. With the tightening of US immigration ⁵⁴ APD, F. 26.1.(53), GGACMT, Urgent No. 9620, Philippos Dragoumis to Ministry of Agriculture, 2 May 1933. ⁵⁵ Ibid.

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laws in 1921, the inflow of remittances was greatly reduced and the native population had consequently to rely even more on the produce of the limited arable lands which they cultivated. The inhabitants were not involved with animal husbandry, and after the distribution of land to the refugees the natives’ plots were reduced to two and a half stremmata per capita. The produce of these mountain fields was insufficient to provide for the needs of the population, which was reduced to starvation. In their petition, the villagers of Velvendos indicate that the 150 Pontic families of neighbouring Imera were in an equally difficult position and that as a consequence the only viable solution would be the resettlement of the refugees elsewhere. They suggested that the latter could possibly be resettled on reclaimed marshlands in the region.⁵⁶

THE POLITICAL IMPACT The political orientation of the refugees has been thoroughly covered in other historical works, particularly those of G. Mavrogordatos and D. Pentzopoulos. Nevertheless, no study of the refugee resettlement in Macedonia can avoid making some mention of such an important factor, which contributed so much to the overall development of the region. From their arrival in Greece, the refugees, although they had the numbers to do so, did not form their own political force, even though some refugees were so inclined. In the various local Congresses convened by the refugees in 1923, they declared their determination to vote for the Liberals.⁵⁷ Characteristic of the refugee political tendencies in the early years of resettlement are the arguments expounded during the course of the Refugee Congress of all Caucasian Pontics from Macedonia and Thrace before the elections of 1923. I. Passalidis, representative from Kavala, supported the view that all refugees, irrespective of place of origin, should remain united in a common cause rather than divide their power into regionally affiliated parties, leaving open the question as to which political current they would eventually support. Gregoriadis and Charatzidis, representatives from the region of Drama, pointed out that as the majority of the refugees were to be settled in agricultural regions, they should form their own agrarian party, rather than support either of ⁵⁶ APD, F. 26.3.(229), No. 554, Petition of the inhabitants of Velvendos to Philippos Dragoumis, Minister and Governor-General of Macedonia, 27 Mar. 1934. ⁵⁷ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 176–7.

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the two existing political blocs, which were parties without principles. The representative for Kilkis, Cosmidis, insisted that the refugees should support en masse whichever political party could promise to respect and promote the interests of the refugees, and such was the Liberal Party. Others argued also in favour of the Liberals on the reasoning that, as the refugees were geographically dispersed, the strength of their vote was weakened and did not allow them to form their own political party. This view, which was shared by the majority of the refugee representatives, prevailed at the Congress and eventually they chose to support the Liberal Party.⁵⁸ Refugee representatives at the All-Thracian Congress also decided ‘to vote for Venizelos and only Venizelos’.⁵⁹ The refugees in their great majority voted for republicanism, and remained loyal to Venizelos for a whole decade. Ottoman Greeks were inclined to support Venizelos even before 1923 as he was the only political personality in Greece who insisted that Greece enter the Great War on the side of the Entente as a means of safeguarding the welfare of the nearly 2 million Greeks in Asia Minor and eastern Thrace who faced annihilation after the adoption by the Young Turks of forced Turkification after 1908. The first refugees who had fled to Greece in 1914–15, following their persecution by the Turks, had fallen victims to bureaucratic harassment by anti-Venizelists and were even violently treated during the November pogrom in 1916.⁶⁰ With the return to power of Venizelos in 1917, they were taken under his protection and were provided with substantial—for the limited resources of Greece’s budget—financial assistance for their maintenance and resettlement. Furthermore, Venizelos’s success, which had led to the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres and even made possible the repatriation of a number of expelled Ottoman Greeks to their homes, consolidated their belief that Venizelos was their irredentist champion.⁶¹ The subsequent destruction of Venizelos’s achievements by the AntiVenizelist regime which succeeded him was indelibly imprinted in the collective memory of the Asia Minor Greeks. Although it was Venizelos who signed the Convention for the Exchange, he was not held responsible for this outcome in the eyes of the refugees. They blamed King Constantine ⁵⁸ Newspaper Phos, Thessaloniki, 29 Sept. 1923; Koinotis, second year, No. 48, 9 Dec. 1923, K. D. Karavidas, Letters from Thessaloniki (28 Oct. 23). ⁵⁹ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 254. ⁶⁰ Ventiris, I Ellas tou 1910–1920, 272. ⁶¹ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, S. Karavas, ‘I prosfygiki psifos sto poleodomiko sygkrotima tis Athinas tin periodo tou Mesopolemou’ (The Refugee Vote in Athens during the Inter-war Period), DKMS, 9 (1992), 135–7.

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and the Populists for the Catastrophe and their expulsion from their ancestral homes.⁶² After 1922 it was the Revolutionary Government and the Venizelists who supported the granting of full citizen rights to the refugees on arrival in Greece, whereas the anti-Venizelists had proposed that they be treated in the same way as other minorities such as the Muslim and Jewish communities, and establish a separate electoral college.⁶³ The anti-Venizelist press systematically cultivated and maintained the polarization of refugees and locals. Throughout the twenties, it focused on the heroic generation of 1910–15, contrasting their achievements with the refugees’ lack of patriotism, self-sacrifice, and social awareness. It tried to stir up the locals with the threat that Greece would soon be a ‘refugee dictatorship’ in which they would be second-class citizens. From very early on, it demanded that no further grants be paid to the refugees, whom it described as lazy, unproductive, and ‘being in no rush whatsoever to find work’; this before funds had even been found to settle them in new homes.⁶⁴ The right-wing press even went so far as to demand that the government impose fines on the refugees for their low productivity and supposed laziness, and to take back the land they had been given to cultivate and return it to the ‘people who were really entitled to it: the native Greeks’.⁶⁵ The anti-Venizelist anti-refugee hysteria reached its climax with the most fascist proposal of all: N. Kraniotakis’s suggestion that refugees wear a yellow armband so the locals could pick them out easily and avoid any contact with them.⁶⁶ The peasant population from eastern Thrace and the Asia Minor coastal regions were usually more progressive in their outlook on life in comparison with their counterparts in Macedonia. This was due to the fact that they generally had more contact with numerous cosmopolitan centres in those areas of the Ottoman Empire. The result of the resettlement programme of the refugees was to bring them to a social and economic level that equated them with the poorest strata in Greek society. The refugees, who arrived destitute in Greece, despite the financial assistance for their integration into society, did not manage to recover during the inter-war period. It is in the light of this background that we must also attempt to understand why there was no room left for any political affiliation with the Populists. The latter, as ⁶² For this reason the refugees voted heavily for the abolition of monarchy in the 1924 referendum. Clogg, Concise History, 108. ⁶³ G. Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 203. ⁶⁴ Kathimerini, 3 Jan. 1923. ⁶⁵ Michailidis, To prosfygiko problima ston typo (n. 4 above), 59–60. ⁶⁶ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 195.

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J. K. Campbell has put it, ‘represented for them the established structure of privileged society from which as destitute newcomers they were excluded’.⁶⁷ The refugees settled in the rural areas of northern Greece were those who had benefited most from the resettlement programme, the agrarian reforms, and the economic policies of the Liberal governments. In the light of the hostilities which they encountered from the native populations and which, on the whole, were kindled by anti-Venizelists, the refugees were all too aware that they could only safeguard their newly acquired possessions so long as the Venizelists stayed in power. Thus an inter-class alliance was developed between refugee settlers and the bourgeoisie or petit-bourgeois politicians who supported the ruling party, which gave the former land and financial support.⁶⁸ The refugees backed Venizelos and those candidates who advocated the introduction of legislative measures that would further assist them in the matters of distribution to refugees of the lands to be released from the reclamation projects under way in 1928, provision of stock, loans, and houses. These candidates also sustained the refugees’ claims for reimbursement for their real properties abandoned in Turkey as only about one-third of the claims for abandoned properties had been paid by 1928. All these schemes were opposed by the natives.⁶⁹ Recruitment of agricultural refugees into the ranks of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) was very limited throughout the 1920s. The enduring anti-Hellenic policy for a ‘united and independent Macedonia and Thrace’ pursued by the KKE, which was in line with the Comintern’s demand, formulated under the influence of the Bulgarian Communist Party, was very unpopular among the refugees. As this slogan in fact advocated the detachment of these two Greek provinces in which the majority ⁶⁷ Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece, 141. ⁶⁸ This is apparent from the election results of 1928, as depicted in tables 22, 23, and 29 in Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 156, 157, 173, when over 90% of all peasants voted for Venizelos. Even though tables of electoral results in the various Macedonian provinces in 1928 do not present urban and rural votes in Macedonia separately, considering that about 80% of the population was rural, it is clearly indicative, if not evident, that almost all of the peasants voted for Venizelos. ⁶⁹ USNA, 868.00B/39, ‘Political and Economic Effects of Refugees in Greek Macedonia’, 23 Dec. 1929, p. 63. For the political support to Venizelos and the Liberal inter-war governments from refugees from the Pontus region and the links between the refugee identity and Venizelism, see N. Marantzidis, Giassassin Millet. Zito to ethnos. Prosfygia, Katochi kai Emfylios. Ethnotiki taftotita kai politiki symperifora stous Tourkophonous hellinorthodoxous tou Dytikou Pontou (Giassassin Millet. Long live Nation. Refugee Status, Occupation, and Civil War. Ethnic Identity and Political Behaviour of the TurkishSpeaking Greek Orthodox from Western Pontus) (Herakleio, 2001).

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of the refugees were resettled, communist propaganda could, of course, hardly appeal to the Greek refugees.⁷⁰ Moreover, as Mavrogordatos remarks, the KKE’s position ‘was explicitly directed against the massive settlement of refugees in these regions. Just like anti-Venizelism, it was specifically opposed to the concomitant land distribution programme at the expense of the natives. Refugee settlement and land acquisition were denounced as part of a sinister plan of the Greek bourgeoisie for the forcible alteration of the ethnic composition of these regions.’⁷¹ Thus the refugees, and in particular those who were settled in provinces with Slavophones for whom the communist policy was designed, experiencing the hostility of the natives, were deprived of any reason to respond to KKE propaganda.⁷² Finally, the anti-agrarian line and the overall class-orientated vision of the party seriously hampered the communist overtures to rural refugees during a period when the existing social and economic conditions in the countryside were favourable to their advance. The reports of the local gendarmerie regarding communist activity in the Macedonian provinces and the response of the peasants verify that the KKE had very few adherents among the peasant refugees with the exception of some tobacco cultivators in the Kavala–Drama regions and in the eparchy of Kailaria, in Kozani.⁷³ Nevertheless, the KKE had some sympathizers and supporters among the tobacco-cultivators settled in the provinces of eastern Macedonia, particularly in Kavala and Drama. The propaganda of communism had an appeal among the less fortunate of those peasants and the more radical elements who came into contact with the tobacco-workers of the urban centres of these provinces, a considerable number of whom had espoused the communist ideology. In the tobacco-growing regions, where cultivation of this high-profit cash crop became intensive in the tiny plots distributed to peasants during the 1920s, many refugee families had managed to become self-sufficient in a short time and were able to repay ⁷⁰ This principle was replaced in 1935 with a new one calling for the recognition of equal rights for all minorities, in order to eliminate sectarian in-fighting and serve the interests of the anti-fascist struggle. See Kofos, Nationalism and Communism, 90–2. ⁷¹ Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 219. ⁷² FO 371/11357, C45078, Annual Report on Greece (1926), 21–2. The political slogan of the communist organizations in Thrace and Macedonia for independence or autonomy for these two provinces ‘divides these organizations very sharply from the Communists of Old Greece, and the immense increase of the Graecophone population in Macedonia and Thrace in the past three years deprives that cry of much of its political value’. ⁷³ See AYE, 1925/A/2ç/ 14, File regarding communist activity in Macedonia.

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their debts to the Bank and the RSC. This fact rendered them less dependent on state patronage, because it was not necessary to have the protection of mediators in order to find a job in the public sector. Moreover, such a prospect was not feasible in view of the fact that these posts were mostly filled with political clients from Old Greece. Tobacco cultivation rendered the producers more independent towards local patrons for an additional reason. In most cases their contact with the urban centres was not a client–patron relationship with the established politicians, but rather a producers–workers relationship. This, in conjunction with the economic crisis after 1929, made them conscious of the fact that they were dependent on the fluctuations of the market tobacco trade. Thus a number of tobacco-cultivators shifted to the left in the 1930s.⁷⁴ As a result of the fragmentation of large estates, simple commodity production became dominant, particularly in the eastern provinces, where large numbers of refugees were settled. On the tiny plots they had received, cultivation of cash crops such as tobacco and vines became intensive. The obligatory participation of the refugees in agricultural co-operatives through which they could be provided with loans, and their indebtedness, accelerated the penetration of banking capital into the rural economy. The refugee cultivators soon operated at a loss and, as their debts kept mounting, they were forced to intensify their labour as family units and to adopt new methods of cultivation. In the tobaccoproducing areas of Serres and Kavala, tobacco-producers found it difficult, however, to diversify when prices fell. Instead, they had to increase cultivation in order to counterbalance the loss. The foreign tobacco monopolies which had assumed a dominant role in the marketing and processing of Greek tobacco favoured the expansion of its cultivation in Macedonia, and in the 1929–32 economic crisis were able to balance the temporary decline in the market, while producers suffered great losses of their income. The state, which had undertaken the entire financing of the producers, since investment of private capital in the agricultural sector was lacking, had allowed the Greek tobacco-merchants and the foreign tobacco industries to reap all the profits when prices in the international market were high; when prices fell, it had no mechanisms for market intervention or price support. Such protective measures were introduced only after 1930. The refugee tobacco-cultivators, who suffered a great loss from the adverse market prices, were obliged to switch back to wheat ⁷⁴ Vermeulen, ‘Agrotikes sygkrouseis’, 238, 241–2.

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cultivation for self-subsistence, but this was not possible since the produce of their tiny plots could not sustain them, and they faced the dilemma of starvation or moving to the cities.⁷⁵ In Kavala a portion of the labour force were seasonal workers hired from among the poor refugee peasants of Thasos and the Pangaion region, who were inclined to adopt radical political practices. It was this small proportion of the peasants who voted for the Communist Party in these two regions, while the political orientation of family farmers remained steadily Venizelist.⁷⁶ The Agrarian Party, which was established in March 1923 at a Panhellenic congress organized by the agricultural co-operatives, although it was theoretically the party to represent and promote the interests of the peasants, failed to attract the votes of the refugee agriculturalists. This was mainly due to its fragile structure and feeble organization, which soon resulted in the split among the original founders, who formed various localized agrarian factions and joined their forces just before the elections.⁷⁷ A more important reason, however, was the fact that during the period under study the peasantry failed to develop a social self-image and class consciousness. The two principal bourgeois parties, the Liberals and the Populists, succeeded in consolidating their power among the peasants, who were politically incorporated into the two rival parties along ethnic lines, as a result of the debate on monarchy versus republic and over land distribution. Thus peasants did not react collectively in spite of their worsening economic condition.⁷⁸ The following analysis of the peasants political inclinations before the parliamentary elections of 1932, penned by the Prefect of Chalkidiki, a prefecture whose inhabitants were chiefly employed in agriculture and stock-raising, reveals the polarized relations and the political cleavage between refugees and natives: There is virtually no political activity worth speaking about on the part of the Communist or Agrarian Parties in our prefecture . . . The only significant parties, that is to say the only parties with a hope of victory, are the Liberals and the ⁷⁵ Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 116–21. ⁷⁶ Maria D. Comninos, ‘Clientelist Politics in Two Greek Districts: Aetolia- Akarnania and Kavala, 1946–1967’, Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1984, 43–4. ⁷⁷ K. Mavreas, ‘I politiki organosi tou agrotikou chorou stin Ellada kata tin periodo 1922–1936’ in T. Sakeropoulos (ed.), Neoelliniki Koinonia.Istorikes kai kritikes proseggiseis (The Political Organization of the Greek Rural World during the Period 1922–1936, in Modern Greek Society. Historical and Critical Approaches), Issues on Political Economy, special edition 2 (Athens, 1993), 119–43. ⁷⁸ Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 32–3.

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Populists. As for their relative strength in Chalkidiki, I can provide the following information: I concur with public opinion in stating that almost all the refugees will vote for the Liberal Party, while the Populist Party has inestimably more support from local people.

The Prefect goes on to mention that a significant number of native Greeks had voted for the Liberal Party in the previous elections because one of the two prefectural candidates, P. Kallidopoulos, was Governor-General of Macedonia, noting that: The inhabitants of my district—apart, of course, from the refugees, who are, or should be, unshakeable supporters of the Liberal Party for historical reasons— have no firm political convictions and have no preference for either party. Although the population of the district are pure Hellenes—I cannot allow that to be doubted for so much as a moment—it must none the less be confessed that they are, for the most part, of the indubitably mistaken opinion that they have not been treated with the love and care they could have expected from their Greek homeland. Since this district has been ruled almost exclusively by Liberal governments since its liberation and incorporation into the Greek state, their complaints—although mostly concerning the past, and even then directed in the main at the Greek Civil Service—have come to be levelled against the Liberal Party. Hence, too, come upon the hopes nurtured by the local population that they would receive better treatment from the opposition party. In all probability, they are behaving as if they hold out a vague hope for better things, rather than from traditional preferences or profound personal convictions, as is generally the case with the political persuasions of the people of Old Greece.⁷⁹

⁷⁹ AEV, F.110, No.173, Prefect of Chalkidiki, I. D. Stavropoulos, to the Political Bureau of the Prime Minister, 20 Mar. 1932.

7 The Ethnological Impact EMIGRATION FROM MACEDONIA AND THE EXCHANGE OF POPUL ATIONS As has already been mentioned, the religious and linguistic composition of Macedonia underwent an important transformation after 1912 and, in particular, after the arrival and settlement of refugees in the region following the Asia Minor catastrophe. The patterns of emigration, and the underlying factors that contributed to people leaving Macedonia, were different in the various ethnic groups. The departure of Muslims and of non-Greek-speaking Christian groups from Macedonia, mainly Slav Macedonians and Vlach-speakers, can be understood only by considering and relating various factors: the conventions on the exchange of minorities signed between Greece and Turkey (30 January 1923), and Greece and Bulgaria (27 November 1919); inter-Balkan relations during the period, as well as the aims of each Balkan country with regard to Greek Macedonia; the policies of the neutral members appointed by the League of Nations to oversee the execution of the conventions and the maintenance of the status quo in the Balkans. Finally, there was the refugee situation, which imposed tremendous problems, particularly in Greece, and required the implementation of drastic measures.

Muslim Turks The emigration of Muslims from Macedonia was a basic requirement of the Convention of Lausanne on the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations (30 January 1923). It was to be supervised by an International Mixed Commission, presided over by a neutral member

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appointed by the Council of the League of Nations.¹ The plan of evacuation set up by the Mixed Commission—in accordance with Article 16 of the Convention—bound each government to fix the date and the port of embarkation for the transfer of persons inhabiting particular regions in Greece and Turkey respectively, and to provide the ships for their transportation. Sub-commissions were established for the several districts and they in turn organized auxiliary committees from the emigrants in order to ensure supply of food and their safe transfer to the ports. As a formality, all exchanged persons were provided with passports.² The transfer of Muslims from Macedonia was to take place from 1 May 1923. Since the Mixed Commission that was to supervise the exchange of populations was constituted and had first convened in October 1923, the time needed to arrange the details for the exchange of populations was extended by a period of seven more months (until 1 May 1924). Nevertheless, the departure of Muslim emigrants had begun earlier. The two governments agreed that the departure of the Muslims from central and eastern Macedonia, where hundreds of thousands of homeless Greek refugees were concentrated at the time the Convention was signed, was to commence before May 1924. The Greek government was anxious to accelerate the departure of Muslims from its newly acquired northern provinces and the islands in order to house and distribute their lands to hundreds of thousands of homeless refugees. The Turkish government, on the other hand, although initially opposed to any proposal that Muslims should leave Greece earlier than the date the Convention provided for, was ultimately willing to accept them before this date, so that crops could be quickly planted on farms left by Greeks.³ In view of the numbers involved and the accumulated vicissitudes, bitterness, and misery of the Greek refugees waiting to be settled in the houses and properties of the Muslims, clashes between the two groups were inevitable. In towns and villages in Macedonia where the authorities tried to find shelter for refugees in the homes of locals, Christians and ¹ The Mixed Commission consisted of four members representing Greece, four representing Turkey, and three neutral members. These, under the terms of the Lausanne Convention, were to be chosen from among the nationals of countries which did not take part in the war of 1914–15. The presidency of the Mixed Commission was to be exercised in turn by each of the three neutral members: Ladas, Exchange, 353–8, where there is a list of all diplomats who offered their services to the Commission. Also AYE, 1926/A/68. ² Ladas, Exchange, 421–3. It is worth mentioning that no permission was given to emigrants, Greeks and Turks alike, to visit temporarily the country of destination in order to make preparations for their resettlement as was—at least in theory—the case with Greco-Bulgarian emigrants. ³ Ibid. 424–5.

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Muslims alike, rivalries intensified.⁴ Problems were acute in Muslim households sharing quarters with Greek refugees. In some cases, as in the districts of eastern Macedonia—Drama, Kavala, Nestos (Sari-Shaban), and Eleftheroupolis (Pravi)—where the concentration of Greek refugees was especially high, the Muslims of most villages had little choice but to take their personal belongings and go to Thessaloniki to await their departure for Turkey. In some villages, such as in the district of Nestos (Sari-Shaban), Muslims reacted by attacking refugees and expelling them from their homes.⁵ The Turkish delegates on the Mixed Commission used threatening language regarding the Greeks of Constantinople in order to exert pressure on Greece to improve the conditions for the Muslims in Greece. The principal Turkish delegate on the Mixed Commission, Adnan Bey, made representations on the ill-treatment of Muslims in Greece to the neutral members of the Commission as well as to the consuls of the European Powers in Constantinople. Towards the end of November and early in December, however, there was a marked falling off in the agitation both in Constantinople and in Angora regarding alleged Greek misbehaviour. The Turks, facing the impartial attitude of the neutral members and the British in particular, began to feel the weakness of their position in any controversy as to the relative conduct of the Turkish and Greek governments in regard to the execution of the Convention.⁶ In October 1923 Margaret Hasluck, a British anthropologist of ‘somewhat anti-Greek reputation’, according to the British Ambassador C. H. Bentinck, sent a letter to the Committee of the Near and Middle East Association urging it to ask the Mixed Commission to accelerate the evacuation of Muslims from western Macedonia, Kozani in particular, in ⁴ FO 286/885/1923, No. 461, E. C. Hole, Acting Consul-General, Thessaloniki, 17 July 1923. Hole was reluctant to remove the refugees who had occupied the houses of the Muslim employees of the house of the chamberlain Ihsan bey in Kavalla and other Egyptian wafks and reported that ‘The housing conditions in Macedonia remain so hopeless in spite of spasmodic efforts of various philanthropic committees that these employees are comparatively fortunate’. ⁵ This action was instigated by two former deputies of the Greek National Assembly: see Ladas, Exchange, 425. ⁶ The British, although of the opinion that the allegations on Greek or Turkish ill-treatment of their minorities were mainly the concern of the Mixed Commission and the League of Nations, were following the situation with constant interest; this could be explained by the significant role that the British delegation in Lausanne had played in the conclusion of the agreement between Greece and Turkey, and particularly over the manner in which the exchange of populations between the two countries was to be carried out. FO 286/874, No. 850, Neville Henderson, member of the British High Commission in Constantinople, to Curzon, Constantinople, 19 Dec. 1923.

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order to protect their lives from exposure in the coming severe winter, because refugees were being billeted on Muslim villages.⁷ The Near and Middle East Association wrote a letter to Lord Robert Cecil, asking that extra measures be taken to hasten the evacuation of the Muslims from the west Macedonian plateau. The matter was brought to the attention of the League of Nations, who subsequently asked for information from the Mixed Commission for the Exchange of Populations, supervising the execution of the Convention.⁸ The Mixed Commission, in its reply to the League of Nations concerning the alleged expulsions of Muslims from Macedonia, explained that a large number of Muslims had actually left their homes and gathered in the port of Thessaloniki by October 1923. They did so, however, of their own free will and without any direct pressure by the local authorities, being anxious to reach Asia Minor in time to sow winter crops. Settlement of Greek refugees in Muslim houses had occurred in the first part of 1923, before the Convention came into force and the Mixed Commission was constituted. But after 7 October 1923, when the Commission banned all requisitions or occupations of Muslim properties, the Greek refugees had to spend the winter in sheds and tents.⁹ The outlook of the British Consul in Thessaloniki is worth noting: The Moslem inhabitants of Macedonia are made to expiate in some measure the sins of their co-religionists in Asia Minor, but in view of the sufferings of the refugees before they reached this country, it is a matter of congratulation to the Greek authorities that so little violence had taken place. Even by collecting all the ‘atrocities’ of the last seven months into a single letter, Mrs Hasluck is not able to produce anything remotely comparable to the PONTUS episode, in which the positions were reversed.¹⁰ ⁷ FO 286/874, Confidential No. 35, C. H. Bentinck to Curzon, Athens, 19 Jan. 1923; ibid., ‘Extract from Notes of Mr Frederick Hasluck’. ⁸ FO 286/874, Lancelot Oliphant to Baker, 14 Nov. 1923. ⁹ FO 286/874, P. Baker to Selby, Paris, 14 Dec. 1923. Baker adds that Hentsch and Morgenthau confirmed the information given by the Mixed Commission to the League of Nations about the motives that caused the hasty departure of Muslims from Macedonia; Ladas, Exchange 431. ¹⁰ FO 286/874, British Consul in Thessaloniki to C. H. Bentinck, 1 May 1923. For the ‘Pontus episode’, that is, deportations, slaughter, and after 1922 the inhuman and coercive methods that the Turks used to force the Pontic Greeks to abandon their homes and stores and leave for Constantinople and then the ports of Greece, see A. Alexandris, ‘I anaptyxi tou ethnikou pnevmatos ton Ellinon tou Pontou 1918–1922: Elliniki exoteriki politiki kai Tourkiki antidrasi’, in Meletimata gyro apo ton Venizelo kai tin epochi tou (The Development of National Spirit of Greeks in Pontus 1918–1922: Greek Foreign Policy and Turkish Reaction, in Studies on Venizelos and his Era) (Athens, 1980), 459–66; for the Turkish nationalist policy of ‘turkification’ from 1908 onwards, which resulted in the loss

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With regard to the general conditions in the region he reported: Macedonia is, for Macedonia, very tranquil under the present regime. The administration is severe but impartial, and the conditions of public security are markedly superior to those obtaining at the close of the late regime. Brigandage is endemic in Macedonia and is not confined to any race or party. The present administration is endeavouring with complete impartiality and much success to keep it within bounds. Some months ago a group of [Greek] refugees guilty of robbery and murder were caught and shot publicly and the standard of public order has risen steadily.¹¹

The Turkish government had also repeatedly charged the Greek authorities with having obliged the Muslims to leave Greece and therefore to sell their movable property at very low prices. The Greek government in an effort to be consistent with the stipulations of the Lausanne Convention had initially decided that ‘no Muslim would be allowed to leave without his previously obtaining a permit to that effect, issued by the Netherlands Legation in Athens, entrusted with the protection of Turkish interests in Greece.’ Later on, however, with a view to preventing a loss which the Muslims might suffer by a hasty sale of their belongings, the Greek government—though it recognized the right of the exchanged Muslims to sell their movable property freely—issued an order prohibiting all sale of Muslim movable property before the time decided by the Mixed Commission. Transactions were allowed only if they were to be supervised and safeguarded by the Mixed Commission.¹² In October 1923 a circular by S. Gonatas cancelled all the limitations on both the use of the Muslim urban properties and the sale of their movable property in order to assist their departure.¹³ Under the surveillance of the sub-committee of Thessaloniki, presided over by Hentsch, a Swiss ex-member of the International Labour Organization, 10,000 Muslims were transported to Asia Minor in a fortnight in November.¹⁴ By the end of January 1924, 53,000 out of the 150,000 remaining Muslims who of more than 300,000 Pontic Greeks, see O. Lampsidis, Oi Ellines tou Pontou ypo tous Tourkous (1461–1922) (The Greek of Pontus under the Turks 1461–1922) (Athens, 1957), 12–32, and G. Valavanis, Sygchronos geniki istoria tou Pontou (Contemporary General History of Pontus), (Thessaloniki, 1988), 22–4. For a more emotional approach see C. Samouilidis, To chroniko tis tragodias tou Pontou (The Chronicle of the Pontus Tragedy) (Athens, n.d.). ¹¹ FO 286/874. British Consul in Thessaloniki to C. H. Bentinck, 1 May 1923. ¹² FO 286/874, C. Collas to L. Oliphant, London, 30 Aug. 1923. ¹³ Pelagidis, Apokatastasi sti Dytiki Makedonia, 56 and 90. ¹⁴ AYE, 1923/KTE/A-⌬/4/10, Governor-General of the Colonization of Macedonia (GGCM) to President of the Greco-Turkish Mixed Commission, Thessaloniki, 4 Dec. 1923.

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were to leave Greece had already migrated to Turkey. They were mainly from eastern and central Macedonia, whereas the evacuation proper of western Macedonia began in 1924. The number of exchanged Muslims who were transported from the port of Thessaloniki per month and their place of origin are shown in Table 7.5. The numbers of those gathered in the port of Thessaloniki in November (20,000 Muslims at least) were inflated by thousands of Albanian Muslims from Kosovo in Serbia, converging on the port of Thessaloniki in the hope of migrating to Turkey and resettling the lands vacated by the Greek refugees. The Turkish government refused to accept these Muslim migrants from Serbia, who remained in the harbour of Thessaloniki making life even more wretched in the already overcrowded camps. The Mixed Greco-Turkish Commission asked for the intervention of the Council of the League of Nations in order to halt the migratory movement from Serbia.¹⁵ The League of Nations obliged the Serbian government to check the outflow of these aspiring emigrants so that Greek–Turkish relations would not be further aggravated, while Greece undertook to have them transported to Gevgeli.¹⁶ The Greek government took extra precautionary measures to ensure the safety of the Muslims awaiting embarkation.¹⁷ A mixed delegation of the Commission visited Thessaloniki and regions in western Macedonia (Kozani, Kailaria) with large Muslim populations to arrange a partial removal with a view to improving the housing conditions of the remaining Muslims. A camp for the reception of Muslim emigrants was established outside the city of Thessaloniki with the assistance of the Red Cross. The camp was placed under the direct surveillance of the Turkish Red Crescent, which established a dispensary for the vaccination of the Turkish refugees before their departure. Another camp was established in Vertecop (Skydra), in which the Muslims from the districts of Karatzova and Edessa could stay until the sub-commissions (of the Mixed commission for the Exchange of Populations) arranged their transportation to the port of Thessaloniki and from there to Turkey.¹⁸ The departure of Muslims from Macedonia ended on 26 December 1924.¹⁹ The statistics of the Mixed Commission give the figures set out in ¹⁵ AYE, 1923, A/5x(3) with correspondence between the governments concerned and the League of Nations. ¹⁶ Ibid. ¹⁷ Ladas, Exchange, 425. ¹⁸ AYE, 1926/r[=3]/68/I, ‘Rapport final sur l’activité de la 1ère Sous-Commission’, Stamboul, 24 Oct. 1925. ¹⁹ HAM, GGM, F. 69, I. Kannavos to the prefectures and sub-governorships of Macedonia, 8 Jan. 1925.

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The Ethnological Impact Table 7.1. Muslims transported from Macedonia to Turkey, 1923–4 Districts

1923

1924

Thessaloniki Drama Kavala Kozani Kailaria Kozani and Kailaria

18,044 69 2,184 13 10 —

91,533 75,978 43,343 26,610 30,770 34,653

TOTAL

20,320

302,887

Source: Ladas, Exchange, 438–9.

Table 7.1 for the Muslims who were transported to Turkey from the regions of Macedonia:²⁰ among the Muslims who migrated from Macedonia were included the Greek-speaking Muslims (Valaades) from the regions of Anasselitsa and Grevena as well as the Muslim Gypsies of the region. Valaades were Greek-speaking Christians who converted to Islam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their culture did not differ in any other aspect apart from religion from that of the local Christian population. They were rich beys, who possessed the most fertile tracts of land in western Macedonia, and therefore their exclusion from the exchange was strongly opposed by the landless peasants.²¹ The governor of Kozani, G. Modis, a native Macedonian and parliamentary candidate of the Populist Party, was inclined to keep the Greek-speaking Muslims who had voted against Venizelos in Greece, on the justification that they were very industrious, besides the fact that they acknowledged Christian ancestry and the language they spoke could help them to be easily assimilated. The strong reaction of both the local patrols and the press, however, who were of the opinion that Valaades were ‘Turks in soul’, not to mention the refugees, foiled any plan for their exemption from the exchange. On the other hand, the majority of Valaades were anxious to leave Greece and settle in the lands that Greek refugees had left in Asia Minor. Another category that could have avoided the compulsory migration were the Muslim Gypsies of the region. Although the Greek ²⁰ To the total of 323, 207 Muslims shown in Table 7.1 should be added a few more thousands who emigrated to Turkey between 1923 and 1926 of their own accord and not under the supervision of the Mixed Commission. Ladas, Exchange, 438–9. ²¹ GAK, Vlachogiannis Collection ⌬ 16, ‘Peri ton Valaadon tis Makedonias’ (On the Valaades in Macedonia) by B.T. Zotos, in Efimeris, 27 Apr. 1878.

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government was willing to exempt the Gypsies from the exchange, finally the majority of them did leave the country, apart from some who remained in the districts of Florina and Kozani in the west and Serres in the east.²² In 1926, when all Muslims liable to exchange had departed, it was estimated that out of the 475,000 Muslims (Turks, Pomaks, Albanians, and Gypsies) who lived in Macedonia in 1912, only 2,000 Muslims, mainly Albanians, had remained in the region (see Table 7.9).²³

Slav Macedonians The Slav Macedonians were more frequently referred to as ‘Bulgarians’ or ‘Bulgarophiles’—literally Bulgarizers—(‘Boulgarizontes’) by most contemporary commentators and officials both Greek and foreign; first, because many of them had already opted to identify themselves ethnically with Bulgaria, and secondly, because Bulgaria was the Slavophone signatory of the Convention. A. A. Pallis, for example, in 1925 and 1929 called ‘Bulgarians’ or ‘Bulgarophiles’ only those Slav-speaking inhabitants who lacked a Greek ethnic consciousness. In his later study Macedonia and the Macedonians: A Historical Study (1949) he called the same group ‘Slavophones’. This term, however, had been used previously by V. Colocotronis when referring specifically to pro-Greek Slav-speaking inhabitants. This ‘arbitrary’ usage of the term Slavophone among historians inadvertently led to confusion when it came to tallying demographic statistical figures. They were further referred to as ‘Slavophiles’—or ‘Slavizers’- (‘Slavizontes’), ‘Former Exarchists’ when a distinction was made between the Slav Macedonians and the ‘Former Patriarchists’ who were considered Greek in sentiment, ‘ Bulgaro-Macedonians’ or ‘SlavoMacedonians’, or even simply as ‘Macedonians’; it must be borne in mind, however, that during the inter-war period the term ‘Macedonian’, either as a second component or as a term itself, was used by Greek officials to refer mostly to inhabitants of the geographical and administrative unit of Greek Macedonia and did not imply a particular ethnic character or national identity of the Slav-speaking group. The term ‘Macedonians’ in many ²² For the case of Valaades see: FO 286/874, Letter from Margaret Hasluck to Bentinck, Kozani 22 Apr. 1923; AYE 1923/KTE/59, Prefecture of Kozani to Governorship-General of Macedonia; Pelagidis, Apokatastasi Sti Dytiki Makedonia, 61. For the complication over the matter concerning the emigration of Muslim Gypsies and the interpretation of the terms Muslim/Turk, see Ladas, Exchange, 435–7. ²³ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 134, table XIII; LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, note on the ethnographic map of Macedonia.

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cases was used to distinguish the native population—Greek-speaking, Slav-speaking, or Vlach-speaking alike—from the Greek refugees established in the region. In a few cases it was used with reference to Slavspeaking inhabitants of Macedonia who spoke the particular vernacular of the Slav language used in the region. As E. Kofos has remarked, initially, reference in Comintern documents to Macedonians—i.e., to citizens of the future Macedonian republic—had merely a geographical content. Gradually, however, the name acquired a national meaning that applied to Slav-speakers. Thus, in Communist jargon, the Macedonian name began, for the first time, to identify a specific ethnic group. The Greek Communist party, however, aware of the Greek legacy of the term Makedones, chose the most suitable term of SlavMacedonians, in order to differentiate the Slav Macedonians from the rest of the Makedones, namely the Greeks of Macedonia.’²⁴

The emigration of Slav Macedonians from the northern provinces of Greece—Macedonia and western Thrace—was carried out according to the Convention of Neuilly (14/27 November 1919), signed between Greece and Bulgaria and providing for the reciprocal and voluntary migration of ‘racial minorities’ of both countries, as well as for the liquidation of their properties. Rights to liquidate their properties were granted not only to those willing to migrate but also to persons who had already migrated from as early as 6/18 December 1900. This was done to make more effective the two countries’ determination to solve the question of minorities in their territories.²⁵ As in the case of the Muslim/Orthodox exchange, the exchange of Slav/Greek populations was also entrusted to a Mixed Commission which consisted of two neutral commissioners, one Greek and one Bulgarian. Though the Convention was ratified in 1920, it was not put into practice until 1923 because neither minority group desired to be uprooted from their accustomed habitat.²⁶ Consequently, the period within which the Convention was applicable to emigrants was extended several times, because the two governments wanted to provide the ²⁴ See E. Kofos, ‘Macedonia: National Heritage and National Identity’, in M. Blinkhorn and T. Veremis (eds.), Modern Greece: Nationalism and Nationality (Athens, 1990), 117. It will be interesting to scrutinize the available literature and sources in order to find out the ideological nuances in the use of the term, but this task is beyond the scope of the present work. In this study the term Slav Macedonians or Slavophones will be used identically with reference to the total number of the inhabitants of Macedonia who spoke Slavic, without implying any other form of distinction, either ethnic or national. ²⁵ See Law 27/80, Article 2, on the realization of the Neuilly Convention. ²⁶ Ladas, Exchange, 104–5.

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opportunity to emigrate and settle ‘in the country to which they were nationally akin’ to those who were initially reluctant to do so.²⁷ Before investigating the factors which caused the migration, it is necessary to say something about the numbers involved. On the eve of the Balkan Wars, the number of Slav-speaking inhabitants who lived in the regions that constituted Greek Macedonia after the Treaty of Bucharest (10 August 1913) was estimated at around 115,000–120,000 persons according to Greek official figures.²⁸ This number, however, which was presented in the works of V. Colocotronis and A. A. Pallis during the interwar period, included, as has been demonstrated in recent studies by Greek historians, only the pro-Bulgarian Slav Macedonians (boulgarofrones) or former Exarchists—literally, ‘those with Bulgarian sentiments’, while the former Patriarchists or pro-Greek Slavophones (ellinofrones)—literally, ‘those with Greek sentiments’ were included in the number of the Greekspeaking inhabitants of Macedonia.²⁹ The total number of the two Slavophone groups in the part of Greek Macedonia was at least 250,000 before the Balkan Wars and represented 21.7 per cent of the total population of the region at that time.³⁰ After the Treaty of Bucharest (1913), this number decreased owing to emigration of a segment of Slavspeaking Christians who had committed themselves to Bulgaria during the preceding decade and felt at risk under Greek administration. They were mostly men of military age, who opted to depart for Bulgaria, or Serbia, or for the New World, to avoid persecution by their opponents, as well as to evade military service in the Greek national army.³¹ It is very difficult, however, to estimate the number of Slav Macedonians who emigrated from Macedonia between 1913 to 1922. The available ²⁷ Ibid. 75–96; FO 371/10664, C15284/168/7, 28 Nov. 1925, fos. 128–35, with a review of the Convention; Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 60–1. Stelios Nestor, ‘Greek Macedonia and the Convention of Neuilly’, Balkan Studies, 3, (1962), 173–81; and Panagiotis Miliotis, I en Neuilly symvasis tis Ellinoboulgarikis metanastevseos tis 14/27 Noembriou 1919 kai i efarmogi tis (The Neuilly Convention on Greco-Bulgarian Emigration and its Application) (Thessaloniki, 1962). ²⁸ See I. Koliopoulos, Leilasia Fronimaton (Looting of Sentiments) (Thessaloniki, 1994), 35. ²⁹ V. Colocotronis, La Macédoine et l’ Hellénisme. Étude historique et ethnologique, (Paris, 1919), and A. A. Pallis, ‘Racial Migration in the Balkans’. For the revision of the numbers of Slav Macedonians presented in these works, see Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic, 247; Dimitris Lithoxoou, ‘I mitriki glossa ton katoikon tou ellinikou tmimatos tis Makedonias prin kai meta tin antallagi ton plithysmon’ (Mother Tongue of the Inhabitants of the Greek Part of Macedonia before and after the Exchange of Populations), Theseis, 38, (Jan.–Mar. 1992), pp. 39–51; cf. Koliopoulos, Leilasia Fronimaton, 35–6. ³⁰ Koliopoulos, Leilasia Fronimaton, 35–6. ³¹ See HAM, GGM, F. 79, with orders for the deportation of 1914.

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statistics are fragmented and present various discrepancies. In some regions there were no register books at all, for example in the district of Kastoria, the archives of which were burnt in 1913, nor are the dates of departure known. Most Slav Macedonians left the region during the Balkan Wars; others followed the Bulgarian army in its retreat in 1918. Information was based on estimates made by the local presidents of the communes. According to figures given by the Governor-General of eastern Macedonia, 3,606 Slav-speaking persons migrated from eastern Macedonia during the period 1913–21. In different districts (ypodioikiseis) 1,220 persons left from Serres, 1,700 from Drama, 70 from Kavala, 127 from Nigrita, 200 from Zichna, 2 from Eleftheroupolis (Pravi), 24 from Nestos, and 263 from Zyrnovo.³² From western Macedonia 1,121 persons migrated: 407 from the district of Florina, 614 from Kastoria, 95 from Kailaria, and 5 from Anasselitsa. More than 8,000 Slav Macedonians from western Macedonia emigrated to America during that same period.³³ According to Greek statistics sent to the Greek Embassy in Paris, the former Exarchist Slav Macedonians of Greek Macedonia in 1916 numbered 103,942 persons (see Table 7.6). At the time the Neuilly Convention was signed, the position of Slav Macedonians inhabiting villages in central and eastern Macedonia was quite different from that of Slav Macedonians in western Macedonia. In relation to their overall numbers, very few Slav Macedonians had emigrated from western Macedonia prior to 1922. One of the contributing factors to this phenomenon was that equally small numbers of Greek refugees had settled in the region and, therefore, there were no real social pressures endured by the locals. Lack of housing, limited water supplies, and the dispersal of arable plots—not to mention the rather hostile reaction of the local Slav Macedonians in some areas—provided little attraction for the refugees. Furthermore, the refugees from the Caucasus, in particular, preferred to settle close to existing main roads and insisted on keeping their communities intact. Thus up till 1922 it was estimated that only 1.5 per cent of the Slavophone inhabitants in western Macedonia had left the country, while refugees from the Caucasus had been settled only in the Slavophone Florina village of Exissou.³⁴ Moreover, ³² AYE, 1923, B/597. Table indicating the Bulgarian migrants from eastern Macedonia since 1913, Governor-General N. Miliotis, Drama, 15 Mar. 1921. ³³ AYE, 1923, B/59/7, Prefect of Kozani, P. Zacharitsas, Kozani, 29 Apr. 1922 and 26 May 1922. G. Zotiades in his work The Macedonian Controversy (Thessaloniki, 1961), 39, estimates the number of Slavophone emigrants from Macedonia at about 15,000. ³⁴ See AYE, 1923, B/597, Confidential No. 3482, Governorship-General of KozaniFlorina, P. Zacharitsas, 26 May 1922. For the hostile reaction of the locals see APD,

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according to reports of the British consuls, the local Greek authorities in western Macedonia had not exerted any kind of pressure on the Slav-speaking population to force them to leave.³⁵ However, apprehension on the part of the Greek government led to a total ban on arms, even though brigandry was still rife in the region. This measure, in conjunction with the general mistrust with which local officials—and in particular the gendarmerie—viewed the Slav-speakers, prevented the latter from developing a feeling of confidence towards the Greek authorities. In most villages of central Macedonia, on the other hand, and in particular in the Kilkis region, as well as in many villages of eastern Macedonia, the Slav-speaking population had dwindled drastically. The great majority had followed the Bulgarian army in its retreat in 1913, after the Balkan Wars, and again in 1918, after the First World War.³⁶ In addition, many Slav Macedonians migrated to Bulgaria between 1914 and 1916 after the settlement of Greek refugees from eastern Thrace and Asia Minor in those areas. In 1915 many Slav Macedonians from villages in the Serres, Drama, and Kilkis areas applied to the Greek authorities for permission to migrate to Bulgaria. The prefect of Thessaloniki attributed these migrations to their persistent Bulgarophile sentiments and to the fact that most of them had relatives and family ties in Bulgaria, which they believed would assist their resettlement there. Bulgarian propaganda and the attitude of the Bulgarian Consulate in Thessaloniki found fertile ground among this population. A more likely reason was the social pressures exerted on the Slav Macedonians by the incoming refugees, who in many instances made life unbearable for the former—as, for example, in F.8.1: 15, Telegram from K. Ioannidis to P. Dragoumis, 13 Nov. 1921; ibid. 16, Telegram from P. Dragkas, President of Exissou, to P. Dragoumis, 13 Nov. 1921; ibid. 17 and 18, Telegrams from Ioannidis and Papathanassiou to the Ministers of Agriculture, Interior, Relief, the President of Parliament and several deputies of the Populist Party (Lioumpis, Dragoumis, Papazachariou, and Mpousios) whose overall content runs as follows: In order to keep 62 families from the Caucasus from settling in the region, the locals pointed out a number of imminent national and social perils. Were the local inhabitants forced to migrate to Bulgaria, not only would the Greek government’s prestige suffer, but the Bulgarians would also exploit the opportunity to sway European feelings in their favour. They further indicated the pro-Greek sentiments of the locals by virtue of the fact that 170 of them were enlisted in the Greek army. They regarded the refugees as a threat to public hygiene (polluting the main water supply and spreading contagious diseases) and to social order (setting fire to the school building where they were temporarily housed), and proposed that they be dispersed in groups of ten among the surrounding villages. Theocharis, the Prefect of Florina supervising the settlement of the refugees, was accused of being a Venizelist agent and was required to resign. ³⁵ FO 371/8566/C15084, Athens 20 Aug. 1923. ³⁶ After 1913 15,000 Bulgarians left the district of Kilkis: Pallis, ‘Fyletikes Metanastevseis’.

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the Kilkis villages Kokkinia (Kousovo), Melisourgio (Mouznterek), and Agios Antonios (Lilovo). This explanation seems to be substantiated by the fact that in villages where no refugees were settled, as, for example, in Ano Theodoraki and Kato Theodoraki, Kilkis, the Slav Macedonians did not migrate.³⁷ Those who wished to return to their villages after 1919 were not allowed to do so, except for a short visit to liquidate their properties and that only after local authorities had approved of such visits. But local authorities had strict instructions to reject applications of the above persons for repatriation and to issue visas only to those whom they regarded as having ‘pro-Greek sentiments’.³⁸ The few who actually did manage to return after 1919 found that their villages, and especially the town of Kilkis, which used to be their centre, had been totally destroyed during the war and subsequently had been rebuilt and populated by Greek refugees who came between 1919 and 1920, mainly from the Caucasus. The greater part of the Slav-speaking population which had left Macedonia was concentrated in the Bulgarian territories of Petritch, Nevrokop, and Gorna-Djoumaya.³⁹ These people were influenced by the organization of the ‘Macedonian Brotherhoods’, one of the refugee committees influenced by the IMRO, which constituted the most unruly element in Bulgaria.⁴⁰ They were well organized and felt equally bitter against both the Bulgarian and the Greek governments for having signed the agreement. The IMRO was all too conscious of the fact that were these ‘Bulgarians’ from the above regions to emigrate, the plans and concentrated efforts of the preceding years to secure Bulgarian supremacy in Macedonia and Thrace would have been rendered futile. Under the terms of the Convention of Neuilly, all Slav Macedonians who had left Greek Macedonia maintained rights to compensation for their abandoned properties. The leaders of the ‘Macedonian Brotherhoods’ had persuaded most of them, through intermittent propaganda, to refuse to have their properties liquidated by the Mixed Commission if they wished to maintain future rights to return to their villages. Thus many who had left Greek soil prior to the Convention opted not to ratify their migration status with the Mixed Commission and so settle matters ³⁷ AYE/1915/A/15, 4698, Prefect of Thessaloniki to Ministry for Foreign Affairs (GMFA), 17 Apr. 1915. ³⁸ See for such instructions HAM, GGM, F85. ³⁹ FO 371/8566, Enclosure in Athens Despatch No. 649 of 20 Aug. 1923: ‘Notes on a Tour Made by the Mixed Commission on Greco-Bulgarian Emigration in Western and Central Macedonia’ by Colonel A. C. Corfe, President of the Commission. ⁴⁰ Ibid.

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concerning their abandoned properties. Similarly the ‘Bulgarians’ who had remained in Greece, encouraged by Bulgarian bands operating in the region not to emigrate but rather to wait and be liberated, were unwilling to migrate and did not submit declarations for emigration to the Mixed Commission before November 1922.⁴¹ However, part of this population expressed its preference to emigrate on the arrival of the first of numerous waves of Greek refugees. In late 1922 thousands of Greek refugees evacuated eastern Thrace in the wake of the departure of the Greek armed forces and surged into western Thrace as well as Macedonia, particularly in the eastern and central regions. In order to prevent the refugees—in the main women, children, and old folk—from dying of exposure and privation, the Greek authorities took emergency measures to house them. They were billeted on all the villagers, among Greeks, Turks, Slav Macedonians, and Jews alike. The tension which arose from this enforced cohabitation to a greater degree acted as a catalyst causing many Slav Macedonians to apply to the Mixed Commission for emigration. Even more direct pressure on the Slav Macedonians was exerted by the Greek government’s precautionary measures in a bid to secure their northern provinces in case of military conflict with Turkey. Early in 1923, with the purpose of clearing the border zone and protecting the railway line, the Slavophone inhabitants of these regions were deported. Almost all from the villages around the Evros (Maritza) line, Komotini–Alexandroupolis (Gioumoultzina–Dedeagats) railway line, as well as from villages in the Drama, Serres, and Sidirocastro (Demir-Hissar) districts, were seen as potential collaborators in the event of war and were sent to Thessaly and the Greek islands.⁴² Many deported men sent their families across the ⁴¹ Ladas, Exchange, 104; Kofos, Nationalism and Communism in Macedonia, 68–74. ⁴² These fears were not unfounded. Bands led by Turkish officers who were sheltered in Bulgaria crossed the borders and with the tolerance or even the co-operation of the Slavophone inhabitants in western Thrace tried to foment an insurrection of the Muslims in the region and to establish a provisional government. As McNeil asserted, Fuad Bey, a Turk notorious for the organization of such bands, whom the Bulgarian government had expelled at the insistence of the allies, was again operating in the Bulgarian border zone in Dec. 1922: see FO 286/885/1923, No. 19, Parliamentary Question by Lieut. Commander Kenworthy, 14 Dec. 1922. See also AYE, 1923/A/5xii(1): the whole file concerns the deportations of Bulgarians from western Thrace and eastern Macedonia and the activities of comitadji bands in these regions; FO 371/8565, W. L. C. Knight to C. H. Bentinck, British Vice-Consulate, Volo, 16 June 1923; FO371/8565, O. H. Mathews to Colonel J. Procter: ‘Report on the condition of the Bulgarian deportees in Thessaly’, 1 June 1923. ‘There is no actual destitution amongst the Bulgarians in Thessaly, while they are in certain respects better off than the Greek refugees in the same regions,’ wrote O. H. Mathews. This could perhaps give us a glimpse of the tragic condition of the Greek refugees and help us to

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Bulgarian frontier for safety. Deportations were also carried out under a law which made families of deserters and of men who did not present themselves for military service subject to this sanction. A considerable number of Slav Macedonians, who were Greek subjects, had deserted from the army or had crossed over the borders to Bulgaria during the First World War and in these circumstances their families were deported to other parts of Greece. This law mainly affected Slav Macedonians from Kastoria and Florina in the region of western Macedonia.⁴³ A number of Slavophone peasants, in order to avoid deportation, emigrated to Bulgaria with the approval of the Greek authorities, while others crossed the frontier secretly. Only a few peasants migrated for both political and economic reasons. This was the case, for instance, when eighty persons from the border village Bouretzik, near the military station at Rassovo (Leimon) in Drama, took their belongings and left secretly for Bulgaria during the night of 8–9 February 1923. The authorities reported that the most important stimulus for their decision to emigrate was ‘the complete poverty in which they were condemned to live because of the fact that their lands had been assigned to Bulgaria after the fixing of the border line’.⁴⁴ At the end of 1923, when the fear of war with Turkey was removed, the families who had been deported were brought back.⁴⁵ In the mean time more than half had chosen to leave after submitting declarations to local authorities. Out of a total of 2,950 persons, 1,750 had departed from Thessaly by that date.⁴⁶ The rest, on their return to their villages, found Greek refugees established in their homes and lands and had little choice other than emigration to Bulgaria. In addition, many Slav-speaking farm-workers had very limited chances of employment after the influx of refugees and the surplus of manual workers in Macedonia and Thrace, and so added to the number of migrants moving to Bulgaria.⁴⁷ understand their subsequent behaviour towards the Slavophone inhabitants of the villages in which they were eventually settled. ⁴³ FO 371/ 8565, No. C.R./B.F.T./55357, General Headquarters, British Forces in Turkey, Constantinople, 16 May 1923. ⁴⁴ AYE/1923/A/5 xii(1), No. 13/3, L. Karayiannopoylos, Superintendant of Police in Ossenitsa, to Police Headquarters in Drama. A few also left secretly in order to take their herds with them because they were prohibited to do so: ibid. 4357, Afthonidis (General Headquarters), 9 May 1923. This report, however, refers to individual cases, as most Slav Macedonians who migrated from eastern Macedonia and Thrace abandoned their property: ibid. 4481, Afthonidis, 15 May 1923. ⁴⁵ AYE/1923/A/5/xii(17): No. 15958, Ministry of Defence (Ypourgeion Stratiotikon) to Ministry of Interior, 10 Sept. 1923. ⁴⁶ Ibid.; AYE/1923/A/5/xii(17): Prefect of Larissa to GMFA, 4 Sept. 1923. ⁴⁷ Ladas, Exchange, 105–6.

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The post-1923 establishment of refugee communities in the frontier zone and the billeting of refugees in villages inhabited by Slav Macedonians as a measure for their efficient assimilation was planned in response to the precarious condition of these areas, which were still coveted by Greece’s neighbours. The Bulgarian government had designs on eastern Macedonia and Thrace, while the Serb-Croat-Slovene Government wished to control the route to Thessaloniki. The territorial settlement incorporated in the Treaty of Neuilly was not considered by Bulgaria as definitive. During the inter-war period, Bulgaria, pursuing a revisionist policy, refused to recognize that this treaty had not left a substantial number of Bulgarians in Greek territory. The decisive factors for the resettlement of refugees in certain areas were two: first, the replacement of local population following the departure of Turkish cultivators in order to make certain that agrarian productivity would not be interrupted; and, secondly, the bolstering of the Greek population in these vulnerable border regions where the Slavophone element was, from the Greek point of view, uncomfortably large. The Governor-General of Thessaloniki wrote in 1924 that the strengthening of the Greek element in these regions could be safeguarded by the provision that the refugees—most of whom had gathered in the city of Thessaloniki—were established comfortably [in rural areas], had their morale bolstered so that they would show interest and eagerness to get on with agricultural activities, particularly in view of the fact that the number of refugees in rural settlements did not make up for even half the number of Muslims who had left.⁴⁸

League of Nations officials were also of the opinion that the establishment of refugee communities in border areas could improve the general situation by quietening down the local feeling and eliminating the danger of episodes between Greece and Bulgaria, which were bound to occur during the first years of the resettlement process. Colonel Blair, who shared such views, reported after his tour in Macedonia and Thrace that ‘divisional commanders in Thrace and Macedonia, to each of whom is allotted a section of the frontier to control, also all said that the state of the frontier was improving, and they looked upon the introduction of colonies of refugees to those parts as one of the best means of countering Bulgarian action, in that, once these refugees got possession of land, they took their own measures to prevent outside interference.’⁴⁹ ⁴⁸ AYE/1925/A/40, ii 15087, Governor-General of Thessaloniki to GMFA, 28 July 1924. ⁴⁹ FO 286/888/1924, 2114/521/B4, Extract from Colonel Blair’s report No. 2 of 27 Dec 1924.

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Thus the Greek refugees created new villages on estates abandoned by the Muslims in the fertile lands of central and eastern Macedonia which were underpopulated during the Ottoman period. In many cases, however, refugees were encouraged to settle in villages and towns inhabited by native Greek-speaking and Slav-speaking Christians, and particularly in such villages near the frontier zone and in areas where the Slav-speaking element was predominant. As has already been mentioned, the purpose of this policy was to alter the linguistic and cultural composition of the population. In March 1924 analytical tables with the number of refugee families settled in each village as well as the number of non-Greek-speaking families in Macedonia were sent by the Statistical Department of the General Settlement Department of Macedonia to the Ministry of Agriculture (see Table 7.2). Each settlement bureau drew up its statistical tables from information provided by the local civil and military authorities. Using these figures as a guideline, they then arranged the establishment of refugee communities among the non-Greek speakers in such proportion as would make the presence of the latter relatively harmless.⁵⁰ This strategy, during the first years at least, was applied where the conditions, namely availability of houses and land, allowed it.⁵¹ The families of refugees settled in each colonization district are shown in Table 7.3. As is apparent in Table 7.3, the refugees were settled mainly in the provinces of eastern and central Macedonia. In the Slavophone villages of western Macedonia, and in particular in the district of Kastoria, the number of refugees settled by 1924 was very small. This was mainly due to lack of houses and lands, as well as of sufficient amounts of money to ⁵⁰ AKDK, F. 26, Confidential, S. Goudas, General Director of Colonization, to Ministry of Agriculture, Thessaloniki 3 March 1924. ⁵¹ It is difficult to specify the cultural, linguistic, religious or other characteristics of the 12,411 families collectively referred to in Table 7.2 as ‘Greeks not speaking Greek’. The kind of empirical criteria used by the colonization bureaux in composing this table are not clearly indicated in the source. However, it may be safely assumed that these ‘Greeks not speaking Greek’ most likely represent the number of both Hellenized Vlach-speaking families, and in particular of Slav-speaking families with strong Greek national feelings who had fought for the Greek cause during the Macedonian Struggle. The latter, generally referred to as ‘Patriarchists’ by the Greeks, and ‘Grekomani’ by the Bulgarians, were Greek in sentiment and in every other respect except for the language. The reason for this assumption is that the various minority groups within Greek Macedonia were quite often defined by the Greek authorities by reference to their ‘ethnic consciousness’ rather than their language. As these families were ‘Hellenized’ and ‘felt’ Greek irrespective of language, they were categorized as ‘Greek’. This issue is expounded later on in this chapter. Their numbers are not included in Table 7.3 because the immediate purpose is to present the mentality behind the resettlement policy and the proportion of ‘minority’ groups to refugees.

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Table 7.2. Minority groups in Macedonia, 1924 (number of families) Colonization Bureaux

1. Verria 2. Voemitsa 3. Yiannitsa 4. Drama 5. Edessa 6. Thessaloniki 7. Kailaria 8. Katerini 9. Kastoria 10. Kilkis 11. Kozani 12. Langada 13. Serres 14. Sidirocastro 15. Florina 16. Kavala TOTAL

Slavophones— Exarchists

Vlachs—ProRomanian

Albanian Total

246 1,565 1,227 5,251 3,507 338 1,320 — 4,939 493 — 3 1,162 2,416 7,669 —

684 100 — — 463 — 150 — 55 — 248 — — 138 213 —

40 100 3 — — — — — — — — — — — — —

30,136

2,051

143

970 1,765 1,230 5,251 3,970 338 1,470 — 4,994 493 248 3 1,162 2,554 7,882 —

Greeks Others Not Speaking Greek 56 977 1,149 — — 1,851 — 903 1,771 1,495 — 851 — 1,261 2,097 —

32,330 12,411

50a

14,000a 81b

— 14,131

Note: By 1924 all the non-Greek inhabitants from the villages and towns of the bureau of Kavala had left. a Jews. b Koutsovlachs. Source: Archive of K. D. Karavidas, F 26, ‘Etnologikoi Pinakes Makedonias’ (Geniki Dieythynsis Epoikismou Makedonias) [Ethnological Tables of Macedonia, GDCM], 31 July 1924.

have allowed mass settlement of Greek-speaking refugees among the locals.⁵² Moreover, the Slav Macedonians in western Macedonia were initially considered to constitute no real danger to the national cause in the way that those inhabiting eastern and central Macedonia were. Many among the latter during the Bulgarian occupation had manifested their pro-Bulgarian feelings and been registered as Bulgarians in contrast to Slav Macedonians of the western part. The attitude expressed by foreign observers was that most of the Slav Macedonians of western Macedonia had not manifested an explicit ‘national consciousness’. Colonel Corfe, President of the Mixed Commission for the Greco-Bulgarian exchange, ⁵² AYE, 1923/B/59, Strictly Confidential No. 701, Governor-General of Macedonia Lambros to Prefects of Pella, Florina, Kozani, and the sub-governors of Kastoria, Enotia, Giannitsa, Kilkis, Langada, Veroia, and Goumenitsa.

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The Ethnological Impact Table 7.3. Non-Greek-speaking native inhabitants and refugees in Macedonia, 1924 (in families) Colonization Bureaux 1. Verria 2. Voemitsa 3. Yiannitsa 4. Drama 5. Edessa 6. Thessaloniki 7. Kailaria 8. Katerini 9. Kastoria 10. Kilkis 11. Kozani 12. Langada 13. Serres 14. Sidirocastro 15. Florina 16. Kavala TOTAL

Refugeesa

Ratio

970 1,765 1,230 5,251 3,970 338 1,470 — 4,994 493 248 3 1,162 2,554 7,882 —

2,904 2,548 2,284 8,277 6,855 6,646 5,489 1,746 1,534 10,041 7,015 7,806 6,731 5,134 1,782 6,242

0.33 0.69 0.54 0.63 0.58 0.05 0.27 — 3.26 0.05 0.035 ⱕ0 0.17 0.5 4.43 0

32,330

83,070

—

Natives Not Speaking Greek

a In August 1924 15,000 more refugee families had arrived in Macedonia and were waiting to be settled. Xydis, Director of the Dept. of Statistics. Source: Archive of K. D. Karavidas, F 13, ‘Statistikos Pinax Agrotikon Prosfygikon Synoikismon apo Septemberiou 1922 mechri 31 louliou 1924’ tis Genikis Dieythynseos Epoikismou Makedonias (Statistical Table of Agricultural Refugee Settlements from September 1922 to 31 July 1924, of the GGCM, August 1924).

was of the view that for this reason Serbian aspirations would find no fertile ground in the region: Granted appropriate administrative handling, the Bulgarian population of Western Macedonia could within a single generation be assimilated by the Greeks. From private conversations with authoritative and neutral commentators on the psychology of these people and from personal observations I am fully convinced that they neither are nor do they inwardly regard themselves as either Bulgarians or Serbs.’ In contrast, he regarded the Slavophone population of the area of Kilkis as being possessed by Bulgarian fanaticism.⁵³ ⁵³ AYE, 1923, B/59, Confidential No. 313, Tzormbatzis to A. Alexandris, Sofia, 18 Aug. 1923.

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Nevertheless, in villages in other parts of Macedonia, where a certain number of Slav Macedonians had remained, refugees lodged themselves in their houses and properties and did their best to frustrate their owners to the point where they would be obliged to leave, thus creating a very difficult situation indeed.⁵⁴ Eventually many Slavophone families decided to emigrate. In late 1923 deputations from Slav-speaking villages in the Kilkis area submitted to the sub-commission office in Thessaloniki mass requests for emigration to Bulgaria, stating that the settlement department had put pressure on them to emigrate. The matter was brought by the neutral members of the Mixed Commission to the notice of the Greek government. Though higher Greek authorities understood that the best policy might have been to cultivate the friendship of the Slav Macedonians, the refugee problem and the very deep-rooted mistrust between Greeks and Bulgarians made such a policy impracticable. A. Lambros, the Governor-General of Macedonia, in a private conversation with Major Saunders and Colonel Corfe himself, in their capacity as neutral members of the Mixed Commission, explained that the officials of the settlement bureaux were facing great difficulties as well as the strong reaction of the original inhabitants—Greeks, Vlachs, Albanians, or Bulgarians—in every village in which they tried to establish refugees.⁵⁵ The urgent situation of the refugees who had to be settled rendered inevitable the use of lands and houses belonging to Slav Macedonians. It is important to mention at this point that between 1922 and 1924 the Greek government was in a position to assign to the RSC only 252,000 stremmata, consisting entirely of public lands situated in Macedonia. Lands belonging to Muslims had to be valued by the Mixed Commissions for the Exchange of Greek and Turkish populations before they could be handed to the Refugee Settlement Commission. Thus, despite the protest of the Slav Macedonians and the exploitation of the matter by Bulgarian propaganda, the use of lands belonging to Slav Macedonians was within the bounds of the Convention signed between Greece and Bulgaria. Article 19 of that Convention provided that Greece was not obliged to pay to Slavophone owners of land the revenues from their abandoned properties which had been leased, in cases where they were used by refugees. Furthermore, according to a decision taken by the Mixed Commission, there was no obligation to give back to Slav Macedonians ⁵⁴ FO 371/8566, No. 649, C. H. Bentinck to Courzon, 20 Aug. 1923. ⁵⁵ FO 371/8566, Enclosure in Athens Dispatch No. 649 of 20 Aug. 1923: ‘Notes on a Tour Made by the Mixed Commission on Greco-Bulgarian Emigration in Western and Central Macedonia’ by Colonel A. C. Corfe, President of the Commission.

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213

lands and houses intended for the resettlement of Greek refugees. In return for their property the former were entitled only to receive a monetary indemnification which was to be defined by the Mixed Commission in due course.⁵⁶ On the other hand, it was vital for the maintenance of social order to forestall unrest in the countryside and convince the reluctant Slav Macedonians that it was better to emigrate. The neutral members of the Mixed Commission did full justice to the difficulties encountered by the Greek government in the settlement of the refugees and recognized that it was necessary to find land for them until Greece had taken over all the Turkish properties in Macedonia.⁵⁷ Corfe, however, advised the Greek authorities to abstain from using coercive force, which could possibly be taken advantage of by the Bulgarian Macedonian Organizations, whose influence he tried to curb. He also visited the Petrich district in a bid to convince the Slav Macedonians of the futility of any plans to return to lands assigned to Greek refugees.⁵⁸ The exodus of virtually the total Slavophone population from the Kilkis region, however, and the elimination of any possibility of repatriation because of the settlement of the Greek refugees made Bulgarian propaganda wholly ineffective. The Bulgarian government reciprocated by settling Slavophone refugees in areas inhabited by Greeks, thus precipitating the emigration of the latter. In fact, by 1924 the majority of Greeks living in and around Philippoupolis, Sofia, Varna, Vodena, Koukleni, and Pyrgos left for Greece.⁵⁹ Most were forced by circumstances to emigrate before their properties had been valued by the Mixed Commissions.⁶⁰ A second wave of Slav Macedonians who had been displaced from Thrace and Macedonia in the last quarter of 1924 were also directed to regions inhabited mainly ⁵⁶ AYE, 1923/B/59, copy of the statute for the reciprocal and voluntary emigration of the minorities in Greece and Bulgaria, 11–12; ibid. 102962, ‘Instructions by the Minister of Agriculture G. D. Sideris to Financial Inspectors and to Directors of Land Offices in Macedonia and Thrace’, 23 Dec. 1922. ⁵⁷ FO 371/8566, ‘Notes on a Tour Made by the Mixed Commission’ by Colonel A. C. Corfe. ⁵⁸ AYE, 1923, B/59, Confidential No. 313, Tzormbatzis to A. Alexandris, Sofia, 18 Aug. 1923. ⁵⁹ FO 286/888/1924, 2114/521/B4, Extract from Colonel Blair’s report No 2 of 27 Dec. 1924: ‘Greeks resident in Bulgarian territory are continually being ill-treated and were frequently driven out of Bulgaria in a destitute condition, many of them now being refugees in Dedeagach.’ ⁶⁰ AYE, 1923/A/xii(1) Telegram No. 3658 4/5 from Raphael to GMFA, Sofia, 21 Apr. 1923; AYE, 1924/B/599, Delmouzos, Sofia (undated) and Roussos to Tzormbatzis: reports regarding the situation created in Greek communities in Bulgaria following the Terlitz incident; also AYE/1925/A/24/2A, Gogos to I. Papas, Sept. 1925.

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by Greeks with the objective of forcing them to emigrate.⁶¹ In January 1925 a circular was sent by the Bulgarian government to all prefects in the country instructing them to redirect all temporarily settled refugees in their respective districts to the district of Bourgas.⁶² Bourgas, however, was interspersed with lakes and marshes—natural breeding-grounds for malaria—and the only habitable areas were along the coast, where the majority of villages were inhabited by Greeks. Arable land was limited and the Greek villages were already overcrowded with the earlier waves of Slavophone refugees. The influx of even more Slav Macedonians was the decisive factor which led to the emigration of almost all Greeks from Bourgas. In other parts of Bulgaria, where overcrowding and natural limitations were not as intense, Bulgarian bands took it upon themselves to force the situation by committing atrocities against Greek residents.⁶³ The overall state of affairs can be seen by comparing the statements of A. Lambros, the Governor General of Macedonia, and Dobreff, the Bulgarian minister. Corfe claimed that Lambros had told him that the presence of refugees provided ‘a good opportunity to get rid of the Bulgars who remained in this area [Macedonia] and who had always been a source of trouble to Greece’. Dobreff is also reported to have recognized the fact that Greek subjects in Bulgaria had indeed been exposed to murderous attacks by bands with the aim of provoking a state of confusion and terror throughout the country. ‘Their best way of doing so’, he said, ‘was to ill-treat the Greeks whose complaints led to both internal disorder and external misunderstandings.’⁶⁴ Dobreff, moreover, in an attempt to justify the situation and the ill-treatment of the Greek minority in his ⁶¹ FO 371/10663, C1535/168/7, No 16: Erskine, British Consul in Sofia, to British Legation, 21 Jan. 1925, remarked: ‘The refugees who are already settled among the Greeks on the sea coast . . . are in a very miserable condition . . . and in a very dangerous mood. With the arrival of yet more emigrants the position in these villages will be absolutely unbearable. The refugees will undoubtedly take the law into their hands and there will be a repetition of the 1906 anti-Greek movement . . . The Sea League is out to get the Greek population off the coast at all costs and as the Greeks refuse to move it can only be done by moving them by force. The government cannot do this but were this done by refugees the government could disclaim any responsibility.’ ⁶² This decision was adopted on the request of the Sea League, who had organized the settlement of 5,000 refugees at Bourgas in the Greek towns and villages along the coastline during the autumn of 1924: ibid. ⁶³ See ‘Messager d’ Athènes’ 15 Jan. 1925, ‘Les Crimes contre les Grecs en Bulgarie’; FO 371/10663: M. Cheetham to Austen Chamberlain, 16 Jan. 1925; ibid. C1187/168/7, No. 9, Report by Erskine, Sofia, 22 Jan. 1925 on ‘Bomb attacks on Greeks in Bourgas district’; AYE/G/65aa ‘Liste comprenant les principaux crimes, persécutions et divers méfaits commis par les Bulgares contre l’ élément grec en Bulgarie durant les années 1924–1925’. ⁶⁴ FO 371/10663: B. N. Barber (British Legation in Sofia) to Austen Chamberlain, 14 Jan. 1925.

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215

country stated that ‘those incidents were unfortunately a recurrent feature in the stage of civilisation through which the Balkans were passing’.⁶⁵ This statement describes, literally, the state of affairs in both countries during the 1920s, when the dramatic changes in demographic structure and ethnological composition took place and the refugees became an instrument serving national policies. The economic reverses suffered by the majority of the rural population in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were, to a great degree, responsible for the defection of many Slavophone peasants from the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Bulgarian Exarchate after 1870. There were also, of course, other ideologically orientated incentives which encouraged this breakaway. Defectors enjoyed the dual economic benefits of being relieved of the compulsory contributions to the Patriarchate on the one hand and acquiring land with the support of the IMRO on the other.⁶⁶ The redistribution of Turkish chiftliks was indeed influenced by the propaganda and other clandestine activities of the IMRO and other Bulgarian Macedonian organizations. The comitadjis coerced beys to reduce the rent which they received from tenant farmers (in the form of crops) and to sell fields to such peasants as could afford to buy them. In the Florina region, the beginning of sales to Slavophone peasants of houses and land owned by beys around 1893 coincides with the rise of comitadji activity. Such sales increased considerably after 1908, when a number of peasants were able to pay with monies remitted by emigrant relatives but also with the aid of the Bulgarian Comitate. To cite one example, testified to by the peasants themselves, Ismet Pasha, who owned c.500 stremmata in Banitsa (Bevi), was forced by a brigand chief to sell a large portion of this land to the tenant farmers who cultivated it.⁶⁷ Similarly, in the Serres region, several landless Slavophone peasants managed to become smallholders with the direct aid of the comitadji bandits. During the period of the first administration in Macedonia (1912–13), Bulgaria was the first to manage to infiltrate the Greek zone economically and to influence the sentiments of the Slav Macedonians with promises to the peasantry of subdivision and distribution of the chiftliks, and to ⁶⁵ Ibid. Dobreff added, however, that some of these crimes were committed by bands recruited with Bolshevik money and instructed to provoke a state of confusion and terror throughout the country. See also LNA, C124, J. Campbell to Abraham, 28 Apr. 1925: ‘the Bolsheviks are attempting to stir up trouble in the Balkans undoubtedly. Bulgaria seems the place where they have the greatest chances of success’. ⁶⁶ Gounaris, ‘Ethnotikes omades kai kommatikes parataxeis’, 193. ⁶⁷ AAP, Diaries from his Tour in Macedonia 1913– (in Greek), Fifth Diary, 22–3 Nov. 1913, without file number (ed. by Lynta-Papagalani, transcription by M. Melios, P. Kimourtzis).

216

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

merchants of financial assistance by Bulgarian banks. The founding of a branch of the National Bulgarian Bank in Thessaloniki (5 January 1913) was as much a political venture as it was economic. The head of the Economic Services of the Greek administration in Macedonia, G. Kofinas, pointed out in a letter to the Minister of Economics, A. Diomidis, that three Bulgarian deputies who had visited Edessa (Vodena) on the pretext of economic research were in fact on a propaganda mission among the numerous Slavophone peasants in the region. These deputies, who were expert on agricultural matters, promulgated a co-operative scheme by which the tenants would be given the opportunity to become landowners. The plan was that the Bulgarian Agrarian Bank would buy up large estates (chiftliks) which would then be distributed to the peasants in equal shares, save for a portion of each such estate which would continue to be cultivated co-operatively by the peasants of the community and the income of which would go towards paying off the Bank’s initial investment. The dissemination of such a scheme among the rural population was certain to influence the Slav Macedonians of the Greek zone to turn towards the Bulgarian state, particularly those who had not as yet openly expressed sentiments in favour of any of the three rival national states concerned. Sensitive to the effects of such a venture on the rural population, Kofinas urged the Greek government to commission experts to Macedonia who would study the agrarian problem there and adopt a similar approach to that of the Bulgarians in order to win over the peasants.⁶⁸ The solution of the rural socio-economic problems in the New Lands had to be shelved because of the ensuing political developments: the First World War and the occupation of the eastern provinces by Bulgaria, the National Schism and the establishment of the provisional government of Venizelos in Thessaloniki. After 1917 A. Michalakopoulos, Minister of Agriculture, provided the institutional framework for agrarian reform (Law 1072). The solution of the agrarian question in Macedonia was thenceforth directly linked with the process of integrating the non-Greek-speaking populations into the national state. The situation created in Greek Macedonia due to social pressure exercised on the native population, both Greek and Slav-speaking, through the establishment of the refugees by the RSC, created favourable ⁶⁸ AAD, F D/36, G. Kofinas to A. Diomidis, Thessaloniki, 22 Jan. 1913; cf. E. A. Chekimoglou, Kofinas pros Diomidi, Dokimia kai tekmiria gia tin oikonomiki istoria tis Makedonias, (Kofinas to Diomidis: Essays and Documents on the Economic History of Macedonia) (Thessaloniki, 1989), 26–9.

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217

conditions for the Bulgarian and the Serbian governments to advance their position in Greek Macedonia. The Bulgarian press and the Macedonian organizations were systematic and persistent in supplying both the governments and the public of European states with sensationalized reports of developments in the Balkans.⁶⁹ Even the slightest bias—either real or imaginary—on the part of either the Greek or Yugoslav authorities as regards their treatment of minority groups was not left unexploited. The League of Nations was also kept under siege with barrages of petitions and memoranda and pamphlets. The object of this activity was to discredit these governments in the eyes of the world. The signing of the Kalfov-Politis Protocol in September 1924, which was to grant Slav Macedonians in Greece international protection as a ‘Bulgarian minority’, although not ratified by the Greek Parliament because of its serious implications, was enough to arouse the Serbs into action. The Serbs had exerted great pressure on the pro-Bulgarian Slav Macedonians inhabiting the portion of Ottoman Macedonia which they had annexed, and feared that the ratification of the Protocol would eventually force them as well to recognize minority rights to this population. Moreover, the ratification of the Protocol would have jeopardized all Serbian claims and aspirations in Greek Macedonia, and consequently the question of a ‘Serbian minority’ became most acute.⁷⁰ From as early as May 1925, the Belgrade press had strongly supported the alleged grievances of Slav Macedonians and complained because ‘Serbs’ were being expelled from Greek Macedonia and obliged to emigrate to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.⁷¹ During the period 1925–6 diplomatic relations between Greece and her neighbours were very fragile. The abortive effort of General Pangalos to invade Bulgaria and change the status quo established by the Lausanne Treaty had reduced the Greek government’s prestige on the international scene. The fear of a likely rapprochement between Belgrade and Sofia obliged Pangalos to seek an improvement in relations with Belgrade at any cost. On the other hand, the Serbs made use of the refusal of the Greek Assembly to recognize the Bulgarian character of the Slavophone population in Macedonia and accept the involvement of the League of Nations in its internal affairs for the protection of the ⁶⁹ One of the major outlets of the Macedonian organizations was the fortnightly magazine ‘Balkan Federation’, which circulated throughout Europe in five languages. ⁷⁰ See Areti Tounta-Fergadi, Ellino-Boulgarikes meionotites. Protokollo Politi–Kalfov (Greco-Bulgarian Minorities. Politis–Kalfov Protocol) (Thessaloniki, 1986). ⁷¹ The dissemination of the Serbian newspaper Giouzna Zvezda (South Star) among the Slav Macedonians in western Macedonia provoked them to protest against illtreatment: see AYE/r [=3]/64a.

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Slav-speaking minority’s rights, and exerted pressure on Athens to accept their proposals concerning the free zone in Thessaloniki.⁷² The head of the department for minority issues in the Serbian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Antic, tried to gauge whether the Greek government would be receptive to a bilateral agreement which would bind both countries to recognize the rights of their respective ‘minorities’ and make declarations to this effect before the Council of the League of Nations. This proposal was an indirect way of obliging Greece to recognize as ‘Serbian’ the Slav-speaking minority in Macedonia. Given the rejection of the PolitisKalfov Protocol by the Greek Assembly and its implications, it was impossible for Greece to recognize by another protocol a new characterization of its Slav-speaking minority.⁷³ The refugee crisis, which inflamed the already existing resentment among the Slav Macedonians, came to a head in 1925. By then almost all rural refugees had been settled in most parts of Macedonia. In April of that year Sir John Campbell, Vice-Chairman of the Refugee Settlement Commission, wrote: ‘Macedonia generally, including western Macedonia, is now practically full up with Greek refugees. The Director of Colonisation there informed the RSC that he could not settle new families, irrespective of their place of origin.’⁷⁴ More than 20,000 exchanged refugee families, however, who were transported from the interior of Anatolia between May and November, were temporarily kept in Old Greece with the intention of moving them to Macedonia.⁷⁵ The intermittent arrival of new refugees in agricultural areas was a burden not only on local peasants but also on refugees who were already settled there and had received land. They had to share what they had obtained with the newcomers. In villages where all communal, expropriated and Muslim lands had already been distributed to refugee and local landless families, every new arrival of at least ten families (one group) brought about a redistribution and division of land into more and smaller ⁷² Lina Louvi, ‘Mechanismoi tis Ellinikis exoterikis politikis meta ti Synthiki tis Lausannes (1923–1928)’ (Mechanisms of Greek Foreign Policy after the Treaty of Lausanne: 1923–1928), in G. T. Mavrogordatos and C. Chatziiosif (eds.), Venizelismos kai astikos Eksygchronismos (Venizelism and Bourgeois Modernization) (Herakleio, 1988), 391–403; Giannis Stefanidis, ‘I Makedonia tou Mesopolemou’ (Inter-war Macedonia), in I. Koliopoulos and I. Chassiotis (eds.), I Neoteri kai Sygchroni Makedonia (Modern and Contemporary Macedonia), ii, (Thessaloniki, 1993), 89–97. ⁷³ AYE, 1925/B/40: Copy of telegram from Dendramis, Berne 8 Nov. 1925; AYE/⌫/61a3, telegram from Rentis, 3 Sept. 1925. ⁷⁴ LNA, C 124, Letter from Sir J. Campbell to Abraham, 28 Apr. 1925. ⁷⁵ AKDK, F 19, Confidential letter to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 31 Jan. 1925.

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plots. An additional effect was the reinforcement of a prevailing impression among the peasants that what was taking place in the countryside was temporary and could be reversed at any time. Such feelings of insecurity concerning their properties and their general socio-economic status prevented the Slav Macedonians from developing a feeling of confidence towards the Greek authorities, and contributed to a ‘minority group’ awareness. Local officials and members of the Colonization Service suggested various measures to tackle the principal constraint on the settlement of more refugee families, namely, the scarcity of land. In these situations the main sufferers were the Slav Macedonians in mixed villages. Refugees were sent to western Macedonian villages which had pro-Bulgarian sentiments even when the available land was obviously insufficient to support new farmers.⁷⁶ The newcomers occupied lands belonging to persons who had emigrated and which were afterwards cultivated by their relatives, or lands which were sold through private contracts (‘senetia’) to Greek-speakers of the region.⁷⁷ The Slavophone peasants quickly realized that their aspirations to improve their lot were on the wane. Not surprisingly, some of those affected turned to Greece’s neighbouring states and to international organizations to protect their interests. This provided the Serbs with the opportunity to try and persuade the Slav Macedonians that by registering as Serbs they would have a more prosperous future to look forward to. In spring 1925 the expressed desire of some Slav Macedonians to migrate to Serbia led to the formation of a special committee by the Serbian government. This was made up of representatives of the Ministries for Foreign Affairs, of the Interior, and of Agrarian Reform, and undertook to examine the state of the Slav Macedonians and to organize their migration.⁷⁸ With the consent of the Greek government, two senior officers of the Serbian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Police Chief of Gevgeli toured the Slavophone villages of Greek Macedonia for a period of three months.⁷⁹ They promised land and other resources and facilities for resettlement in the district of Gevgeli to all intending migrants.⁸⁰ The fact that these Serb promises were not fully delivered did not deter a great many families from applying for immigration. ⁷⁶ FO 371/11360, British Consulate General, Thessaloniki, 28 Oct. 1926. ⁷⁷ HAM, GGM, F 108, Report dated 9 Apr. 1925. ⁷⁸ AYE 1925/⌫/61/a,3: Translation from the Serbian newspaper ‘Politika’, No. 6096, Belgrade, 13 Apr. 1925. ⁷⁹ Karavidas, Agrotika, 355. ⁸⁰ AYE 1925/⌫/61/a,3: Translation from the Serbian newspaper ‘Politika’, No. 6096, Belgrade, 13 Apr. 1925.

220

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

In December 1925 petitions, dated 20 August and 8 October, were sent to the League of Nations, signed by a number of inhabitants of three Greek villages in Macedonia, Nalban-kioi [Perdikkas] (Birintsi), and Hasan-kioi [Asvestopetra] and Lipnica in the district of Kailaria, Department of Kozani. The petitioners, who called themselves ‘Serbs’, protested against the expropriation of part of their land and produce by the Greek government for the relief and settlement of refugees from Asia Minor. They also asked for a Serbian school and church. Groups of Slav Macedonians from other regions of western Macedonia also approached the Serbian Consul in their quest to be granted rights as ‘Serbs’.⁸¹ Slavophone inhabitants of the village of Vosterani (Meliti) in the Florina area applied to become subjects of Serbia when refugees occupied fields cultivated by them.⁸² There was in fact a problem in some of these particular villages because, as can be seen from Table 7.4, the number of Greek refugees settled there was greater than the number of the Muslim inhabitants who had left.⁸³ The Greek government responded that the lands in question had never belonged to any persons other than the Muslims. Consequently, under the agreements for the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations, these lands rightfully belonged to the Greek refugees and therefore they were a matter which concerned only the Mixed Commission for the GrecoTurkish exchange of populations.⁸⁴ Moreover, the petitions were described as the product of external agitation and propaganda, since the villagers themselves were illiterate and not even capable of speaking the Serbian ⁸¹ Slav-speaking peasants who applied to the Serbian Consulate in Thessaloniki in order to obtain Serbian nationality were from the following villages: District of Karatzova: Ano and Kato Pozar (Ano and Kato Loutraki), Sarakinovo (Sarakini), Kato Rodovon; District of Florina: Setina (Skopos), Neokazi (Neochoraki), Krousourati (Achlada), Bermpeni (Itea), Bosterani (Meliti), Popoziani (Papagiannis), Klampoutsista (Polyplatano), Agia Paraskevi; District of Veroia: Emporion, Knouf, Stor and Ligka; see AYE, 1925/B/37,13 and AYE, 1925/B/46, No. 4113/1236, 10th Army Division, Stavrianopoulos, Veroia 15 July 1925 and AYE, 1926/⌫/68/I, No. E.P.3/100, (Lieutenant-Colonel of the Special Security Centre) to Ministry of Interior, Dept. of Special Security, Thessaloniki, 16 Jan. 1926. ⁸² See HAM, GGWM, F 90, Gendarmerie of Florina to Headquarters of Gendarmerie in Thessaloniki, 24 Oct. 1925; Also APD, F.11.3, 93, K. D. Karavidas to P. Dragoumis, Germa Prespes, 13 Apr. 1926. Karavidas refers to 15 such villages in Florina all located in the plain, but he observes that in contrast, the highland Slavophone villages of Korestia did not side with the Serbophiles on this issue, presumably because they supported the Bulgarian cause. Moreover, in mountainous Korestia, where arable land was not adequate even for the native peasants, only a few refugee families were settled in each village on lands left by Slav Macedonians who had emigrated. ⁸³ Pelagidis based his figures on the censuses of 1920 and 1928. ⁸⁴ AYE/1925/A/24/3, No. 4148, V. Dendramis to Sir Eric Drummond, Berne, 5 Dec. 1925.

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Table 7.4. Greek and Muslim population movements in Mixed villages in western Macedonia Village New Name

Village Old Name

Perdikkas Asbestopetra Meliti Grammatiko Neochoraki Polyplatanos Papagiannis

Nalbankioi Hasankioi Vosterani Grammatikovo Neokazi Klampoutsista Popazianis

Total Population in 1920

Exchanged Muslims in 1923

Settled Refugees in 1928

860 997 1,292 842 486 628 750

550 670 370 510 130 45

710 524 211 186 117 128 31

Source: Pelagidis, Apokatastasi, 74, 81.

language, which was also the reason why there were no Serbian schools and churches in their villages.⁸⁵ A Greek source pertinent to the issue are the reports of the Chief of the Gendarmerie of Kozani. This source, however, refers only to the activities of the peasants of Nalbankioi in the Eparchy of Kailaria. Be that as it may, any glimmer of new light that can be shed on such a controversial issue cannot be left without being investigated. According to these reports, nine Nalbankioi peasants whom the Greek authorities considered to be fanatical Bulgarophiles sought the support of the Serbian government. In October and November of 1924, the Exchange Bureau of Kailaria (Grafeio Antallagis Kailarion) in co-operation with the Settlement Bureau (Grafeio Epoikismou) confiscated about 320 stremmata of arable land which had formerly belonged to Muslims but had in the mean time come into the possession of local farmers through surreptitious private sales without valid deeds and titles. The locals who demanded recognition of their rights to these lands had hastened to stake their claims by sowing the fields with cereals in a bid to deter the authorities from resettling refugees in these areas, although the Settlement Bureau had warned them to refrain from doing so prior to the announcement of any decision by the proper court authorities (Epitropi tou Topikou Protodikeiou). When the Settlement Bureau finally distributed to refugees the 320 stremmata which had been found to belong rightly to the state as former Ottoman lands, the locals complained about unfair ⁸⁵ Ibid. The local gendarmerie commander of Florina interpreted the action of the Slav Macedonians as an open expression of ‘their hidden anti-Greek sentiments’.

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treatment. They directed their complaints in ascending order to the Exchange and Settlement Bureaux of Kailaria, to the Prefecture, and to Directorship of Settlement of Kozani and, finally, to the GovernorshipGeneral of Thessaloniki, the authority which had the power to settle the matter. The Governor General, however, happened to be in Athens at the time and settlement of the matter faced further delay. In the mean time the petitioners had spent over 70,000 drachmas on lawyers, travel expenses, and other costs. With their funds depleted, they turned to the Mixed Greco-Bulgarian Commission and asked whether they could acquire Bulgarian nationality without being obliged to migrate. As the Convention of Neuilly precluded such a move, they finally approached the Serbian Consul, who promised them that he would see to it that they were recompensed, provided they took out Serbian nationality. Their overtures to the foreign consuls and to the League of Nations resulted in the petitioners being interrogated by the local gendarmerie for subversive activities. As the spokesman for the petitioners, K. Mitkas, stated, they had originally no intention of seeking foreign protection or, even more, acquiring a foreign nationality, if they were allowed to keep the lands in question. They had, however, considered asking the English and the French to intervene as arbitrators. The British Consul, when he was asked by his Serbian colleague to intervene, refused to do so ‘because the lands in question were Turkish estates and were given rightfully to Greek refugees’. The Governor General of Thessaloniki saw to it, however, that thirty-eight Slavophone families of Kailaria were compensated for the cereals which had been taken from them to be distributed among the refugees.⁸⁶ Many of the fields which had been distributed to refugee families were finally given back to local cultivators, but at a high economic cost. In order to hold on to 3–15 stremmata the peasants were obliged to put up as much as 3,000–5,000 drachmas. This fact, together with the priority of necessity given to the exchanged refugees, led to a widespread impression that the Refugee Settlement Commission was acting with bias. The Greek Ministry of Agriculture, in its efforts to avert social friction, had indeed sent instructions to the local settlement bureaux. Refugees were not to be allotted fields which, even though they had been part of former Ottoman estates, had been cultivated by local farmers for a period of three years or more. The Refugee Settlement Commission, however, faced with the problem of providing means of sustenance to the near-starving ⁸⁶ AYE, 1925/B/37(13), I. Kannavos to Agricultural Bureau of Kailaria. Lena Divani, Eellada kai meionotites (Greece and Minorities) (Athens, 1995), 144–9.

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refugees, acted in compliance with the Geneva Protocol, which recognized the refugees as the only rightful claimants to all former Ottoman lands. To add to the confusion, the court authorities of Kozani had fallen behind in their hearings as a backlog of claims (for the lands in question), which were continually being lodged by local peasants, had accumulated. These inconsistencies caused grievances among the local peasants, Greek- and Slav-speakers alike. Amid these perturbations, the gendarmerie of Kozani found an easy scapegoat in the person of Neofoitos Georgiadis, the Director of the local Exchange Bureau. The latter was deemed responsible for the deplorable state of affairs and was further accused of harbouring communist sentiments. A recommendation for his replacement was duly lodged.⁸⁷ This state of uncertainty which had developed over property rights affected all mixed villages of northern Greece where refugees were settled.⁸⁸ However, where Slavophone populations were concerned the impact went, as has been mentioned, beyond the borders of the Greek state and resounded as far as the League of Nations. The issue was taken up by the Greek press as well as by many politicians. Among the latter, Karavidas was perhaps the most outspoken. Karavidas, who toured the villages of Macedonia, was of the opinion that the question of minorities had been brought to a head because of the social disarray caused by the policies of the Refugee Settlement Commission, which had not been dictated by the government: The agents of the Commission preferred to establish refugees in areas inhabited by Slav Macedonians. The pressure exercised on them prompted their desertions and their petition to the League of Nations for protection . . . The League of Nations should concentrate its effort rather on the implementation of the pacifist spirit of the Convention than on the formal and hasty bureaucratic realisation of its programme, which could cause more damage than benefit.⁸⁹

In his opinion, protests and complaints by Slavophone natives could be eliminated only if the problems related to the settlement of the refugees were resolved. Three issues needed particular attention: (1) the vexing claims of the refugees expressed at the latest all-refugee congress held in Thessaloniki; (2) the entirely disordered and confusing situation over the ⁸⁷ AYE, 1925/B/37(13) and AYE, 1925/B/46, reports by: the Chief of the Gendarmerie of Kozani, T. Kontogiannis (14 July 1925); the Governor of the Gendarmerie of Kozani, Kourakos (1 Aug. 1925); the Third Army Division Commander, Tseroulis (12 July 1925). ⁸⁸ See HAM, GDM, F89A for problems in other eparchies (e.g. in Langadas). ⁸⁹ AKDK, K. D. Karavidas, Letter to the President [of the RSC?], 10 Dec. 1924.

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land question and the delay by the settlement services in distributing permanent plots and fixing the boundaries; and (3) the constant arrival of new waves of refugees in Macedonia. The refugees at their congress had accused native peasants of illegally occupying lands to which they had neither titles nor any contracts for cultivation. Though this was true, it was more important that in many cases it became possible to settle refugees on uncultivated lands that the natives had transformed to arable (the so called ␯␫␣´␮␣␶␣) by their personal labour. Thus, Karavidas, who was of the opinion that assimilation of the Slav Macedonians would be easier through a careful distribution of plots, pointed out that the refugees ought at least to appreciate the fact that local peasants had been obliged to make sacrifices. As to the second issue—the economic aspect of which is not discussed here—there were two obstacles. First, the RSC’s claim to obtain titles over lands on which it had installed refugees and spent money and, secondly, the obstacles due to the lack of a cadastral survey, etc. In addition, in 1925 the RSC had no funds to furnish the refugees who were arriving in Macedonia with adequate equipment for their settlement. Karavidas urged the government to think about providing the necessary funds for their settlement. This was the only way to know the precise number of all the refugees who had to be settled in the rural areas in order to accelerate the process for the distribution of titles and thus to prevent social rivalries, particularly in sensitive areas where there were considerable numbers of non Greek-speakers.⁹⁰ That same year, however, Sir John Campbell made the following comment: Theoretically it is the Greek government that decides where refugees are to be placed, and which controls their movements. Practically we can exercise some considerable influence in this matter; but we would not I think attempt to exercise that influence where the dominant motives dictating any particular movement were political . . . I am told that Bulgarians have been dribbling away from Western Macedonia for some time; they felt isolated in a mass of Greeks; and in some cases pressure was employed to induce them to leave . . . The Greeks are anxious . . . to keep the Bulgarophones in Western Macedonia, who are said to be wholly Greek in sentiment, and to have given the greatest assistance throughout in frontier troubles with the Bulgarians. But, unfortunately, the local officials seem to have muddled that matter recently; and I am told that a good many of these Bulgarophones have been allowed or have been forced to depart.’⁹¹ ⁹⁰ AKDK, F. 19, 1925: K. D. Karavidas, ‘Report on the present relations between native Slav Macedonians and refugees’; ibid., Confidential letter by K. D. Karavidas to GMFA 31 Jan. 1925. ⁹¹ LNA, Sir J. Campbell to Abraham, 28 Apr. 1925.

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The political authorities intervened with the aim of maintaining social order in rural Macedonia as well as averting the growing concern among the local Slav Macedonians that they were being intentionally victimized. The former were all too well aware that the increasing unrest and the peasants’ overtures to Serbia were harmful to Greek interests. The Governor General of Thessaloniki, Kannavos, gave explicit and strict instructions to all local settlement bureaux to reduce the pressure on natives in mixed villages and suggested means by which the differences between locals and refugees should be resolved. Competent higher civil servants, with a full awareness of both the legal and the political implications involved, were posted in the regions to supervise and co-ordinate the work of the various bureaux entrusted with the task of expropriating lands and redistributing them among the refugees. In response to Serbia’s pressure for recognition of a Serbian minority inside Greece, Kannavos urged the local authorities to make it clear to all Slav Macedonians that on acquiring Serbian nationality they would be obliged to migrate.⁹² A total of 90 such families did in fact migrate to Serbia between 1925 and 1926. The Serbs, however, did not remain idle. In December 1925 Yugoslavia stimulated anti-Greek demonstrations in a number of cities.⁹³ On 27 December 1925 a congregation of about 15,000 people was held at Monastir to protest against the treatment of Slav minorities in Greece. Most of the speakers at this meeting were in favour of a rapprochement with Bulgaria.⁹⁴ In the resolution adopted it was mentioned that ‘on Greek territory, land belonging to our brothers is openly being confiscated . . . and that they are obliged to relinquish their estates in order to save their lives from the terrorism of the Greek authorities’.⁹⁵ As foreign commentators noted, the meeting was most probably organized with the active encouragement of the government, since it was unlikely that ‘a meeting of such large dimensions could have been held in a country where there is practically no public opinion’.⁹⁶ The anti-Greek campaign ⁹² AYE, 1925/B 37,13 and B 46, No. 840, I. Kannavos to Headquarters of the Gendarmerie of Macedonia, 22 July 1925; HAM, GGM, F 89B, M. Maniatopoulos, General Director of the Political Bureau of the Prime Minister to Ministries of Interior, Relief, Agriculture, and GGM, 17 Sept. 1925 and 17 Dec. 1925; AYE, 1926, Confidential No. 8239, A. Michalakopoulos, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Greek Embassy in Belgrade, 15 June 1925, stated that ‘It was impossible for Greece to recognize any national minority in Macedonia—which was Hellenized up to 95%—and thus provide to any propagandist the pretext to intervene in its internal affairs.’ ⁹³ Stephanidis, ‘I Makedonia tou Mesopolemou’ ii. 89–94. ⁹⁴ Such as the radical deputy M. Jovan Cirkovic. ⁹⁵ FO 371/ 11337, C102 Kennard to Sir Austen Chamberlain; Belgrade, 31 Dec. 1925. ⁹⁶ Ibid.

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in Serbia in response to the appeal on behalf of the Slav Macedonians indicated an improvement in relations between Serbia and Bulgaria. The Bulgarian press was not opposed to Serbian interference in Greek Macedonia but approved the proceedings. This situation placed the Greeks in the awkward position of having to give guarantees to Serbia as regards the Gevgeli railway line if the former desired reconciliation with the latter. The British, however, were in opposition to such an agreement and were of the opinion that if the Gevgeli line had to be guaranteed to anybody this should be the League of Nations.⁹⁷ The efforts which were made to exert pressure on Greece to modify her attitude with regard to the railway to Thessaloniki and to offer satisfactory guarantees for the transit of Yugoslav goods over the line were, however, supported by the French government and had a twofold impact. At the diplomatic level, Pangalos’s government made concessions by signing bilateral agreements with Serbia. On the other hand, it affected the sentiments of the Slav Macedonians inside Greece, creating or fortifying a distinct ethnic consciousness among a number of those Slavophone groups who felt that their interests were threatened and shifted their loyalties to Greece’s neighbours. It is difficult to fathom the actual reasons which led a segment of the Slavophone peasants to choose Serbian identity rather than either Greek or Bulgarian, as we lack their own testimony. From the beginning, the Serbs’ interpretation was that the Slav-speakers of Greek Macedonia who sought recognition as ‘Serbs’ were Serbs by descent. The Bulgarians, on the other hand, although they regarded all Slav Macedonians as Bulgars by virtue of their language, did not react immediately to Serbian interference in Greek Macedonia, as any unrest among the Slav Macedonians within Greece served their own purposes also. Greece believed that many of the peasants concerned had no distinct national consciousness but rather succumbed to Serbian propaganda and reacted out of desperation on seeing properties which they felt were their own being distributed among the refugees.⁹⁸ The observations of the neutral members of the Mixed Commission supported the view that Serb propaganda was widespread in western Macedonia at that period.⁹⁹ Furthermore, in early 1926, Sir M. Cheetham reported that many Slav Macedonians who had emigrated under the ⁹⁷ FO 371/11337, C/102/19, Kennard, Belgrade, 31 Dec. 1925. ⁹⁸ See HAM, GGM, F 89B and F 91. ⁹⁹ FO 371/11337, C 3041/102/19, Confidential: Memorandum on Serbian Minorities in Greek Macedonia, by C. H. Bateman, 3 Mar. 1926, section 2.

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Convention of Neuilly, in order to increase their chances of receiving compensation for their abandoned immovable property, had given up their national affiliations to Bulgaria, received Serbian passports, and with the encouragement of Serbia had claimed indemnity from Greece.¹⁰⁰ During that period Serbia, by means of an incessant flow of memoranda, applied to the Greek government either to reinstate all Serbian subjects in Greek Macedonia who had been left landless or to ensure other means of indemnity. Most of the properties in question had been expropriated in accordance with the Agrarian Law, which affected all foreign subjects throughout Greece. None the less, Serbia’s new role as protector-patron to all Slav Macedonians had the desired effects in bringing to the fore the question of a ‘Serbian minority’.¹⁰¹ The British Vice-Consul in Skopje was also of the opinion that allegations by Bulgaria and Serbia that the Slav Macedonians were being expelled from Greek Macedonia were exaggerated and in fact obscured what was actually taking place. He reported that ‘emigrations were confined to Macedonian Slavs, who were attracted to Yugoslavia by the cheapness of land there, caused by the wholesale emigration of Moslems from South Serbia to Anatolia’.¹⁰² The above clearly indicates that for many of the Slav Macedonians the question of ethnic identity was not necessarily a matter of consciousness but was frequently seen as a means to maintaining or even enhancing their socio-economic status. Bewildered by the state of social and political circumstances created during the settlement of the refugees, many Slav Macedonians opted to leave for safer and more promising countries. That same year, some Slav Macedonians who had raised the necessary funds opted to emigrate to Australia and the New World.¹⁰³ It is beyond the scope of the present study to examine, let alone define, what ‘national identity’ is. It is obvious, however, that some clarification is necessary, given that the ‘fate’ of the Slavs during the period in question rested on precisely that issue. The latest anthropological studies assure us ¹⁰⁰ Ibid. ¹⁰¹ See in AYE, 1925/⌫/61/a 3 relevant documents at the Ministry of Agriculture, Directorship of Exchange of Populations; also AYE, 1925/G/61/a, 2, No. 6355, Letter to D. Kaklamanos, member of the Greek delegation in Belgrade, 15 May 1925, with a list of 67 expropriated or confiscated estates throughout Greece which belonged to foreign subjects: Albanians, Jews, French, English, Belgians, Italians, Turks, Austrians, and Serbs. ¹⁰² FO 371/ 11337, C102 Kennard to Sir Austen Chamberlain; Belgrade, 31 Dec. 1925. ¹⁰³ FO371/11360, No. 48, A.H.K/N.C, British Consulate General, Thessaloniki, 28 Oct. 1926: ‘The quota [to Australia] at this Consulate General is now complete up to the end of next January and the applicants for visas are Bulgars to a man’.

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that ‘identities’ may be in certain circumstances anything but stable. They are rather described as ‘fluid’, ‘malleable’, and even ‘situational’.¹⁰⁴ As J. D. Toland states: Identities . . . are . . . forever in process to include all the social roles individuals may assume and all the functions groups may perform in differing situations within the social arena. Ethnic affinity may or may not be a choice at a particular time within a particular situation for either individual or group. Self identity at a particular moment may be contingent upon a more complex set of variables than peoplehood . . . There are as many criteria for ethnic inclusiveness or identity as there are situational interactions for individuals and groups.¹⁰⁵

The case under study correlates exactly. Most of the Slav Macedonians in western Macedonia were of rather ‘interlocking, overlapping, and multiple collective’ identities. It is also evident that their choice of ‘nationality’ was not a matter of ‘sentiment’ but rather a matter of social well-being. The choice of a nationality as a means of preserving one’s property rights or of being exempted from the population exchange regulations was not limited only to the Slav Macedonians. Wealthy Muslims also endeavoured to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the Balkan states Serbia and Albania, which had not signed population exchange agreements with Greece. One such case was that of the Chatzi-Osman brothers from Thessaloniki, who had extensive properties, olive-groves and oil-presses in Chalkidiki. On failing to be recognized as Albanians, they finally chose Serbian citizenship in order to be exempted from the exchange regulations. Strong objections raised by both refugees and natives eventually brought the case to the attention of the authorities and it was discussed in the session of Parliament on 6 August 1925. The settlement bureau had shared out 65,000 Chatzi-Osman olive trees in the location of Portaria to refugees settled in Nea Moudania, while the remainder of the Chatzi-Osman property in Chalkidiki had been confiscated by the Bureau and put up for auction. The Thessaloniki Exchange Bureau requested of the Ministry of Agriculture to have the matter of the Chatzi-Osman brothers’ nationality resolved so that they could continue with the distribution of property to the refugees who had been settled in the area and were in a state of unrest.¹⁰⁶ Irrespective of the ¹⁰⁴ Richard G. Fox (ed.), Nationalist Ideologies and the Production of National Cultures, American Ethnological Society Monograph Series, 2 (Washington, DC, 1990), 1–13. ¹⁰⁵ Judith D. Toland (ed.), Ethnicity and the State, Political and Legal Anthropology Series, 9, (New Brunswick, NJ, 1993), 13. ¹⁰⁶ See Minutes of the Debates at the Greek Parliament, 6 Aug. 1925.

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outcome concerning the citizenship bestowed upon the Chatzi-Osman brothers, the fact remains that ownership of the disputed estate and its olive-groves was granted to the refugees.¹⁰⁷ Relevant to this issue is also the following report submitted to the League of Nations: The Albanian complaint probably relates to requisitions and expropriations of land for the use of the refugees. I have no precise information as to the position in that respect, but will ask Cunliffe-Owen on his return. You will readily understand, however, that requisition and expropriation always lead to complaints, even where there is no discrimination. The Bulgarians complained recently; and as far as could be made out they were treated on exactly the same footing as the Greeks and the non-exchangeable Turks. Greeks complain—loudly; foreigners complain—they say English and Italians are marked down for specially invidious treatment; and so on. No one likes having his land taken, with payment for it, even at a low price, as a possibly remote contingency; everyone is honestly convinced that he is being unfairly treated; that his nationality is being discriminated against. I may add that I heard recently, privately, that many Turks were now claiming Albanian nationality, as they are claiming Italian and other nationalities.¹⁰⁸

The number of persons who availed themselves of the Convention of Neuilly is not known, because it is very difficult to determine the numbers of emigrants. In October 1922, according to estimates provided to the League of Nations by Greece and Bulgaria, around 30,000 ‘Greeks’ and 150,000 ‘Bulgarians’ were expected to migrate from Bulgaria and Greece respectively.¹⁰⁹ After 1923, according to the figures of the Mixed Commission, almost all Greek-speakers left Bulgaria (c.30,000) and 53,000 Slav Macedonians emigrated from Greece.¹¹⁰ With the emigration of these 53,000, only a small number of Slav Macedonians remained in the regions between Goumenitsa and Drama, as well as in western ¹⁰⁷ Unfortunately, my research into the final outcome of the case was fruitless. A 1931 publication of the Refugees’ Association of Moudania, Echoes from Moudania and Environs, provides us with the information concerning the ownership. ¹⁰⁸ LNA, C 129.1, Letter to G. H. F. Abraham: 14 May 1924. ¹⁰⁹ The Greek census of 1920 showed that 139,000 Bulgarians had remained in Macedonia and Thrace; 16,000 Greek speakers had left Bulgaria prior to the Convention; and 39,000 Slav Macedonians had left Greece: Ladas, Exchange, 122. ¹¹⁰ The controversy over the actual size of the minorities in both Greece and Bulgaria, and consequently over the number of emigrants, is illustrated by the figures published by the two countries. In 1925, in refutation of the figure of 70,000 refugees from Bulgaria out of the total of 75,000 Greeks living there which were published in the Greek press, the Bulgarian official organ produced figures to show that no more than 20,213 Greeks had in fact expressed their intention to emigrate and that of these only 9,036 had actually done so: FO371/10663, Barber to Chamberlain, 14 Jan. 1925.

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Thrace, and were dispersed in this wide geographical area. Furthermore, after 1925 Greece was concerned that no more Slav Macedonians who had not openly expressed pro-Bulgarian sentiments should migrate to neighbouring countries and so strengthen the position of the IMRO right on its frontiers. Greece preferred to assimilate those who had remained. In contrast, those in eastern and central Macedonia who were pro-Bulgarian and whose presence there might at any time facilitate a Bulgarian descent to the Aegean coast could threaten the territorial status quo and had been encouraged to emigrate. After the exchange of minorities between Bulgaria and Greece, the bulk of the Slav-speaking population was thus concentrated in western Macedonia, mostly in villages along the border line with Yugoslavia up to Goumenitsa and along the railway line from Monastir to Edessa, and was estimated by the Greek government at about 82,000 persons. There were also very few left in the district of Thessaloniki and Drama.¹¹¹ The above figure, however, represents only those who were considered to lacking a Greek national consciousness, as will be shown later on. The exodus of Slav Macedonians from Macedonia continued, though in small numbers, in the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s. Difficult living conditions and low family incomes compelled many to seek a better life in America or in Australia. Slav Macedonians seeking entry into America found it easier to do so from Bulgaria or even Romania, as the emigration quota set by the American government for Greece was very small. In other words, for many Slav Macedonians a ‘choice’ of nationality was a means to an end rather than an end in itself.¹¹²

THE STATISTICS Although the exchanges of populations were, for all practical purposes, completed by 1925, the question of the number of Slav-speakers remaining in Greek Macedonia of necessity remains open. The figures proposed by Greek, Bulgarian, and Yugoslav historians to date show great differences between them as the purported ‘number’ of Slav Macedonians in Greek Macedonia has been and continues to be the basic argument used by concerned parties in promoting irredentist ¹¹¹ FO 371/15172/C122/46/7, Waterlow to Sargent Sofia, 31 Dec. 1930. ¹¹² See HAM, GDM, F70, with applications for emigration abroad of the period 1926–32.

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claims. Contemporary demographic statistics pertaining to the ethnicity of the Macedonian peoples simply projected the interests of the nation-states that provided them and show gross inconsistencies between them which render them invalid. Not only do figures concerning the ethnological make-up of Macedonia differ between themselves but also the very criteria on which they were arrived at were inconsistent and ill-defined, if specified at all. Each party categorized groups of local inhabitants in accordance with their own interests and for their own political exploitation. The locals themselves categorized each other as much, if not more so, in accordance with a variety of socio-economic standards as by creed and culture alone. As invalid as the contemporary statistics are, they still provide us with a relative indication of the existing state of affairs. Greek historiography has adopted the figures of A. A. Pallis, who was a member of the Mixed Greco-Bulgarian Commission in the 1920s.¹¹³ In early 1925, according to Pallis, the number of ‘Bulgarophiles’ (‘Boulgarizontes’) in Macedonia was about 77,000.¹¹⁴ The Greek census of 1928 estimated the Slav Macedonians who lived in Greek Macedonia at 80,789, out of a total of 81,984 in the whole country.¹¹⁵ This number—c.82,000 ‘Bulgarians’—was published by Pallis in 1929, when the emigration of the non-Greek populations was completed.¹¹⁶ The League of Nations used the official Greek censuses and the statistics of the Mixed Greco-Bulgarian and Greco-Turkish Commissions for the ethnographic map of Macedonia which depicted the strength of the various ethnic groups there between 1912 and 1925 and was attached to ¹¹³ A. A. Pallis was considered an expert on population movements and statistics during the inter-war period. At the turn of the decade he was member of the Central Committee for the Displaced Greek Populations and General Financial Inspector at the Greek High Commission in Constantinople. ¹¹⁴ A. A. Pallis, Statistiki meleti peri ton fyletikon metanastevseon Makedonias kai Thrakis kata tin periodo 1912–1924 (Statistical Study of the Racial Migrations in Macedonia and Thrace during the Period 1912–1924) (Athens, 1925), 16. ¹¹⁵ Geniki Statistiki Ypiresia tis Ellados, Statistika apotelesmata tis apographis tou plythismou tis Ellados tis 15–16 Maiou 1928 (General Statistical Department of Greece, Statistical Results of the 15–16 May 1928 census of Greece), iv (Athens, 1930), 25–6, 28. These Slav Macedonians were of ‘Greek national consciousness’ in the opinion of the Department. ¹¹⁶ A. A. Pallis, Syllogi ton kyrioteron statistikon ton aforoson tin antallagin ton plithysmon kai tin prosfygikin apokatastasin meta analyseos kai epexigiseos (Collection of the Main Statistics Regarding the Exchange of Populations and the Refugee Resettlement with Analysis and Interpretation) (Athens, 1929), 10.

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the RSC’s publication of 1926.¹¹⁷ Most Greek historians subsequently based their calculations on the above sources.¹¹⁸ Bulgarian and Yugoslav historians on the other hand claimed the above statistics to be unreliable and biased, and alleged that, after the exchange of populations in Greek Macedonia, or ‘Macedonia of the Aegean’ as they called it, there still remained about 230,000 Slav-speakers, whom Yugoslav historians also renamed ‘Macedonians’. In view of the fact that the above figures with their great divergence were summarily and severally arrived at by the Balkan states in their endeavours to promote their individual interests, they cannot be regarded as anything but spurious. Full consideration of the above makes it evident that the question of the number of Slav-speakers in Greek Macedonia after the exchange of populations is very difficult to resolve. Discrepancies in the statistics produced by the interested Balkan states are due to different criteria applied in determining the ‘nationality’ of the inhabitants of Macedonia. At the beginning of the century and during the inter-war period there were two principal approaches to the question which opposed each other: the Bulgarian and the Greek. The Bulgarians’ sole criterion was that of language in the sense of the ‘mother tongue’, or the language of the ‘home’, as opposed to ‘acquired’ language which might be an ‘official’ language, like Turkish, or a ‘cultural’ language, like ¹¹⁷ Figures for this map were derived from the following sources: (1) the population of Greek Macedonia in 1913 and 1920 from the official Greek censuses taken in those years. No reference is made to religion, nationality, or race in these censuses; (2) the relative proportions of the various ethnic groups in Macedonia before the Balkan Wars are estimated from the official Greek figures based on the reports of the Greek consuls as well as the Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities in Macedonia, as published in the Bulletin d’Orient of 1904 and the Temps of 27 Dec. 1904 and quoted in Amadori Virgilj’s book La Questione Rumeliota; (3) the number of Bulgarians and Greeks who emigrated under the provisions of the Neuilly Convention from the figures of the Greco-Bulgarian Mixed Emigration Commission, as published in the Messager d’Athènes of 7 Apr. 1926; (4) the number of Turkish Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians who were exchanged under the provisions of the Convention of Lausanne, from the figures of the Greco-Turkish Mixed Exchange Commission; (5) the number of Muslims who emigrated from Macedonia to Turkey during 1912–13 from the official figures of the Turkish Colonization Department; (6) the number of Greek immigrants from the Caucasus and southern Russia from the figures of the Ministry of Relief as published in Michalis C. Ailianos’s book To ergon tis Hellinikis Perithalpseos (The Work of the Greek Relief Service), Press Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Athens, 1921); (7) finally, the relative proportions of the ethnic groups in 1925 was estimated by subtracting and adding the figures of the intermediate migrations as derived from the sources indicated. See LNA, C123, ‘Note on the ethnographical map attached to the RSC publication (Geneva 1926)’, A.A.P.[allis], 7 Nov. 1927; cf. Wilkinson, Maps and Politics, 264–8. ¹¹⁸ S. Ladas, D. Pentzopoulos, G. Zotiades, E. Kofos, and S. Nestor are the most representative.

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Greek. As the Slavic dialect in question is a branch of the Bulgarian language, all the inhabitants of Macedonia who spoke it were regarded as ‘Bulgars’. In accordance with this view, J. Ivanoff, who was a member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and professor at the University of Sofia, identified all Slav-speaking inhabitants of the region as Bulgars in spite of the fact that many of them had manifested Greek or Serbian national sentiments. Yugoslav historians of the People’s Republic of Macedonia, applying the same criteria, in turn adapted Ivanoff ’s figures—which of course included the ‘Grecomani’—simply renaming his ‘Bulgars’ ‘Macedonians’. This coinage was the direct consequence of a deliberate attempt on the part of the ‘People’s Republic of Macedonia’ to dissociate the Slav Macedonians of Macedonia from any ties whatsoever, be they historical, cultural, or other with Bulgaria, in order to endow their newly created republic with historical foundations.¹¹⁹ They arrived at the number of 230,000 by subtracting from the pre-Balkan War figures of J. Ivanoff—who estimated that 325,000 ‘Bulgarians’ lived in Greek Macedonia—the number of 87,000 Slav Macedonians, who, according to the statistics published by the Yugoslav historian V. Rumenov in 1941, left the region between 1912 and 1930, and a further 15,000 who emigrated to the New World during the same period.¹²⁰ The choice of the language criterion as the determining factor of ‘consciousness’ of Slav Macedonians in Greek Macedonia has its roots equally in Bulgaria’s political aspirations between the creation of the autocephalous church in 1870 and 1945 and in those of the ‘People’s Republic of Macedonia’ from 1944 onwards. Both the Bulgars and the Yugoslavs identified language with ethnic differentiation and national sentiment. Language, of course, is linked to both ethnic and national identity, but it can hardly be regarded as the sole determining factor. Thus, during the inter-war period, the Bulgarian criterion was discredited by other Balkan countries as too arbitrary and absolute. This Bulgarian approach did not reflect the real situation in the Balkans, where ¹¹⁹ E. Kofos, I Makedonia stin Yugoslaviki Istoriographia (Macedonia in Yugoslav Historiography) (Thessaloniki, 1974), 10–11. ¹²⁰ Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and the Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington, DC, 1914), 194–5, wherein the official Bulgarian view as put forward by Ivanoff; J. Ivanoff, La Question Macédonienne, au point de vue historique, ethnographique et statistique (Paris, 1920), table on p. 187; for the view of the Yugoslav historians see Kofos, and I. D. Michailidis, ‘I Makedonia tou 1930 mesa apo tis statistikes: I periptosi ton Slavophonon’ (Macedonia of 1930 through the Statistics: The Case of the Slav Macedonians), Praktika 15ou Panelliniou Istorikou Synedrious, Proceedings of the 15th Panhellenic Historical Congress (Thessaloniki,1995), 407–21.

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there were, for example, Greek-speaking Muslims in the regions of Grevena and Kozani, and Slav-speaking Muslims in the regions of Karatzova and the Rhodope mountains who identified themselves as Turks. A further example is the mass migration to Kilkis, Greece, of the Slav-speaking but Greek in sentiment inhabitants of the Strumnitsa district following its annexation to Bulgaria after the Balkan Wars. The Greek attitude was that the true criterion of nationality was ‘national sentiment’. In the case of Macedonia, ‘national sentiment’ was manifested in the form of ecclesiastical allegiance. All who acknowledged allegiance to the Bulgarian Exarch and frequented Bulgarian churches and schools after the schism between the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1872 were regarded as ‘Bulgarians’. Those, on the other hand, who continued to acknowledge the Ecumenical Patriarch and frequented Greek schools were regarded as ‘Greeks’. This approach was also officially adopted by the Turkish state, which registered their Christian subjects as either ‘Bulgar millet’ or ‘Rum millet’ accordingly, and all Muslims as Turks, whatever their racial origin and mother tongue might be.¹²¹ The Serbs were also opposed to identifying the Slav Macedonians of Macedonia, whether racially or linguistically, with the Bulgarians, rather than as descendants of the Serbs who invaded Macedonia in the Byzantine period long before the Bulgarian semi-nomadic tribes penetrated the Balkan peninsula and mixed with the local population. Any Bulgarian sympathies they attributed to the methods followed by the Bulgarian Macedonian Committees between 1872 and 1913. The Bulgarian attitude was supported only by Romania, which readily adapted it to suit its claims that the Koutso-Vlachs of Macedonia were Romanians on the grounds that they spoke a Latin dialect resembling their own.¹²² Despite the inherent complexities involved, it is nevertheless worthwhile to examine the hitherto unpublished statistics compiled by the Greek authorities during the inter-war period. They provide a new perspective which perhaps is closer to reality. Before making reference to the figures, it is necessary to make clear that these statistics are not the result of a per capita census count but were rather acquired by the local and military authorities, whose estimations were based on the number of ¹²¹ At the turn of century, as a result of Romanian national activity among the Vlach-speakers in Macedonia, a relatively small number of Vlach communities converted to the Romanian national ideology. The Ottoman government, in a bid to curb the Greek influence and nationalist activity among the Vlachs, granted official recognition to those Vlachs as a separate ‘millet’ in 1905:Kofos, ‘Macedonia: National Heritage’, 114–15. ¹²² LNA, C 123, ‘Note on the ethnographical map attached to the RSC publication (Geneva 1926)’, A.A.P[allis], 7 Nov. 1927.

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(registered) families. Consequently, they can only present a ‘picture close to reality’, as the above authorities themselves stated in expressing their own reservations. Another feature that these statistics have in common is the categorization of the Slav-speakers of Greek Macedonia into two groups in accordance with the ‘sentiments and attitude’ which they held during the Macedonian Struggle: ‘former Exarchists’ or ‘Schismatics’ and ‘former Patriarchists’ or ‘Grecomani’. This distinction is explicit in the statistics. However, in prefectural and military reports, apart from those Slav Macedonians who had openly expressed either Greek or proBulgarian affiliations, the majority fell into a third category. This consisted mainly of illiterate peasantfolk—whose primary interest was the ‘quality’ rather the ‘identity’ of their rulers. The authorities saw them as being of ‘fickle or fluid consciousness’ (refstis i hydarous syneidiseos) and consequently regarded them as more prone to assimilation, were the agrarian question to be resolved and their social conditions improved. These distinctions reflect the official outlook and can in no way indicate how the Slav Macedonians felt in themselves. Further differences were determined by regional distribution. Frontier Slavophone villages, particularly in central and eastern Macedonia, tended to be pro-Bulgarian, whereas in western Macedonia the ‘acquiescent’ Slav Macedonians were the majority.¹²³ In 1924, according to figures of the Governorship-General of Thessaloniki and of Thrace, there were 182,484 Slav Macedonians in Macedonia. About 140,000 of these were former Exarchists and represented 11.5 per cent of the total population of Macedonia in that year. Their regional distribution is shown in Table 7.8, which is indicative of the linguistic and ethnic composition of the population in each district, before most Muslims and Slav Macedonians emigrated from the region, and when refugees were constantly being settled. Another source, a confidential statistical account of the Governorship-General of Macedonia, referring to the population of the region as it was in the first quarter of 1925, estimates the Slav Macedonians at 173,954 persons. Of those, 97,836 or 7.1 per cent of the total population were listed as bearing pro-Bulgarian sympathies (former Exarchists) and 76,118 or 5.5 per cent as ‘Patriarchists’, that is, of pro-Greek sympathies. Of the 97,836 ‘Schismatic’ Slav Macedonians, however, 11,238 were expected to emigrate; thus their number would be reduced to 86,398. The remaining 88 per cent of the total population of Macedonia, consisting of indigenous Greek-speakers, Hellenized Vlach-speakers, a few pro-Romanian Vlach-speakers, a few Muslim Albanians, Jews, and the Greek refugees settled in the region, are ¹²³ Koliopoulos, Leilasia fronimaton, 32–4.

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Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

shown in Table 7.9. As is clear from this table, in 1925 the majority of the Slav Macedonians who opted to remain in Greece lived in the districts of Florina and Kastoria in western Macedonia, as well as in Karatzova, Pella, and Giannitsa in central, and Serres in eastern Macedonia. The credibility of the above source is evidenced by a number of other official documents which estimate that the number of all Slav Macedonians, both Exarchists and Patriarchists, was about 160,000 at the end of 1920s and that of these c.75,000 were concentrated in the Eparchies of Florina and Kastoria¹²⁴ (see Tables 7.9–7.11). The Greek census figures of 1928, in making reference to c.82,000 Slav-speakers in Greek Macedonia, obviously took into consideration only the ‘Schismatics’, despite the assertions that these people had, nevertheless, Greek sentiments. The 77,000 of the 1925 statistical account were included in the number of Greeks. Such a conclusion seems to be further supported by the proposals put forward by the Governor General of Macedonia, Kannavos, in 1925. ‘We regard it as proper that among the native Greek element be included the Slavophone former Patriarchists, for throughout the Macedonian Struggle they maintained Greek schools and many of them paid for their Greek sentiment in blood. . . .’¹²⁵ The ultimate change to the demographic profile of Greek Macedonia came with the settlement of the Asia Minor refugees and socio-economic relations were aggravated even more as new conflicts of identity and of interests emerged. The great exodus of Slav-Macedonians from their traditional Slav-speaking enclaves in the late 1940s as political refugees, and in the 1950s and 1960s as emigrants, significantly reduced their numbers.¹²⁶

Vlachs Nomadic herdsmen as they were, the Vlachs were dispersed in clusters of villages throughout northern Greece. The majority did not simply identify with the Greeks but regarded themselves as Greeks. The adoption of ¹²⁴ See AYE/1924/B/59, 10, No. 607, G. Tzormbatzis, Greek representative on the Greco-Bulgarian Commission, to Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sofia, 29 Mar. 1924; AYE/1924/A/5xii,2, No. 668, G. Tzormbatzis to Roussos, Sofia, 22 May 1924; cf. Michailidis, ‘I Makedonia tou 1930 mesa apo tis statistikes’, 13. ¹²⁵ AYE 1925/B/40, 2, No. 983, I. Kannavos, Governor General of Macedonia, 16 Sept. 1925. ¹²⁶ John S. Koliopoulos, ‘The War over Identity and Numbers of Greece’s Slav Macedonians’, in Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis (eds.), Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford, 1997), 39–57.

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the Greek national ideology by the Vlachs was a result of their adherence to the Ecumenical Patriarchate—with its glorious past and undisputed authority for centuries—and common education and sufferings with the Greeks under Ottoman rule. The Vlachs were staunch supporters of the Greek cause in Macedonia, several having fought on the Greek side in the struggle for Macedonia, particularly in areas where the Slav-speaking element was dominant.¹²⁷ Whereas the majority of Vlachs in northern Greece had been Hellenized, a number of them had expressed pro-Romanian sympathies by supporting the maintenance of Romanian schools and churches in their villages when Romanian nationalist activity became intense in Vlach settlements around the turn of the century.¹²⁸ These Romanophile Vlachs, however, were neither encouraged nor compelled to leave the country during the inter-war period.¹²⁹ The main reason for this was the fact that, with the exception of some Vlachs in frontier villages in the district of Sidirocastro (Ano Poroia, Lipos, and Tservitsa), they did not inhabit villages near the borders, as was the case in Slavophone villages—and they were not claimed as co-nationals by any neighbouring state.¹³⁰ This, alongside the fact that the Vlach-speaking population who did identify with Romania was very small, led the Greek government to disregard them as a threat to national interests in Macedonia. In 1924 the Governor General of Thessaloniki commented on the political aspirations of the pro-Romanian Vlachs: ‘The Romanophile Vlachs who were financially supported by Romanian propaganda are harmless; there is, however, a contrast between them and the Hellenized Vlachs for whom we have failed to provide adequate education.’¹³¹ ¹²⁷ For this reason the Vlachs were referred to as Greeks and in most statistics they were included in the number of the indigenous Greek population: ibid.; Kofos, ‘Macedonia: National Heritage’ 114. ¹²⁸ The educational privileges of the Vlachs were established after the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913, when the Greek and Romanian governments exchanged notes regarding the treatment of the Koutso-Vlach and Greek minorities respectively. According to these, they undertook the obligation to allow the minorities in their countries to have their own churches and schools. When the minorities treaties were signed after the War, these notes were cancelled. The Romanian government was fully satisfied with the machinery set up for the protection of the Vlachs in Greece. FO 371/11337, C 3041/102/19, Confidential, C. H. Bateman. ¹²⁹ Only a few who had actively collaborated with Bulgarian bands and were in favour of an independent Macedonia were obliged to leave. ¹³⁰ AYE, 1923/A/5xi; see reports by the Prefect of Serres (22 Nov. 1923) and the Metropolitan of Sidirocastro (21 Nov. 1923) regarding the condition of the Romanophiles in this area. ¹³¹ AYE, 1925/B/40, 2, No. 15087, Governor-General of Thessaloniki to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 28 July 1924.

238

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

The crisis which the traditional form of pastoral economy faced since the settlement of refugees in the northern provinces of Greece directly affected the Vlachs, who were on the whole nomadic or at least semi-nomadic shepherds. In April 1923 Vlach communities from the districts of Kozani and Edessa with pro-Romanian sympathies submitted memoranda to various organizations in Bucharest, to the Romanian Consulate in Constantinople, and several Romanian agents, complaining that life had become very difficult for the Vlachs after the refugees had flooded into Macedonia; their economic and social stability was upset owing to the fact that refugee farmers cultivated former pasture lands. Furthermore, the trade in cheese and wool, which until then was almost exclusively in Vlach hands, was passing in many cases to refugees who had capital and were as active and experienced merchants as the Vlachs.¹³² In view of such developments, it is understandable that the above Romanian organizations were turning to the Romanian government with petitions addressed to it for immigration, provision of pasture lands in Romania, and help in expanding their commercial business.¹³³ The Director of the Gendarmerie in Veroia, Spiliotopoulos, reported that 200 Romanophile Vlachs settled in villages around Veroia had sent Giannakis Papathanassiou, as their representative, to Romania in a bid to persuade the government to grant suitable pasture lands for them to emigrate to and settle permanently in Romania. In Spiliotopoulos’s view other factors which brought about this action included the resentment of the shepherds against the government after the settlement in some villages of refugees from the Caucasus, who cultivated lands previously used by them; the fear that the arrival of thousands of refugees from Asia Minor and eastern Thrace would put their livelihood in even greater peril; the tremendous rise in the cost of living which had created a situation where many of them were unable to secure the basic necessities of life. As many Vlachs lived by commerce and muleteering, they suffered from the current high prices (for example, a horse required 5 okas of barley a day and an oka cost 6–7 drachmas). There was also the bitterness brought ¹³² AYE, 1923/A/5xi, Prefect of Pella to Ministry of Interior. The Vlach communities were: Grammatikovon (Kozani), Kentrovon and Patetsiva (Pella). The prefect reports that these communities were not actually affected by the influx of refugees because of their mountainous character, which discouraged the settlement of refugees. Their economic interests were threatened, however, because many shepherds had bought, at very low prices, the herds and ploughing animals of the departing Muslims. ¹³³ AYE/1923/A/5xi, Confidential No. 4/77, Spiliotopoulos, Director of the Gendarmerie in Veroia, to the Directorship of the Gendarmerie in Thessaloniki, Veroia, 1 May 1923.

The Ethnological Impact

239

about by the Revolutionary Government’s strict measures regarding evasion of military service. Previous governments had been lax in forcing the nomadic Vlachs to fulfil their military service obligations, a fact which rendered up to 90 per cent of their male population liable to punishment for evasion of military service. Finally, there was the utopian propaganda which presented Romania as a land of plenty.¹³⁴ The Greek government took measures to forestall the emigration of the Vlachs and attempted to dispel their resentment and doubts. After a visit of the Minister of Agriculture, G. Sideris, to Macedonia, Mixed Committees were set up in each region. These were composed of refugees, civil servants, and, last but indeed not least, of both Vlach-speaking and Greek-speaking herdsmen who had been equally harmed by the assignment of winter pastures to refugees. The Committees were to examine the particular needs of each party concerned and through concessions to find mutually acceptable solutions.¹³⁵ The Greek government also issued, in September 1923, an order according to which an amnesty was granted to all Vlach shepherds who were army deserters in order to enable them to remain in Greece.¹³⁶ The ultimate aim of these measures was to avert possible Romanian interference. The problem of the disappearing pasture lands and the consequences suffered by graziers continued to worsen, as we shall see in a later chapter. Those Vlachs who had not at that point migrated remained in the hope that they would recover their pastures. There was, however, the possibility of migration if these hopes were unfulfilled. On 21 July 1925, the Romanian Embassy asked the Greek government to grant permission for the emigration of 1,500 Vlach families from Macedonia to Romania.¹³⁷ Migration was approved on condition that the migrants declared to the local authorities that they were willing to surrender their Greek citizenship (ithageneia), did not intend to return, and would pay off all taxes due to the Greek state before departing. With regard to their properties, they were free to take their movable property ¹³⁴ Ibid., Confidential No. 1/120, S. Spiliotopoulos to Ministry of Interior, Veroia 29 May 1923; AYE, 1923/A/5xi, Telegram No. 3349, Lambros to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thessaloniki 13 Apr. 1923; also FO 286/874, ‘Enclosure in Athens’, dispatch No. 35 to Foreign Office, 1923. ¹³⁵ See AYE/1923/A/5/xi, No. 86801, G. Sideris to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, 13 Sept. 1923. ¹³⁶ AYE, 1923/A/5/xi, No. 1654, Telegram from N. Plastiras to Governor-General of Epirus, to Ministries of Interior and of Foreign Affairs, etc., 19 Sept. 1923. ¹³⁷ AYE, 1925/A/24/2, Confidential No. 11866, V. Colokotronis to Dept. A; Political, Athens, 12 Sept. 1925. It was planned to settle these families in New Dobrudja (Romania); AYE/B/37.

240

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

with them but not their herds, which they had to sell, preferably to the Refugee Settlement Commission. They were also obliged to sell off their land to the state and then only if they were able to present titles of ownership.¹³⁸ After 1927, however, both the Greek and the Romanian governments, each for their particular reasons, tried to end the migration movement. Romania was reluctant to accept more migrants because there was no more land available for their settlement and some of those who had migrated earlier had been found to have ‘committed several illegal actions’ and more generally to have disturbed the social order. In order to discourage more Vlachs from migrating to Romania, Popovich, the Romanian Inspector of the Ministry of Agriculture who visited Greece in 1929, advised the Vlachs in the region of Pella to remain in Greece ‘because it was doubtful whether they could find better conditions in Romania’.¹³⁹ Consequently, eighty families of ‘Romanophiles’ in Veroia who had initially expressed their desire to migrate and had sold their herds and land changed their minds and tried to get their properties back.¹⁴⁰ The Greek government, on the other hand, was concerned not to jeopardize the position of the substantial Greek minority in Romania and so possibly aggravate the refugee problem. It therefore sent instructions to local authorities to avoid any kind of pressure on the Vlachs. Nevertheless, during the period under study, around 2,000 Vlach families are estimated to have left the region for Romania, mainly for economic reasons.¹⁴¹ The policies of the two governments towards the Vlach and Greek minorities were, moreover, influenced by the good relations established between Greece and Romania after they signed, on 21 March 1928 in Geneva, an accord of conciliation and arbitration.¹⁴² The number of the Romanophile Vlach-speaking population which remained in Greece was 11,340 individuals in 1925, and constituted 0.82 per cent of the total population of Macedonia (see Table 7.9). ¹³⁸ According to the decree of 29 Jan. 1925 and the relevant resolutions of the Ministry of Agriculture. ¹³⁹ See HAM, GGM, F 71, Police Headquarters in Pella to Governor-General of Macedonia, 20 May 1929. ¹⁴⁰ HAM, GGM, F 71, Police Station in Ematheia, Liodis (Chief of the Station), Veroia, 10 Oct. 1929. ¹⁴¹ HAM, GGM, F 71, Governor General of Macedonia to Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Thessaloniki, 23 Apr. 1929; ibid., petition of 50 Vlach families from GeniMachala, Serres, for emigration to Romania. ¹⁴² AYE, 1928, A/Political, No. 980, Melas to A. Michalakopoulos, Paris, 22 Mar. 1928. See also Divani, Ellada kai meionotites, 95–129.

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241

CONCLUSIONS After the Balkan Wars, Greece started to pursue the creation of a culturally and linguistically homogeneous national state in earnest. With the conclusion of the Treaty of Lausanne and the arrival of the refugees in the northern provinces, the Greek government concentrated its effort towards achieving national homogeneity and assimilation in the context of the liberal model of linguistic uniformity according to which a national language is fundamental to national ideology. Government policies aimed at assimilating the minorities were in line with Western ideals and policy-makers expected all, refugees and natives, to conform to stateimposed linguistic requirements. In their attempt to make northern provinces less open to threats from neighbouring countries, they settled a large number of Greek refugees on the borders of the Greek nation-state. The resettlement of refugees acted as a catalyst for the implementation of the Convention of Neuilly (1919) and the departure of the Slavophones. In many Slavophone villages, however, it took the form of expulsion of the Slavs. The shoring up of border regions through the creation of frontier refugee villages, however, resulted in more secure borders, and protected Greece from the sort of problems that her less homogeneous northern neighbours faced in the 1940s.¹⁴³ During the same period, the state also formed an ideology of national unity to ward off the threat of social instability. Consequently, the ideals of social unity and national harmony were promoted, while measures were taken to prevent subversive social change, and to exclude anything that deviated too radically from the norm. The policy-makers’ primary goal was the cultivation of a uniform Greek identity among the diverse peoples of the new lands, driven by the belief that all citizens of the state should be assimilated members of the nation that the state embodies. Both locals and refugees still tended to identify themselves in regional or ethnic/religious terms, an attitude which was reinforced and kept alive by the real, everyday problem of oral communication. To this end, schools were set up for the illiterate and for the non-Greek speakers, as it was felt that an individual’s language was tantamount to that individual’s national identity. Overall, implementation of the policy of assimilation and homogenization in the new lands was successful. The refugees, the Vlachs and ¹⁴³ Koliopoulos, ‘Identity and Numbers of Greece’s Slav-Macedonians’, 46.

242

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

the Greek-speaking Macedonians as well as a portion of Slav-speaking Macedonians, the Grecomans, who had remained in Macedonia, readily espoused Greek national identity. However, this policy was less successful for a percentage of Slav Macedonians in western Macedonia who were of ‘fluid consciousness’, according to the authorities. One of the major aims of the resettlement of Greek refugees in the region was to facilitate the process of assimilating the Slav Macedonians. It was very soon obvious, however, that there were insurmountable differences between the two groups. Apart from those differences pertaining to the distribution of lands expounded above, the strongest dividing force was the organization of the Slavophone peasant society, which was based on the extended patriarchal family unit known as the zadruga. P. Kalligas, the Prefect of Florina, in his report in 1930, pointed out that in the few cases of marriages between Slav Macedonians and refugee women, the latter failed to influence the language or the attitude of their Slavophone families to any considerable degree.¹⁴⁴ He further warned the government that the refugee women tended to be assimilated to the culture of their husbands because the traditional patriarchal values of the zadruga could not be challenged by brides.¹⁴⁵ As the assimilation policy of Greece was in fact a modernization policy, it could hardly have been expected to be successful among the Slavophone peasants who remained in the remote, underdeveloped and mountainous region of western Macedonia in particular. In such circumstances the Slav Macedonians maintained their ethnic characteristics, which led them to social isolation, depriving them of any opportunity to move into the cities and enter the urban middle class. This social isolation eventually developed into class conflict between them and the other assimilated populations, whether local or refugee. The underdevelopment of the region of western Macedonia, with its natural resources too meagre to support its population, who had always suffered ongoing economic hardship, was a great impediment to the process of assimilation. Resentment and disappointment over the negligence shown on the part of the central government had been festering for years and came to a head when the promised review of land distribution and the removal of the refugees who had been settled in their midst did not take place following the conservative Populist Party’s coming to office after the 1933 elections. Detailed and regular records concerning the ¹⁴⁴ This is not surprising considering the fact that zadruga was a patriarchal family system. ¹⁴⁵ APK, report by P. Kalligas, Prefect of Florina, No. 3394, 26 Feb. 1930.

The Ethnological Impact

243

buying power of Slavophone peasants’ annual earnings are indeed scanty. However, such reports as do exist are indicative of the general situation, even though they refer to particular instances. One such case is the report of the District Governor of Florina, I. Tsaktsiras, which provides comprehensive and detailed information on nine Slavophone villages in the region of Florina.¹⁴⁶ The report states that the average family yearly income in these villages ranged from between 9,000 and 11,000 drachmas in 1936, whereas it was estimated that the average peasant family needed a yearly income of at least about 20,000 drachmas in order to safeguard their subsistence. Tsaktsiras in fact states that 70 per cent of the inhabitants were actually undernourished. Out of frustration, many Slav Macedonians, who had heretofore been supporters of the anti-Venizelist camp—and not the Communist Party—succumbed to propaganda and shifted their loyalties either to neighbouring states or to the communists, particularly after 1940.¹⁴⁷ The suspicion with which they were looked upon by local state officials who were non-natives, spurred on by the fear of dissension as a result of Bulgarian or Serbian propaganda, developed into official state policy under the right-wing dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas. Members of the inter-war liberal governments had been divided on both the aims of assimilation as well as on how to achieve it (see Chapter 3 above). They regarded the process of assimilation through socio-economic reforms as a necessary step towards the realization of their primary concern, which was the modernization of the Greek state. As Mazower puts it: ‘Liberal state-building . . . was unsympathetic to minority aspirations, but it was not entirely exclusionary. Repression was often not so much the ultimate goal as an aspect of the modernization of the state.’¹⁴⁸ In general, they were intolerant of cultural fragmentation and were more eager to have state schools built rather than minority schools. However, that the Slav Macedonians enjoyed relative freedom in retaining their cultural characteristics—including the freedom to speak their own languages—is evident from the remonstrations of the conservative nationalists as published in the contemporary press and elsewhere.¹⁴⁹ ¹⁴⁶ HAM, GDM, F 18–21, report by I. Tsaktsiras, District Governor of Florina, to the Ministers of Agriculture, Interior, the Prime Minister’s office, and the Governor General of Macedonia, 24 Aug. 1936: cf. Koliopoulos, Leilasia fronimaton. ¹⁴⁷ The attribution of Communist sentiments to the majority of the Slav Macedonians has since been found to be grossly exaggerated: see Mavrogordatos, Still Republic, 249–52. ¹⁴⁸ Mazower, The Balkans, 109. ¹⁴⁹ Christina Barda, ‘Opseis tis politikis afomoiosis sti Dytiki Makedonia sto Mesopolemo’ (Aspects of political assimilation in Western Macedonia in the Inter-War), Istorika, 10.18–19 (June–Dec. 1993), 151–170.

244

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

In contrast, under the Metaxas regime, which considered ‘enemies of the national state’ all those who insisted on speaking the Slavic language, ethnic repression was centrally organized and the assimilation policy was forcefully applied. Slav Macedonians experienced discrimination and were treated very harshly. In addition to not being allowed to speak their own language in public, the Slav Macedonians were regarded as communists or ‘latent’ communists at least, since the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) promoted the idea of a united and independent Macedonia and Thrace, which was in line with the aspirations of the locals. In fact, few Slavophone peasants were attracted to communism before the outbreak of the Second World War because the class-orientated vision of the party left peasants, irrespective of religious or ethnic identity, indifferent. Metaxas made full use of the anti-communist legislation passed by Venizelos in 1929 and set up special tribunals which imprisoned, deported, or otherwise persecuted communists, whether real or suspected. Such a repressive policy put an end to any hopes of assimilating the Slav Macedonians who had chosen to remain in their homes, and in fact set the pattern for developments during the foreign occupation, the ensuing civil war, and all its attendant misfortunes.¹⁵⁰ The numbers of Slav Macedonians were significantly reduced following their exodus from their villages in the late 1940s, as political refugees,¹⁵¹ and in the 1950s and 1960s as emigrants into towns and cities where they were gradually assimilated. As Koliopoulos puts it ‘Defeat and fear, no less than subsequent conciliation, finally removed the remaining barriers separating Greek Macedonia’s linguistic communities, while intermarriages continue to obliterate the last traces of a turbulent past.’¹⁵²

¹⁵⁰ For Metaxas’s policy see Philip Carabott, ‘The Politics of Integration and Assimilation vis-à-vis the Slavo-Macedonian Minority of Inter-war Greece: From Parliamentrary Inertia to Metaxist Repression’, in Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis (eds.), Ourselves and Others: The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912 (Oxford, 1997), 59–78; L. M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict (Princeton, 1995), 71–8. For an analytical study of developments in western Macedonia during the Axis Occupation and the Civil War see Koliopoulos, Plundered Loyalties. ¹⁵¹ Aggeliki E. Laiou, ‘Population Movements in the Greek Countryside during the Civil War’ in L. Baerentzen, J. O. Iatrides, and O.L. Smith (eds.), Studies in the History of the Greek Civil War (Copenhagen, 1987), 70–3. ¹⁵² Koliopoulos, ‘Identity and Numbers of Greece’s Slav Macedonians’, 57.

STATISTICAL DATA Table 7.5. Muslims from central and western Macedonia exchanged from the port of Thessaloniki District

1923

1924 Dec.

Jan.

Feb.

Mar.

Apr.

May

June

Kilkis Langadas Kalamaria Gianitsa Thessaloniki Karatzova Veroia Edessa Katerini Serres Sidirokastro Poroia Naoussa Kozani Servia Grevena Anaselitsa Florina Kastoria Kailaria Mayadagh Other

1,664 4,828 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

7,231 3,617 303 62 29 215 6 3 — 9 60 — — 13 — — — 10 — — — —

3,893 7,131 3,091 2,800 398 837 13 63 — 17 8 — — 48 — — — 27 — — — —

166 697 2,513 19 — 988 9 399 — 4 — — — 139 — — — 6 — 2 — —

222 193 9 1,147 671 1,105 394 867 — 2 — — 995 5,822 — — — 97 — 8,013 — —

1,230 5,908 — 13 23 1,889 68 3,489 — — — 1,903 — 4,235 2,322 5,509 — — — 2,776 — —

743 1,055 — 4 — 2,935 2,041 3,975 2,622 — — 4,968 — 3,872 — 340 7,686 3,700 — 2,716 — —

— 55 — 5,215 8 998 — — 36 — — — — 4,287 — — — 3,883 895 10,542 2,861 142

TOTAL

6,492 11,558

18,326

4,942

19,537

29,365 36,697

28,922

July

Aug.

Sept.

Oct.

Nov.

Dec.

1 36 — 375 148 4,337 — 179 — — — — — 5,148 — — 1 6,883 4,311 3,579 — 643

34 45 — 57 146 335 1,594 10 — 5,346 993 — — — — — 9 1,068 7,949 5,100 5 34

— 10 — — 4 5,852 709 27 1 27 412 — — — — — — 13 37 433 — —

— — — — 2,349 — — — — — — — — — — — — 201 — — — —

— — — — 2,151 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

— — — — 516 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

25,641 22,725

7,525

2,550

2,151

516

Source: AYE, 1926/⌫/68/I: ‘Rapport final sur (I’ activité de la Ière Sous-Commission. Liste Générale des Exchangeables Expediés en Turquie.’ Istanbul, 24 October 1925.

245

Nov.

246

Table 7.6. Population of the Greek administrative districts (nomoi) of Greek Macedonia in 1916 Nomoi

Greeks

Muslims

Former Exarchists

Bulgarians

Jews

Others

Total

Kozani Florina Thessaloniki Serres Drama

146,563 71,367 331,192 107,431 96,062

56,032 27,858 123,553 20,335 125,522

2,513 39,764 30,410 17,974 13,281

— — 1,912 — —

— — 62,030 1,500 2,900

— — 7,424 — —

205,108 138,989 556,521 147,240 237,765

TOTAL

752,615

353,300

103,942

1,912

66,430

7,424

1,285,623

58.54%

27.48%

8.08%

0.15%

5.17%

0.58%

100%

Source: AYE/1917/B 55, No 6541, N. Politis to Greek Legation in Paris, Athens, 15 March 1916.

Table 7.7. Population of the cities of Greek Macedonia, 1916 Cities

Greeks

Muslims

Kozani Florina Thessaloniki Serres Drama Kavala Nigrita Kilkis Edessa Naousa Veroia Kastoria

11,029 3,576 86,204a 15,200 13,500 31,769 4,529 3,200 7,069 8,870 7,948 6,315

— 6,227 30,000 4,000 9,800 9,026 — — 3,305 1,141 5,064 1,565

199,209 58.02%

70,128 20.43%

TOTAL

Former Exarchists

Bulgarians

Jews

Others (foreigners)

Total

— 589 — — — — — — 803 — — —

— — 1,800 — — — — 72 — — — —

— — 61,400 1,500 600 2,300 — — — — 630 —

— — 4,300 — — — — — — — — —

11,029 10,392 183,704 20,700 23,900 43,095 4,529 3,272 11,177 10,011 13,642 7,880

1,392 0.40%

1,872 0.55%

66,430 19.35%

4,300 1.25%

343,331 100%

a

The number of Greeks in Thessaloniki is 68,204 according to documents dated 15 March 1916. Sources: AYE/1917/B 55, No. N. Politis to Greek Legation in Paris, Athens) 12 March 1916 and ibid. No. 6541, N. Politis to Greek Legation in Paris, Athens, 15 March 1916.

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248

Table 7.8. Ethnological composition of the population of Macedonia, 1924 District

1. Anaselitsa 2. Chalkidiki 3. Drama 4. Elefthe/lis 5. Florina 6. Gianitsa 7. Goumenitsa 8. Grevena 9. Kailaria 10. Karatzova 11. Kastoria 12. Katerini 13. Kavala 14. Kilkis

Greeks

30,103 46,049 14,008 7,500 51,212 — — 41,500 3,798 1,415 22,768 28,496 14,500 500

Muslims

7,408 1,996 31 — 15,095 6,500 3,760 4,680 30,169 21,135 14,448 3,050 — 10,015

Slavophones, former Patriarchists

Slavophones, former Exarchists

Vlachophones, pro-Romanians

Jews

Refugees

1,408

—

—

—

4,905 — 9,027 — — — 4,578 — 7,519 150 — —

929 — 48,443 13,366 16,155 — 3,008 9,710 22,079 — — 2,255

382 — 359 — 1,600 400 885 300 220 — — —

1,026 — 433 — — — — — 1,211 — 2,500 —

787 1,670 70,722 11,827 3,839 3,049 1,846 318 10,891 8,057 95 3,473 32,303 19,475

Total

39,706 49,715a 92,003 19,327 128,408 22,915 23,361 46,898 53,329 40,617 68,340 35,169 49,303 32,245

15. Kozani 16. Langadas 17. Nestos 18. Pella 19. Thasos 20. Thessaloniki 21. Veroia 22. Zyrnovo

32,872 18,664 1,000 — 14,930 96,410 37,000 417

22,510 18,455 4 5,332 — 26,466 5,764 —

Subtotal (Slavophones) TOTAL

463,142 37.49%

196,818 15.93%

— 5,000 — 3,000 — 4,000 1,927 2,736

— — — 15,886

33,173

138,234

6,403 182,484d 14.77%

— — — — — 278 3,427 106

— 435 — — — 70,000 376 —

6,500 13,342 14,172 5,000 1,364 88,985b 5,761 5,684

61,882 55,896 15,176 29,218 16,294 286,139c 54,255 15,346

7,957 0.64%

75,981 6.15%

309,160 25.02%

1,235,542 100%

a

In this district there were 1,399 non-Greek monks (Bulgarian, Serbs, Russians and Romanians). 57,821 refugees were settled in the city of Thessaloniki. In this district there were 3,946 foreigners, of which 1,775 Serbs. d All Slav Macedonians. Source: AYE/1925/B/40,2, No. 15087, Governorship-General of Thessaloniki, 28 July 1924; ibid, ‘Table indicating the ethnological composition of eastern Macedonia’, Governorship-General of Thrace, Komotini, 10 October 1924. b c

249

250

Table 7.9. Ethnological composition of the population of Macedonia, 1925 Districts, Sub-governorships

1. Anaselitsa 2. Chalkidiki 3. Drama 4. Florina 5. Pella 6. Gianitsa 7. Goumenitsa 8. Grevena 9. Kailaria 10. Karatzova 11. Kastoria 12. Katerini 13. Kavala

Greeks (natives)

27,947 31,552 14,000 1,882 200 — 12,560 32,031 8,598 — 17,737 24,396 14,500

VlachMuslims, speakers, Albanians pro-Greek — 60 — 3,176 500 — 3,514 9,645 11 1,183 2,195 5,808 —

3 — 30 27 4 — — — 2 — 213 57 —

Slavspeakers former, Patriarchists — — 5,207 11,293 6,109 1,854 3,543 — 4,494 5,059 7,339 30 —

Slavspeakers, former Exarchists — — 780 34,234 8,739 14,884 5,139 — 3,443 4,614 14,807 — —

Slavspeakers to emigrate — — 44 10 21 7,147 1,936 — 6 443 10 — —

Vlachspeakers, proRomanian — — 380 414 840 — 404 1,510 920 348 135 15 —

Jews

— — 1,030 349 — — — — 3 — 525 36 2,500

Greek refugees

3,918 6,741 70,730 7,449 10,726 25,589 10,478 5,837 25,668 20,659 5,962 9,106 32,350

Foreign subjects

— — — 5 5 4 — — 3 – 29 2 —

14. Kilkis 15. Kozani 16. Langadas 17. Arnaia 18. Nigrita 19. Serres 20. Sidirokastro 21. Thessaloniki 22. Veroia 23. Zichni 24. Zyrnovo

6 30,710 9,810 12,800 17,367 26,295 5,927 137,546 32,941 21,488 420

124 — — — — 1,158 1,747 788 4,502 161 —

— — — — — — — 1,500 — — —

368 — 11,485 — 617 4,124 4,307 6,916 1,109 1,865 399

231 — — — — 2,376 4,253 1,661 735 606 1,334

30 — — — — — 290 3 16 — 1,282

17 — — — — — 319 200 5,733 — 105

— — 65 — — 400 — 60,001 428 — —

34,870 16,554 22,024 4,500 8,034 25,022 17,156 209,659 15,660 12,902 5,700

12 — 3 — — — 198 — — —

TOTAL

480,713 35%

34,572 2.5%

1,836 0.13%

76,118 5.53%

97,836 7.11%

11,238 —

11,340 0.82%

65,337 4.75%

607,294 44.15%

249 0.02%

Source: AYE, 1925/B/40, 2: ‘Synoptiki Statistiki tou plithysmou tis Genikis Dioikiseos Makedonias (Archas 1925)’ (Concise Statistic of the Population of the Governorship-General of Macedonia (early 1925)). Comments: All numbers were estimated approximately on the basis of the number of families; ibid, ‘Synoptiki Statistiki plithismou Dytikis Thrakis kai Anatolikis Makedonias 1925’ (Concise Statistic of the Population of western Thrace and eastern Macedonia, 1925).

251

252

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact Table 7.10. Population of the region Florina/Kastoria, 1925

Slav-speakers Exarchists Patriarchists Vlachs pro-Greek pro-Romanian Greeks Native Refugees TOTAL a

Florina

Kastoria

Total

64,500a

47,500a

112,000a

28,673 12,628

22,000 7,500

50,673 20,128

3,176 416

3,176 416

1,862 8,230

10,500 7,500

12,362 15,730

54,985

47,500

102,485

Populations estimated by the Prefect of Florina.

Source: HAM, GGM.F 90 Report by the Prefect of Florina 13 January 1925.

Table 7.11. Population of the region Florina/Kastoria, 1930 Language Slav-speakers Greek-Speakers (natives ⫹ refugees) Turkish-speakers (refugees) Vlachs Albanians TOTAL

Greek sentiment

76,370

14,420

38,844 3,508 4,500 2,500

38,854 3,508 3,000 1,800

125,722

58,882

Source: Archive of P. Kalligas, Report by P. Kalligas No. 3394, 26 January 1930.

8 Geographical Distribution of the Refugees What was the geographical distribution of the refugees within Greece, and in particular in Macedonia, after their settlement? To what degree were the refugees successful in reconstituting their communities in their new lands? Were communities dispersed over great distances or did groups from the one place of origin manage to resettle in areas within a radius of only a few kilometres? The reconstitution of the uprooted communities on Greek soil was considered implicit by the authorities for successful and permanent re-establishment in rural areas. The strong cohesion and solidarity which was developed among the members of the Greek rural communities in the Ottoman Empire was a factor that could facilitate to a great degree their adaptation into their new country and eliminate the danger of friction during the process of their resettlement. The above reflected the widespread attitude of the Ministry of Agriculture, the RSC, and other official bodies such as the ‘Association for the Social and Political Sciences on the Refugee Question’. A. Bakalbassis pointed out the political and economic significance of the reconstitution of the refugee communities on Greek soil: Their moral and economic bonds are so powerful, and their sense of solidarity is inherent to such a degree that, were the members of each community to find each other again and were they to have the good fortune to be established in a physical environment similar to that of their lost homeland (patrida) then not only would the expenditure to the state be greatly reduced, their productivity would be astounding as well. It would be impossible to achieve any worthwhile resettlement if communities fail to be reunited.¹ ¹ A. Bakalbassis, To prosfygikon zitima (The Refugee Question) (Athens, 1923), 28, 32, cited by M. Kouroupou and E. Balta, ‘Piges gia tin istoria ton antallaximon tis Kappadokias’ (Sources Concerning the History of the Exchange Refugees from Cappadocia), DKMS 9 (1992), 26.

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However, reuniting uprooted refugee communities was by no means a simple matter. Because of the magnitude of the refugee problem and because of the necessity to settle the maximum number of refugees in the minimum amount of time, the RSC soon realized that it was necessary to distribute them in order ‘to meet the requirements of settlement’.² As has already been mentioned, refugees had to be divided into groups of at least ten persons in order for them to receive temporary lots. The idea behind this approach was to ensure that in the new villages every individual would have at least a small circle of compatriots, rather than being strangers among strangers. Most communities from the Asia Minor coast and the Pontus region had already been dispersed during their exodus and different groups arrived in Greece at different times and places. Furthermore, conditions in Greece were such that even communities which arrived en masse (those from eastern Thrace and the exchangees/ ␣␯␶␣␭␭f␰␫␮␱␫) were rarely successful in resettling in one new settlement in their entirety.³ In order to help the agricultural refugees to be reunited, the RSC did not base its work only on the instructions of the central bureaucratic organization, but asked for the active co-operation of the refugees themselves. This greatly facilitated the process, as the refugees took a personal interest, as individuals and as groups, in the final determination of the place of destination.⁴ The factors which usually determined the degree to which a community succeeded or not in being reunited were the following. First, the circumstances and conditions under which the refugees arrived in Greece. For those who migrated en masse, as is the case with most Thracians and exchange/refugees (antallaximoi), it was easier to remain together, because theirs was not a hasty exodus, and they were able to bring their movable property with them (livestock and other items). In at least one case, that of Ganos-Chora, they carried to their new home in the form of gold and silver bars the smelted consecrated vessels and other treasures of their community. These were used for the purchase of land and building materials for the construction of the new community’s houses in Ganochora in the Ekaterini area.⁵ Secondly, some communities had rich compatriots who had already established themselves in Athens and Thessaloniki prior to 1922. They provided invaluable services through contacts in political and bureaucratic circles and even contributed sums of money. Most ² LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 25. ³ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 107–8. ⁴ Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees, 141. ⁵ GAK, Codix Praktikon tis Koinotitos Ganou-Choras, 1913–1922 (Minute book of the community of Ganos-Chora, 1913–1922), iv. 228.

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255

characteristic of the latter situation is the case of a benefactor from Karvali in Cappadocia who provided the land on which his compatriots (500 families) were resettled in the district of Kavala, in the location of Tsinar Tserpanti, which was renamed Nea Karvali.⁶ Many communities were unable to reassemble themselves even partially and scattered to different cities and villages on arriving in Greece. The communities which were unable to gather together even a small group of the families of which they had consisted in the places they were resettled were those which had suffered massacres and persecution before they had even left their homelands; their social fabric had been destroyed before they got to Greece. We know this from the refugees’ own accounts, which were recorded by the Centre for Asia Minor Studies. One example, out of numerous cases, is that of Christos Telikostoglou, from Pek-alan in the Sampsous area, who recounted: ‘There are two families from the village of Kemal in the Ladik district living in Laodikino, Thessaloniki. And there are four more in Nea Sinopi, Preveza. The rest scattered. But then, the Turks slaughtered sixteen of the forty families in the village in a single night.’⁷ Eddy remarks that during the first two years refugee groups were distributed throughout Macedonia in a haphazard way. This distribution was determined by several quite patent factors, of which the geographical was the controlling one. The capacity of the country in the absorption of refugees was limited by its physical features. Masses of population could support themselves only in or adjoining the large plains of the three Macedonian subdivisions . . . In 1922 there were no large areas vacant for the Moslems had not emigrated to any considerable extent. The Bulgarians as well departed after 1923. During this first period refugees were sent to the devastated areas such as that of Kilkis . . . After 1924 the organisation of the Commission became intensive in character . . . and was everywhere strengthened; knowledge of the country in all its parts, of its natural resources and of its capacity for absorption of the new population became precise . . . Consolidation of the new village units upon the holdings allotted to them proceeded rapidly, and was accompanied by many movements within the population itself, as the scattered inhabitants of the old villages in Asia Minor tended again to unite, and venturesome spirits, dissatisfied with their original holdings, sought new homes.⁸ ⁶ A detailed account of the history of the settlement of Nea Karvali in E. Karatza, Kappadokia: o teleftaios ellinismos. Akserai-Gelveri (Cappadocia: The Last Hellenism. Akserai-Gelveri) (Athens, 1985), 316–37; LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 25. ⁷ AKMS, SE, F.42, Christos Telikostoglou, refugee from Pek-Alan, Sampsous, settled in Nea Sinopi, Preveza, 21 Oct. 1962, interviewer Christos Samouilidis. ⁸ Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees, 139–41.

256

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

In a considerable number of cases a substantial number of exchanged families from the same community managed to settle in the same village. Eddy ascribes this phenomenon to the ‘racial characteristics’ of the refugees and adds: ‘There were obscure and imponderable forces at work—an instinct among the refugees themselves which led them to seek out appropriate places for settlement, a tendency to group themselves according to the village arrangements of their old homes.’⁹ The seemingly spontaneous institutions of leadership and group cohesion were strong among the refugees and helped them considerably in organizing their settlements after their establishment. They transferred the structure and the organization of their former community to their new home, and named their villages after it (Nea Krithia, Nea Madytos, Nea Moudania, Nea Pergamos are a few examples of this widespread practice.) The RSC remarks on that are eloquent: ‘Each village, as soon as it takes shape, returns to its tradition and constitutes as it were a tiny little republic . . . The affairs of the community are dealt with in front of the church, in the market place or in the café, on Sundays on coming out of Mass.’¹⁰ The building up by the refugees of their saint’s church in their new villages took first priority, a fact which is a manifestation of their religiousness, but also rather more an indication of their will to revive the structure of communal life which in their original homes was organized around the church, whose role was not merely symbolic. The elders of the original community, teachers, and priests were elected leaders by the refugees on their arrival and played an important role for the rural re-establishment of their compatriots in Greece.¹¹ Choice of a place for resettlement by a refugee group was determined by different criteria. There were groups of Thracians and Asia Minor refugees who had been in Macedonia following their persecutions in 1913–14 and knew where there were fertile lands and sanitary topographical conditions and, therefore, tried to establish themselves there. Others were informed that a particular region was fertile and chose that for their resettlement. A refugee recounts: Turkish refugees had told me at Sebinkarahissar, when we were living for Greece: ‘Papaz effendi, go to Kailaria. It’s good country there.’ So I went straight from Thessaloniki to Kailaria (Ptolemaida). From there I came here. Pelargos was a village of Turks before the Exchange. It was called Mouralar. We hit upon a good place. There’s no malaria. It’s just that we don’t have any water, even though a river ⁹ Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees, 140. ¹¹ Dritsa, ‘Eeterochthones koinotites, 423.

¹⁰ LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 28.

Geographical Distribution of Refugees

257

flows outside our village; we get water from wells. The inhabitants of our village are from the following places: thirty families from the Caucasus; sixty Turkishspeaking families from Bafra; ten families from Trebizond. There are also a few families from Ak-Dag Maden and from Ebes.¹²

The success or failure of resettlement depended to a great extent on how much scope the refugees had to choose a location with similar geophysical characteristics to the town or village they had left behind. Settling in such a place not only made it easier for the refugees to adapt and fed a need to be nostalgic about their ‘lost homeland’, it also allowed the refugees to keep the same trade and the same habits they had had prior to being uprooted. The townsfolk from Apolloniada were fortunate in this respect; and settled down successfully in their new homeland: The people of Apolloniada arrived in Greece and scattered all round the country. A sizeable chunk of them settled in Kastoria. There was a lake there, and that attracted them . . . Quite a few of them stayed on in the refugee settlement in Toumba in Thessaloniki and other areas nearby, and a number of them now live in Sidirokastro and in Xanthi. Lastly, a largish part of the population of our town settled in the area around Serres, especially in Tsoumlek Dere, where we met up with them. But the majority are definitely in Kastoria, where they do pretty much what they did back home. They have boats and fish on the lake there; they really do feel that the lake in Kastoria is their lake, and that none of them has moved at all. All the rest are just minor things of no importance.¹³

Although refugees from urban centres were placed in a number of rural settlements in Macedonia during the resettlement period, in most cases their stay in the countryside was a short one. Completely unused to heavy agricultural labour, they made ineffectual farmers and were unable to accustom themselves to the slow rhythms of village life. The great majority abandoned the land they had been given at the first opportunity and moved into the cities. In many cases this urban resettlement took place en masse (a number of families together), which allowed their original community to partially re-assemble. The example of the refugees from Malakopi demonstrates this process well. Malakopi (Ano Toumba) now stretches both above and below the main road . . . Most of its inhabitants live below the road . . . This is the only place where ¹² Papatheodoros Hatzikyriakidis, ‘The Settling of Refugees at Pelargos, Ptolemaida’, researcher Ermolaos Andreadis, 9 May 1955, in G. A. Yiannakopoulos, Refugee Greece (Athens, 1992), 153. ¹³ AKMS, SE, F.42, Georgios Kontratzis, refugee settled in Apolloniada, Kastoria, summer 1953, interviewer Eleni Glykatzi.

258

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

a significant number of people from Malakopi settled down together . . . the other refugees from the town are scattered here and there. And the ones that live here had initially been settled up in Ompar, near Giannitsa. But they quickly realized the place wasn’t right for them, because the place needed farmers and they were city folk. And now they live in Thessaloniki. Some of them have grocer’s shops, and others peddle stuff around the city or work as drivers . . . what I mean is that they’re all doing city jobs.¹⁴

In order to illustrate what appears to be the more characteristic case, it is worth citing one example, that of nine villages, the Pisticochoria, which administratively belonged to Michalitsi, near Proussa, and ecclesiastically to the See of Nikomideia and Apollonia. The Pisticochoria consisted of the following nine communities: (1) Vourlatoi (Bastar-kioi) with 200 families, (2) Voulgaratoi or Chorouda (Karatsova) with 60 families, (3) Constantinatoi (Tsatal-Agil) with 80 families, (4) Aginatoi (Ekichtse) with 120 families, (5) Kamariotatoi or Kamartatoi or Aghia Kyriaki with 140 families, (6) Kideia or Kiteiani (Karakoutza) with 220 families, (7) Apilladatoi or Pladatoi (Sou-Mpasi) with 160 families, (8) Primikiratoi or Primikir with 70 families, and (9) Syrianatoi or Syrianoi with 75 families. On arriving in Greece, one of the above communities, Apilladatoi, was re-established at Loutros, in the district of Evros, close to the mineral springs of Ferres. The rest of the communities were re-settled in Macedonia. The refugees from five villages in the Pisticochoria managed to keep together and were established in the plain of Serres. Various groups from the village of Chorouda were established in the three neighbouring villages of Skoutari, Vamvakousa, and Peponia, while the Constantinatoi settled in Neo Constantinato. Almost half of the families of Kamariotatoi (about 120) resettled in Neo Kamaroto in the eparchy of Sintiki (Sidirokastro). Of the rest, the majority resettled in the village of Aghia Kyriaki in northern Kilkis. The remaining few families went to the eparchy of Nestos and resettled in the neighbouring villages of Xerias and Perni on the plain of Nestos.¹⁵ In most settlements in Macedonia, however, there were established refugee groups originating from almost all four major geographical regions, namely Asia Minor, the Pontus, eastern Thrace, and the ¹⁴ AKMS, SE, F.42, Avraam Karfopoulos, refugee from Malakopi, settled in Malakopi at Ano Toumba, Thessaloniki, interviewer Dimitrios Loukopoulos. ¹⁵ D. Kalpakidis, Ta ennia Pistikochoria tis Mikras Asias (The Nine Villages of Pisticochoria in Asia Minor) (Thessaloniki, 1987), 18, 20, 103–11.

Geographical Distribution of Refugees

259

Caucasus. Each individual group was concentrated in distinct quarters within the same village. In mixed villages, the natives mainly resided in the area which used to be the old part of the village. As to the question regarding the dispersal of refugees coming from a wider administrative area in the Ottoman Empire, up till now there has been no detailed account. The sources available hitherto and the statistics from the 1923 and 1928 censuses provide the overall number of the four major categories of refugees and the number of the refugee population of each new settlement for the whole of Greece. They do not, however, specify the place of origin of the various groups making up the new communities. The only exceptions are the treatise of Maravelakis and Vakalopoulos, Oi Prosfygikes Egkatastaseis Stin Periochi Thessalonikis (Refugee Settlements in the Region of Thessaloniki). This work is a valuable account of the resettlement of refugees and provides extensive information on the socio-economic condition of the original homelands of the refugee groups. The authors, who were both directly involved in the resettlement programme, apart from the official sources which they had at their disposal, also rely to a great degree on oral testimonies. Similar works have also been published concerning the resettlement of Pontic communities in Serres and Kozani.¹⁶ To answer the question raised at the beginning of this section, we will rely on a hitherto unpublished source, the Archive of the General Directorship for the Exchange of the Ministry of Agriculture, which provides information concerning the resettlement in Greece, during the period 1925–6, of each community from the Ecclesiastic eparchies of Asia Minor, eastern Thrace, and the Caucasus (Kars). The decree of 4/9 July 1924 as amended by the decrees of 4/10 October 1924, 13/22 December 1924 and 15/20 January 1925 ‘on the formation of Committees and the function of the bureaux for the exchange of populations’ appointed Regional Committees whose task it was to gather and investigate declarations made by the refugees as to the extent and value of properties which they had been forced to abandon in order that the amount for their indemnification could be estimated.¹⁷ Apart from the ¹⁶ Isaak N. Lavrentidis, ‘I en Elladi egkatastasis ton ek Pontou Ellinon, A Nomos Serron’ (The Resettlement of Greeks from the Pontus in Greece, A, Prefecture of Serres), Archeion Pontou, 29 (1968), 341–81 and P. C. Tsakiridis, ‘I en Elladi egkatastasis ton ek Pontou Ellinon, B Nomos Kozanis’ (The Resettlement of Greeks from the Pontus in Greece, B Prefecture of Kozani), Archeion Pontou, 32, (1973–4). 337–47. The authors of these papers do not cite sources and evidently rely mostly on oral testimony. ¹⁷ A. B. Protonotarios, To Prosfygikon Problima apo Istorikis, Nomikis, Kratikis apopseos, 106–7.

260

Social, Political, Ethnological Impact

ministerial member, these Regional Committees were drawn from the political and church leaders and the elders of each community in the Ottoman Empire or the Caucasus. The files compiled by each regional committee concerning the individual declarations of refugees from each community number in the thousands and are not classified, hence not readily available for research. There also exists, however, a Collective Register, the ‘Book of Ecclessiastic Eparchies and Committee Centres [in Greece]’ which includes: community of origin, place of resettlement in Greece, and the number of declarations for indemnification made by the head of each refugee family. Despite its limitations and drawbacks, this source will prove invaluable in attempting to provide answers to the questions posed above. Furthermore, it provides detailed information about, if not all, then a great number of the communities uprooted from Asia Minor, and names them. As with all statistics from this period, there are a number of omissions and irregularities in the findings and the manner of their presentation, which presumably is as efficient as the secretary/ies who transferred them to the Collective Register. In several instances, where a number of small neighbouring communities (in their original place) are concerned, our source provides an aggregate figure for these communities. In such cases the entries in the tables are given under the name of the first community written in the source without its necessarily being the most populous or otherwise most important community of the group. The names of the other communities in such group presentations are given at the bottom of the table. A random check on a number of such aggregate entries was made by cross-referencing the total figure presented in the source with the sum-total of the communities concerned provided in the individual books of each Regional Committee. The figures were in agreement for all ten such cases checked.¹⁸ Of the forty-three ecclesiastical eparchies that the source provides information on, the greatest omission is that for the eparch, of Kars. No information at all is provided concerning the number of refugee families who submitted declarations for indemnification. This particular eparchy, however, has not been omitted from the tables presented in this book, as the information it provides still tells us where the original twenty-nine communities from Kars were resettled in Greece. Similarly the number of declarations is omitted for the occasional village (community) of other ¹⁸ Eparchy of Adrianople (Baba-Eski), Amaseia (Tourentzik), Vryoulla (Demirtzeli), Iconion (Permata), Krini (Geni-Liman, Ergi-Liman, Lythri), Kyzikos (Balouceser, Panormo), Efessos (Giol-Tepe).

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eparchies. The percentage of these villages is very low compared to the total number of the original communities. A number of omissions are also to be noticed in the column headed ‘Place of resettlement’, where, although in the majority of the cases the name of the new settlement is cited, in some cases we have the name of the prefecture only. A characteristic case is that of the eparchy of Amaseia, where the name of the prefecture of resettlement only is cited. This presents an obvious difficulty in pinpointing the exact place of resettlement, but provides sufficient indication that communities from the same ecclesiastical eparchy of origin settled, in the majority, in one general region in Greece. Finally, there are some instances of new settlements in Greece which bear the name of the original communities in Asia Minor and in our source the refugees from these villages are shown as having been settled in Athens or other urban centres (for example, refugees from Fokaia are today established in Chalkidiki, in Nea Fokaia, and in a suburb of Athens. In the source they appeared as having all been settled in Athens). This type of irregularity is obviously due to the fact that the communities concerned moved to their present locations after 1926. Of the 148,000 refugee families, however, about 140,000 had been settled by the end of that year. Consequently, such cases mentioned above do not account for more than a small percentage of the total. A high percentage (75 to 95 per cent) of refugees coming from the diocese is of Ankyra, Adrianopolis, Ainos Amaseia, Anefn, Vizyi, Vryoulla, Ganos and Chora, Dardanellia Didymoteicho, Efessos, Ilioupolis and Theira, Kaisareia, Kallipolis and Madytos, Krini, Kydonies and Moschonisia, Kyzikos, Myriofyto and Peristasis, Neokaisareia and Kotyora, Pergamos and Adramyttion, Pisidia, Proussa, Saranta Ekklissies, Smyrna, Tarsos and Adana, Trapezounta, Tiroloi and Serentzion, Philadelpheia, and Chalkidon was resettled in Greece in three provinces. Refugees from the dioceses of Derkfn, Irakleia and Raidestos, Ikonio, Kolonia, Metron, Nikaias, Nokomideias, Proikonnison, Rodopoleos, Slyivrias, Chaldeias and Kerasountos, and Theodosioupoleos, seem to have been dispersed throughout many more provinces. In almost every province refugees from the same place of origin made up less than 10 per cent of the total refugee population within that province, the exceptions being: Amaseia, Myriophyto and Peristasis, Nikomideia, Rodopolis, Trapezounta, Ikonio, Kallipolis and Madytos, Nikaia, Saranta Ekklssies, Chaldeia and Kerasounta, and Metra.¹⁹ ¹⁹ See Appendix I and Appendix II in my thesis where analytical tables are provided for each ecclesiastical eparchy in the place of origin and in settlements in Greece.

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PART IV DEVELOPMENTS IN THE INFRASTRUCTURE

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9 Infrastructure Development Rural refugee resettlement and its success were not limited to allocation of a plot and at best a house to each refugee family, but it was related to the general improvement of conditions in the countryside of Macedonia. This goal made necessary a number of infrastructural works which included the organization of health services in the countryside, which were almost totally lacking, as well as the execution of irrigation and drainage works in marshlands, the construction of roads, etc. On the initiative of the RSC such a programme was undertaken and realized, but its fulfilment and continuation required the involvement of the state.

HEALTH SERVICES The needs in the field of health and hygiene, which accrued over the period 1912–22 as a result of the Balkan and First World Wars, compelled the Greek government to organize medical services, particularly in the northern regions. The military medical services and camps, both local and foreign, not only cared for the direct victims of the wars and the great concentrations of foreign troops, but also provided medical care to the successive waves of refugees who arrived in Macedonia in the wake of the hostilities. The first successful endeavours were made in the war-zone itself. The Health Bureau of Macedonia was organized in 1912, and the Inter-Allied Macedonian Council in 1915 on the initiative of the chief medical officers of the allied troops and with the express purpose of meeting the needs of public health in the region. By legislation regarding the administration of New Lands (Law 582), the Bureau of Public Health was founded in Thessaloniki in 1915 with the primary aim of checking the spread of epidemics in the region of Macedonia.¹ ¹ E. Tsitsopoulou and G. Pentogalos, ‘I Ygeionomiki perithalpsi tou protou kymatos prosfygon sti Macedonia 1912–1922’ (Medical Relief for the first wave of refugees in

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In the following year, the American Red Cross mission established dispensaries in Kavala, Drama, Eleftheroupolis, and Rodoleivos in eastern Macedonia for the medical treatment of refugees. In 1917 the Thessaloniki Provisional Government also founded the Ministry of Relief for the provision of medical services to refugees but, on the initiative of Venizelos himself, its services were extended to the local population as well. Several hospitals and dispensaries were also established in parts of Central Macedonia, but the services they provided proved to be inadequate, not only owing to the financial difficulties which they encountered, but also because they were of little use against malaria, which was rife in those districts.² Malaria, in fact, was the greatest health problem throughout Macedonia and Thrace. The Strymon and the Axios with their tributaries in the eastern and central part of Macedonia and the Aliakmon to the west were, paradoxically, both a curse and a blessing, as it was these rivers which rendered Macedonia so fertile, but they were also the natural breeding-grounds of the mosquitoes. Permanent marshes surrounded the lakes of Aghios Vasileios, Mavrovon, Lantsa, and in particular Lake Yannitsa, which was the most extensive marshland in the valley of the Axios, as well as Lake Tachinos in the Serres valley. Many areas were prone to seasonal flooding because of climatic and topographical conditions, not only in low-lying areas around the lakes and rivers, but even in highland regions.³ The marshes along the Axios formed a broad arch to the north-west of Thessaloniki and, consequently, affected the health of urban dwellers as well, particularly after 1917, as it was the north-west part of the city which suffered most in the great fire of that year. In a memorandum to the Governorship of Thessaloniki, the Association of Doctors of Macedonia remarked that: the morbific reaches of the Axios stretching around the city will always present a problem to the health of Thessaloniki and its environs unless the necessary works are executed and they are transformed into arable lands. Local conditions explain the endemic nature of the disease [malaria] all year round and in particular during summer and autumn. The extent to which this disease undermines the constitution Macedonia 1912–1922), Proceedings of the IA’ Panhellenic Historical Congress (May 1990) (Thessaloniki, 1991), 159–79; C. D. Zilidis, ‘I anoikti perithalpsi stin Elliniki Ypaithro: 1922–1983’ (Medical Relief in the Greek Countryside 1922–1983), doctoral dissertation, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1988, 95–6. ² Zilidis, ‘Anoikti Perithalpsi’, 96–8. ³ ‘Carte du Paludisme en Macédoine’, annexed to the Quatorzième Rapport Trimestriel de l’ office autonome pour l’ établissement des réfugiés, C 281. M. 104.1927. II [F 404], Geneva, 7 June 1927, 10–11.

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of those who reside in the area and renders them incapable of working is evident from their pallid countenance and cachexia.⁴

With the arrival of the refugees, the organization of a health care programme was of the utmost urgency. The initiative was taken by foreign philanthropic organizations. Colonel E. H. Jarvis, Chairman of the Anglo-American Relief Committee which was formed and operated in Salonica, reported: The ordinary public hospitals of the town are full. In the camps impromptu hospitals have been founded on very modest lines, which cannot deal with even a small fraction of the sickness. Nurses and doctors are few, and drugs (quinine is very important) and all hospital equipment are short, and the government cannot supply nor can any be bought on a large scale locally. Practically all the refugees are crawling with vermin, having no clothes to change into. There is no water for washing and hardly enough for drinking. There is no soap. There are no disinfectants, with the exception of some lime. The very rudiments of sanitation as understood in Western Europe or America do not exist.⁵

Reports of local doctors in rural areas to the RSC put the morbidity rate among refugees at double that of the indigenous population. The mortality rate of children rose with the seasonal proliferation of malariacarrying mosquitoes, and the general shortage of wholesome food and fresh milk, and, in some villages, no new births were recorded for over a year. Apart from malnutrition and insanitary living conditions, the majority of refugees (with the exception of those who came from the Caucasus, Georgia, the region of Amissos in Pontus, and the region of Aidin in Asia Minor) were from places where malaria was unknown and therefore they had little resistance to the disease. They were infected as soon as they arrived in Macedonia and Thrace, as had happened with the Greek and Allied armies in 1916–17. Every effort was made to transfer the refugees from the quarantine camps and cities as quickly as possible to their places of settlement and to supply them with food and tents until adequate housing could be provided, albeit ‘their state of health unfortunately remained that which it had been during the previous year and the scale of morbidity and mortality due to malaria and ailments of the peptic system has also remained virtually unchanged’.⁶ ⁴ I. S. Papadakis, Ai ploutoparagogikai dynameis tis Makedonias (The Natural Resources of Macedonia) (Thessaloniki, 1920), 42–4. ⁵ APLD, F 11.3, 105, Draft of letter by Colonel E. H. Jarvis. ⁶ K. Savvas and I. Kardamatis, I elonosia en Elladi kai ta pepragmena tou Syllogou, 1914–1928 (Malaria in Greece and the Work of the Society, 1914–1928) (Athens, 1928), 92–5.

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According to a survey by the ‘Society for the Anti-Malaria Campaign’, the average rate of morbidity and mortality among the refugee population in Macedonia between 1921 and 1925 was the following: Morbidity: Thessaloniki 40–85%, Kailaria 35–95%, Kilkis 30–95%, Sochos 35–100%, Goumenitsa 30–90%, Katerini 40–90%, Nigrita 40–100%, Serres 30–100%, Kavala 35–95%, Veroia 30–100%, Naoussa 20–90%, Florina 15–75%. Mortality: Thessaloniki 0.50–6.14 %, Nigrita 0.50–7%, Kavala 0.01–1%.⁷ Because of a shortage of money, the existing public health services concentrated their efforts on the control of the situation in urban centres, where the danger of contagion reaching epidemic proportions was the highest. The high morbidity among the refugee population caused contemporary writers to express their concern for the native population, whose health, they observed, was also deteriorating and who, with the spread of disease, were on the verge of ‘frenzied social panic’.⁸ The Greek government had recourse to requesting assistance from the League of Nations and in response two members of the League’s ‘Epidemic Committee’ were sent to Greece. One undertook to organize the inoculation of the refugee population while the other acted in the capacity of technical consultant to the government on matters concerning health and sanitation in the refugee settlements. Within a few months, over half a million refugees had been inoculated. Thereafter missions of specialists and information on preventive measures against epidemic diseases were exchanged between Greece and foreign centres. These exchanges were the first of many which eventually led to the formulation of a comprehensive scheme which formed the basis of the Health Service of the RSC in northern Greece and was instrumental in instigating measures which gradually led to the institutionalization of a health scheme.⁹ According to RSC reports, in 1924 malaria seems to have been the main cause of death among the refugees in rural areas. In their first years of settlement they were more vulnerable to malaria as they were generally undernourished, and lived in unsanitary conditions, mainly in squalid, improvised huts and army tents. Furthermore, the majority of the refugee population were women, children, and old folk and they were all exhausted by the hardships they had suffered. As the funds for a permanent solution to the problem—namely large-scale drainage schemes—were ⁷ K. Savvas and I. Kardamatis, I elonosia en Elladi kai ta pepragmena tou Syllogou, 1914–1928, 92–5. ⁸ Liakos, Ergasia kai Politiki, 322. ⁹ Ibid. 322–3.

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not readily available, it was decided at least to alleviate the situation by making an estimated 20 to 30 tons of quinine readily available to refugees in the most affected areas. Twelve tons provided by the American Red Cross in 1924 were distributed through the sanitary service of the Ministry of Hygiene, and in the following year another 5 tons were procured in response to an appeal organized by the RSC.¹⁰ In addition to being a major cause of death, malaria also greatly reduced the able workforce. During the ‘fever season’ the average number of land-workers incapacitated by the disease was over 50 per cent and in some villages reached a staggering 100 per cent. In effect, malaria was the determining factor in the entire agricultural settlement operation in western Thrace and Macedonia. The RSC was convinced that, as soon as funds were made available, it was essential to formulate a comprehensive scheme to combat this problem, which not only threatened the lives of the refugees but also brought productivity to a standstill.¹¹ In November 1924 the RSC gave more serious consideration to the health questions and approached the League of Nations with an offer to undertake the task of providing a permanent solution to the problem. The Chairman of the RSC wrote to Geneva: ‘such action would be in perfect accord with the recent revision of the Geneva Protocol, by which the RSC is entitled to dispose of its funds on a wider basis’. In the mean time they sought the government’s support in a bid to improve living conditions among the refugees and by so doing increase their productive capacity.¹² In January 1925 the Chairman of the RSC outlined to Dr Norman White, the Chief of the Health Section of the League of Nations in Geneva, the scheme on which the RSC was inclined to proceed and asked for the latter’s assistance. In general the proposed scheme would follow the dispensary system which had already been established in India, with the difference that there would be no in-patients and the doctors would undertake only minor surgical work. Thirty dispensaries were considered adequate to initiate the scheme in this first proposal. As was the norm with all goods and services provided under the resettlement plan by the RSC, each refugee family would pay a certain amount annually for medical services in order to cover expenditure. The RSC was, however, against ¹⁰ LN, C.767.M.269, Fourth Quarterly Report on the operations of the RSC, Athens, 25 Nov. 1924, 4–5; LN, C.112.M.53, Fifth Quarterly Report on the Operations of the Refugees Settlement Commission, Athens, 25 Feb. 1925, 8. ¹¹ LN, C.274.M.87, Report on the Operations of the RSC for the Second Three Months, Athens, 25 May 1924, p. 3. ¹² LN, C.767.M.269, Fourth Quarterly Report on the operations of the RSC, Athens 25 Nov. 1924, 4–5.

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the Greek government’s sharing control of the scheme, experience having taught them that without an undivided control such a system was unlikely ‘to work well in practice’.¹³ The RSC was further bound by the Protocol of Geneva to staff the dispensaries with Greek personnel.¹⁴ The League of Nations accepted the scheme and under its auspices the RSC, together with the Greek government and certain philanthropic organizations which had already been operating among the refugee settlements in northern Greece for some time, formulated their plans for the improvement of sanitary conditions and for the provision of medical assistance to refugees. The scheme was to be extended throughout Greece with the establishment of about 250 dispensaries in all, the majority of which, however, were to be in Macedonia and Thrace. Each dispensary was to be staffed by a circuit doctor who would provide his services to all villages within a fixed radius and at regular intervals, and a partly trained doctor to dispense medicines and provide emergency medical attention at the dispensary in the absence of the fully qualified doctor. In return for the medical attention provided, the refugees were to pay a nominal fee while medicines were to be supplied at cost price. Besides the provision of care and medicines, the refugees were also to be educated in the rudiments of preventive medicine and hygiene.¹⁵ The scheme sought to incorporate the existing facilities which were being run by philanthropic societies, the most important of which was the ‘Refugee Village Co-operative Association’ headed by Dr Bertholf and operating in central Macedonia. This association had in 1923 already established dispensaries in five villages in the region of Thessaloniki, namely Sedes, Mazarades, Langadikia, Rission, and Nea Kallipoli. These dispensaries also provided medical care to the neighbouring villages of Tsinganades and Adali. By 1925 the number of dispensaries had increased to eleven, staffed with five doctors, and four partly trained doctors, two trained nurses, and two pharmacists which catered for a total of fifty villages. The Ministry of Agriculture had provided building materials to the ¹³ LNA, C 129, Prot. No. 2016, Letter to Dr Norman White C.I.E., Health Section of the League of Nations, 10 Jan. 1925. ¹⁴ There were additional obstacles to the employment of a foreign expert by the RSC. The Chairman of the Commission reported to Norman White: ‘I doubt whether the sums which we shall be in a position to expend would justify the appointment of a highly trained medical man . . . The language difficulty—which does not exist for us in India—is very important practical obstacle here . . . The importance of this can hardly be exaggerated where real administrative work is in question.’ Ibid. ¹⁵ LN, C.112.M.53, Fifth Quarterly Report on the operations of the Refugees Settlement Commission, 25 Feb. 1925, 8; LNA, C 123, ‘Note on the origin of the Medical Department of the Refugee Settlement Commission at Thessaloniki’, unsigned, 20 Mar. 1930.

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value of £224 sterling towards their construction while the association itself expended £1,060 for staff equipment and medicine. The Association operated along the lines of the ‘condotta system’,¹⁶, and its membership consisted of 1,300 families (from fifty villages) each of which paid an annual fee of 60 drachmas in return for which they were provided with medical attention at half cost as well as a 25 per cent discount on medicines.¹⁷ The resolution for the organization of the scheme, adopted by the RSC on 13 March 1925 decided on the construction of fifty dispensaries in Macedonia. The Commission proposes to increase this number to 200 when the sanitary organization proposed has been tried. The GDCM (General Directorate for the Colonization of Macedonia) is authorised to repay to the organisation of Mr Bertholf the cost paid by him of the existing dispensaries up to £720, on condition that these dispensaries are constructed on land belonging to the Commission.

In recognition of services hitherto provided by Dr Bertholf, it was also proposed that he be appointed by the General Directorate of Colonization as Inspector-General of Dispensaries in Macedonia for six months, effective as of 1 April 1925. Bertholf, however, refused the appointment and Dr Metallinos was appointed in his stead.¹⁸ In his first report to the Commission on the general state of health and hygiene in Macedonia he pointed out that for the period 1923–4 the death rate among the refugees was double the birth rate and that in certain regions of Chalkidiki, Yannitsa, Kilkis, Ekaterini, and Serres one-fifth of the refugee population had died principally of malaria and associated illnesses. Dr Metallinos proposed certain amendments to the initial scheme including the creation of a headquarters for Macedonia consisting of a Sanitary Inspector-General with a qualified assistant and a secretary, one pharmacist, and one assistant dispenser at the central depot, four controllers of stores with two secretaries, as well as three sanitary inspectors each with his secretary; fifty doctors in charge of agricultural dispensaries assisted by fifty pharmacists also attached to these dispensaries.¹⁹ ¹⁶ The condotta system, according to which the inhabitants of two or more neighbouring villages paid an annual fee to a doctor who in return was obliged to provide his medical services to the villagers. This system has its roots in the Tourkokratia and it was widespread among the Greeks in Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor as well as in the Ionian Islands: see Zilidis, ‘Anoikti Perithalpsi,’ 125. ¹⁷ Ibid. ¹⁸ Ibid.; also LNA, C 132, No. 147, Minutes of the Meeting of the members of the RSC, 18 Mar. 1925. ¹⁹ LNA, C 124, ‘Note on the origin of the Medical Department of the Refugee Settlement Commission at Thessaloniki’, unsigned, 20 Mar. 1930.

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The RSC readily accepted this proposal and, in the summer of 1925, fifty-three dispensaries, housed either in Bertholf ’s existing buildings or in tents, commenced their operation in those regions where the presence of both refugees and malaria were highest.²⁰ The cost of setting up the dispensaries and of paying doctors’ and chemists’ salaries was debited to each refugee equally. One of the dispensaries’ first duties was the distribution of quinine at a minimal price fixed by the RSC—and even free to families without means to pay for it—in a bid to popularize its use. The RSC bought 10 tons of quinine and other medicines necessary for inaugurating its scheme. The takings from the sale of medicine were to provide the capital for the purchase of the following year’s supplies.²¹ Inadequate financial resources once again hindered the progress of the scheme. In 1926 the number of dispensaries had increased only to fiftynine, but the urgency of extending their work forced the Commission to the half-measure of transferring dispensaries from areas which had shown some improvement to others which were in greater need.²² Teams of army engineers assisted by executing minor sanitary works in some rural settlements. The refugees themselves also supplied personal labour and wherever possible what little money they could afford for the draining of small marshes. The drainage of individual fields by their cultivation also led to the disappearance of small marshes which had developed in fields lying fallow for many years. Lacking the prospect of full ownership of the lands they toiled at, the refugees in some areas, however, were reluctant to go to such expense and effort.²³ Various experiments were carried out in Chalkidiki, where local marshes were sprayed with Schweinfurth-green, which was relatively inexpensive and proved effective in checking the proliferation of malariabearing mosquitoes by destroying the larvae. Frost-resistant, moistureloving eucalyptus trees with anti-miasmatic properties were also cultivated in nurseries there, and in the Moudania district, where the health of a ²⁰ These 53 dispensaries functioned in the following regions: Kozani (4), Florina (1), Edessa (1), Verria (2), Ekaterini (2), Yannitsa (4), Boemitsa (3), Kilkis (5), Thessaloniki (3), Langadas (2), Chalkidiki (5), Sidirokastro (5), Serres (5), Drama (6), Kavala (5). The construction of the buildings of the dispensaries was completed in 1927, and of these 43 were new buildings, and the balance old buildings which had been renovated and adapted for the work. Ibid. ²¹ LN, C.294.M.106, Sixth Quarterly Report on the work of the RFC, 5 June 1925, 6. ²² LN, C.214.M.79, Twenty-Second Quarterly Report on the RSC, 27 May 1929, 11. ²³ LN, C.110.M.51, Ninth Quarterly Report on the work of the RSC, Athens 25 Feb. 1926, 5; see GAK, AYG, TYYG, F411: claims by the refugees from Nea Peramos and Eleftherai (Kavala) for the distribution of lands in order to cultivate their fields intensively and so eliminate the morbidity due to malaria.

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large number of refugees who had been settled there was at high risk, a small marsh was drained. A further measure taken by the RSC in December 1928 was to establish a microbiological and parasitological laboratory in connection with the Salonica Health Service. It was intended that this laboratory should prepare vaccines, sera, etc. in collaboration with the Pasteur Institute at Athens and undertake a bacteriological survey throughout Macedonia.²⁴ The relative improvement in the health of the refugees by 1927 was due rather to the fact that the majority of them were by then adequately housed and producing their own fresh food and had regular supplies of quinine. Many communities had also been provided with abundant supplies of drinkable water. However, malaria and tuberculosis were still rife. The report of the Commission in April 1928 observed: Tuberculosis is gaining ground owing to the patients, in the absence of sanatoria, being nursed at home and so spreading the germs to their relatives. Apart from tuberculosis the health of the refugees treated in 1927 shows an improvement in comparison with the year 1926. The number of individuals requiring medical assistance in our dispensaries has decreased by 5,000. The mortality from disease, including infectious diseases, is lower. In this same area where our dispensaries are situated and where malaria is acute, 10,000 fewer cases have been reported. Finally the number of deaths from malaria recorded in 1927 was 409, as against 569 in 1926. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the proportion of malaria sufferers is still enormous—at any rate, in the worst regions. In January last, a month when this endemic disease is on the wane, the number of refugee school children in the area covered by our dispensaries suffering from chronic malaria was 414 per thousand, notwithstanding all the preventive measures employed.²⁵

The number of the villagers under the surveillance of the RSC’s dispensaries from 1926 to 1929 is shown in Table 9.1. The epidemic of dengue fever which broke out in 1928 prompted the Greek government to give serious consideration to its health policy. In response to a proposal by A. Doxiadis, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Health, in August of the same year, the League of Nations sent a Health ²⁴ LN, C.406. M.128, Nineteenth Quarterly Report of the RSC, Athens, 22 Aug. 1928, 16–17. ²⁵ Ibid. See also LN, C.214.M.79, Twenty-Second Quarterly Report on the operations of the RSC, 27 May 1929, 11–12: ‘During 1928 our medical service discovered 68,508 cases of malaria, of which 345 proved fatal, as compared with 56,251 with 409 deaths in 1927. There has been a slight increase in the number of malaria cases and a marked fall in the death-rate. The rise in the number of cases was caused by the large swarms of anopheles, due to the heavy rains in spring and autumn’.

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Refugees

Natives

1926 1927 1928 1929

173,446 168,474 154,226 148,300

25,000 25,000 43,248 41,700

Source: C. B. Eddy, Greece and Greek Refugees.

Committee to Greece in January 1929. Its mission was to evaluate the existing state of health hygiene in the country and to propose whatever plans for improvements they deemed necessary and to organize a comprehensive health services scheme. The research was carried out in towns and villages throughout Greece and investigated all factors related to health and well-being including studies of local economic conditions, existing hospitals and dispensaries, water supply, sewerage and sewage systems, topographical and climatic conditions, and demographic trends.²⁶ The findings of the mission, but more importantly the proposals as to the health policy that the government should adopt concerning health, hygiene and social security in general, as well as the impact it had on the development of a new mentality regarding health matters, which resulted in the institutionalization by the Venizelos government of a system of social insurance, have been thoroughly examined by A. Liakos in his illuminating exposition of the above issue. Suffice it to say that their proposals were decisive for the realization on the part of the government that the reclamation works which were already but feebly under way were not only fundamental to the agrarian sector and the economy but an essential prerequisite for the very survival of the refugee settlements on which the former depended.²⁷ In 1930, after its liquidation, the RSC transferred all its dispensaries (see Table 9.2) to the Ministry of Hygiene.²⁸ At that time it was expected that the Ministry would establish more dispensaries and expand the system to more prefectures of the country. Although such plans had been ²⁶ Liakos, Ergasia kai Politiki, 326–7. ²⁷ Ibid. 326–35. ²⁸ LNA, C 124, Note on Liquidation, Sir John Hope Simpson, 1 Nov. 1929. The Minister of Hygiene, Pappas, signed in Geneva a Convention binding the Greek government to execute the scheme prepared by the Committee of Specialists who had made the survey of hygienic conditions in Greece during spring 1928. This scheme included the transfer of hospitals and dispensaries run by the RSC to the Ministry of Hygiene.

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Infrastructure Development Table 9.2. Dispensaries in rural settlements in Macedonia, April 1929 THESSALONIKI

KAVALLA

KILKIS

Topsin Tekeli Ano Kolovot Bougarievon Agios Pavlos Nea Kallikrateia

Nea Karvali Ogantzilar Neo Peramos Zogou Egri-Basza Mesiremma

Karabounar Kato Theodoraki Chersovon Armoutsi Seventekil Ereseli

CHALKIDIKI

KATERINI

YIANNITSA

Nea Moudania Balaban Provlakos Chalkidi, AWHa

Neo Eleftherochori Peristasis Aigineion Kitros

Lozanovan (Palaifyton) Asar-Bey Koufalia Gialantzik

SERRES

DRAMA

KOZANI

Orliakon Boutkovon Vetrina Eziovi Nea Kamila Neos Skopos Porna Sdravikion Stathmos Aggistis Chomondos

Minare Chiftlik Paranestion (Boukion) Ossenitsa Borovon Belotintsa

Kryftsion Sofoular Toritsa Nea Irakleion SIDIROKASTRO

BOEMITSA

Vyroneia

Amatovon Askilar Sari-Pazar

FLORINA

VERRIA

EDESSA

LAGADAS

Yiannitsa Meliki Platy

Apsalon Fousiani Evropos

Souflar Stayros

Ano Kleinai

a AWH ⫽ American Women’s Hospital. Source: LNA, J. H. Simpson: Agricultural A.I. (a), General File 2, 12 April–31 December 1929. Classification according to Colonization Bureaux.

extensively deliberated by the Ministry they were finally shelved after having been undermined particularly by private doctors. The work of the dispensaries in Macedonia was in fact paralysed a few months after the liquidation of the RSC, by action of the Ministry of Hygiene which recalled the doctors of the dispensaries to Athens, despite the fact that tuberculosis, flu, and meningitis were prevalent in the rural refugee settlements. As N. Zarifis, a journalist who appealed to the Prime Minister to take up the matter, remarked ‘The villagers are either obliged to trust only to the mercy of Providence or else travel to Salonica, at great expense and loss of valuable time that puts the patients’ lives at greater

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risk. The functioning of the Chalkidiki hospital has stopped—almost entirely—for lack of funds, a hospital for whose operations the foreign doctors recently expressed their high appreciation.’²⁹ Nevertheless, neglect due to lack of system and resoluteness on the part of the state continued. After only six years the number of dispensaries in Macedonia had shrunk to just thirty-three, and owing to a lack of qualified doctors, shortage of medicines, etc., services provided gradually became inadequate to cover even rudimentary problems. To conclude: the health service established in the northern provinces by the RSC was the first comprehensive scheme for the provision of medical care in rural districts and was the first successful attempt, despite its limitations, at the improvement of public health in the Greek countryside. Neglect of the system on the part of the Ministry had as a consequence the protraction of health problems among the peasantry. In 1937, commenting on the lack of organization in the field of hygiene in rural areas, Dr Metallinos stated that, even though there were few statistics available, the existing figures were sufficient to give a clear picture of the deplorable state of affairs. Consumption of alcohol was extremely high among the peasant population and, contrary to common belief, surveys had shown that tuberculosis was more widespread in rural than in urban areas. One official survey of the health of about 12,000 peasants from thirteen villages in the Langadas area showed an increase in the rate of deaths due to malaria as compared to the rate of births for the years 1932–5 (see Table 9.3). On average, there were twice as many deaths as there were births. In the countryside they store animal dung and excrement at small distances from reservoirs and springs, which causes the pollution of the water they drink. Furthermore, figures on the terms of hygiene and preventive measures as well as those on medical care in countryside, where malaria, tuberculosis, and venereal diseases, etc. thrive, are discouraging . . . State intervention was discontinued and so the allocated monies were squandered without bringing about relative results.

Between 1930 and 1935, the average death rate in the country remained very high (17.8 per thousand) and Greece occupied the third worst position among twenty European countries.³⁰ ²⁹ See newspaper Eleftheron Vima, 3 Feb. 1930: The Succession of the Colonization Service. The First Sad Symptoms, in RSC Press Bulletin, 4 Feb. 1930. ³⁰ Valaoras, V. G., To Dimographikon problima, 285.

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Infrastructure Development Table 9.3. Deaths from malaria and births in Langadas, 1933–1935 Years

Births

Deaths from malaria

1932 1933 1934 1935

712 636 502 595 2,445

1,130 1,074 1,247 1,310 4,761

TOTAL

Source: M. Metallinos, ‘I symboli ton Synaiterismon eis tin ygeionomikin organosin tis Ypaithrou’, Synetairistikai Omiliai, PASEGES (The Contribution of Co-operatives to the Hygiene Organization of the Countryside, in Co-operative Speeches), issue 2, (Athens, 1937), 43–58.

Hospitals were to be found only in towns and were incapable of meeting the needs of villagers who required hospitalization. N. Gavrielidou provides a revealing description of conditions in Kilkis: Behind the municipal garden there was a large two-storey building which was run by nuns and which was the only hospital in Kilkis. There they would bring down the ill in carts. You would see these people frying in the sun during the summer, exhausted, hungry, and in the winter huddled under their blankets in the rain and exposed to the northwind anxiously waiting their turn . . . The means at the hospital’s disposal were minimal and medical care was insufficient for all. Thus mortality was at that time very high.³¹

RECL AMATION WORKS The annexation of Macedonia prompted Greece to seek the immediate exploitation of her natural resources and the general development of the agrarian sector. It was imperative, however, that such undertakings be preceded by large-scale drainage and reclamation projects which, because of the ensuing wars and shortage of capital, had to be deferred indefinitely. The arrival of the first refugees and the growing health problem with its detrimental effects on productivity were soon to bring the urgency of such projects to the fore again. The need for the state to undertake, through enactment of special laws, an extensive project for the drainage of swamps and marshlands ³¹ N. Gavrielidou, O pateras mou Kostas Gabriilidis (My Father, Costas Gavrielidis) (Athens, 1988), 23.

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had been expressed prior to the establishment of the RSC. Such a programme was considered essential as it would at once increase the size of arable lands by thousands of stremmata, and equally significant was the fact that it would eliminate the major breeding-ground of diseases which seasonally crippled the workforce, bringing productivity to a low ebb. For so comprehensive a scheme to succeed, a simple reorganization of existing health services was not sufficient. Radical measures needed to be taken which would advance sanitary conditions and safeguard public health. The range of measures proposed in the decade before the exchange of populations covered a broad spectrum of infrastructural works and placed particular emphasis on the interrelation between economic development and public health. Concerning this matter, I. S. Papadakis, Manager of the Agricultural Bank of Macedonia and Epirus, in his treatise ‘The Natural Resources of Macedonia’ wrote in 1920: Were these measures to be applied, we believe that they can fight and significantly curb the spread of malaria, a disease which undermines so many robust organisms and renders impotent so many working hands, deprives so many families of their bread and the motherland of powerful arms and of millions in productive labour . . . This evil must be fought systematically in as much as rural development and the prosperity of a nation in general is directly related to the health of its population and, consequently, to the curbing and elimination of the pernicious effects of malaria. No serious thought can be given to intensive cultivation if the danger of malaria is not warded off altogether and if the unremitting attention of both rulers and ruled is not turned against this evil . . . As a doctor of the Eastern [Allied] Forces has written in a relevant study ‘malaria has completed the task of drawn-out wars, ravaging, and Turkish despotism, and has been one of the major obstacles to the renaissance of Macedonia.’³²

Malaria seriously affected the number of births as well as the physical and mental condition of the inhabitants and limited their work output. Contemporaries writing about the inhabitants of malaria-stricken regions were shocked by the realization of the extent of the effects of malaria in Greece. Their descriptions present a picture of enfeebled persons obviously affected by the disease from birth: ‘Yellow-grey visages supported on sickly torsos with huge, bloated bellies and scrawny limbs . . . incurable dejection combined with imbecility and indifference . . . [for whom] social and political matters are meaningless.’³³ ³² Papadakis, Ploutoparagogikai dynameis, 47–51. ³³ Observations by the physicians Montfalcon and Melier, cited ibid. 52; cf. Liakos, Ergasia kai Politiki, 317.

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Preliminary engineering ‘surveys’ had been carried out during the 1910s, among which were those of the French in the case of the Vardar valley and of Sir John Jackson in that of the Strymon. Serious studies and observations which provided the groundwork for the drainage of the marshlands had also been made in the decade prior to the establishment of refugees in Macedonia by specially organized teams during the First World War.³⁴ Even before the Convention on the exchange of populations and when negotiations were in process, in a letter to N. Politis, Foreign Secretary of Greece, concerning irrigation and settlement in Macedonia, Corfe suggested that drainage of the Strymon and Axios valleys would provide considerable land for resettlement as well as profitable employment. Drainage of the marshlands involved a series of major engineering problems, as canals and levees had to be constructed for the purpose and rivers needed to be diverted to avoid the silting-up of Thermaikos Bay. He emphasized that such projects were in keeping with Nansen’s policy (during the negotiations on the exchange). As supervising engineer, he proposed the Englishman Bailey, not only for his accumulated experience from similar projects in Egypt and his success with the Kopais project, but also because ‘he has made a special study of the malaria question which is one of the greatest difficulties in the resettlement question’. He also adds, ‘I would suggest that in the Struma and Vardar valleys many settlements of this kind [Kopais] could be organised, especially if Sir John Jackson’s scheme for the draining of the Struma valley is carried out.’³⁵ Following the influx of refugees, draft legislation regulating the administration of large-scale drainage and irrigation works in northern Greece was debated in the Greek Parliament. A. Mylonas pointed out that the state lacked both the technical and financial means to carry out these projects, and suggested introducing a system used in other Mediterranean countries whereby the land to be drained was handed over to a large foreign company which was granted the right to make use of the reclaimed land once drainage work was completed for a set period of time in exchange for the funds they invested in the drainage project. The MP went on to cite the example of the drainage of Lake Kopais. ³⁴ Preliminary engineering surveys had been carried out prior to the influx of refugees, among which were those of Frenchmen De Maurice Lanyi, Dr Ernest Eber, and Antoine Gelley in the case of the Axios valley as early as 1913 and of the British Sir John Jackson in that of the Strymon between 1918 and 1920: see AAD, No. 86, Rapport sur la Grèce, Oct. 1913 (sent to A. Diomidis) and AYE, 1922/A/5(13), A. C. Corfe to Politis, Athens, 21 Oct. 1922. ³⁵ AYE, 1922/A/5(13), A.C. Corfe to Politis, Athens, 21 Oct. 1922.

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The Prime Minister, A. Papanastassiou, wanted to press ahead with the project and side-step landowners’ objections. He stressed the supreme importance of the projects from both a public health and an economic point of view, and added that the government ‘considered it inadvisable to waste any time before implementing public works of such significance’, proposing that the various projects be put out to tender immediately, and that the land should be expropriated without any discussion, for the time being, of how landowners were to be compensated. In the Prime Minister’s opinion, this was the only way that the obstacles preventing companies interested in taking up the government’s offer from doing so could be removed. This was of the utmost importance, given the circumstances, ‘so as not to waste any time, and to give the refugees the impression that the Government was now definitely and fully committed to carrying out these major construction projects, at whatever cost’.³⁶ As Greece lacked the technical background for such engineering feats, much ferment quickly developed between the Greek government and foreign engineering firms over the proposed projects. Moreover, foreign loans had to be secured and, consequently, negotiations over the contract became a long drawn out process pitiful of political, diplomatic and commercial intrigues, British and American interests being the major competitors. Although Britain had a history of both political and economic involvement in the area, the USA made a dynamic appearance on the scene after the First World War, spearheaded mainly by private business concerns.³⁷ American involvement in Greek politics was, in effect, non-existent. Greek–American relations were money-orientated and American politicians abstained from direct involvement in Greek political affairs, preferring to apply their Dollar Diplomacy to sway the conclusion of contracts for public works in favour of American financial and industrial interests rather than British. Another point in favour of the Americans was the fact that the policy of the Greek government stipulated that contractors were obliged to provide, if not the total, at least 50 per cent of the capital required for any public works project undertaken. In the summer of 1925 a contract was signed between the Greek government and the ‘Foundation Company of New York’ for the reclamation of the flood plain of the Axios—including the diversion of the river-mouth beyond the harbour of Salonica—the drainage of the Yannitsa swamp ³⁶ ESV, Fourth Constituent Assembly of Greeks, Session 70, 1 July 1924, 570–4. These views were supported by D. Marselos and Vellianitis, MPs. ³⁷ Cassimatis, American Influence, 167–72.

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and of the Amatovo and Ardzan lakes, the construction of levees along the Gallicos river, as well as some minor irrigation works. It was expected that this undertaking would provide about 325,000 acres of arable land and that malaria would be wholly eliminated from the Axios valley.³⁸ Pangalos, who came into power through a coup d’état just days after the signing of the contract, shelved the ratification of the agreement for his one year in office.³⁹ His government was plagued with opportunist politicians eager to make an easy profit by allowing themselves to be bribed by the contracting company. Fearful of likely British protests, however, the US government urged the American contractors to avoid resorting to bribery. Although they had lost the contract itself, the British were in effect to finance the project through the same British banks which had provided the 1924 RSC loan. This continuing British–American competition also added to the deferment of the project. The works commenced with the fall of the Pangalos regime, but the succession of unstable, ephemeral governments which followed could not secure the Allied consent which was a prerequisite for floating a loan of such dimensions. The British exploited this situation in their bid to maintain a foothold in Greek development projects, thus adding to the delay of the works.⁴⁰ The issuing of the loan was eventually finalized in 1928 with the return to power of Venizelos who, with his landslide victory, easily formed a stable government.⁴¹ As the development and modernization of the agrarian sector were fundamental to his economic policy, Venizelos gave the reclamation projects in northern Greece top priority, as he had promised in his electoral campaign. As mentioned in a previous chapter, the Protocol stipulated the Greek government’s obligation to provide the RSC with 5 million stremmata of arable land for distribution among the refugees. By 1928, 4,195,000 stremmata had been provided but much of this could not be ³⁸ The Greek government ratified the contract on 6 Oct. 1925: see Government Gazette, A, No. 295, 8 Oct. 1925: ‘Contract for the execution of works in the Thessaloniki plain between the Greek Government and the Foundation Company of New York’, for the scope, the general obligations of the contract, guarantees, provision of funds for the works, etc.; Cassimatis, American Influence, 178; also USNA, State Department files: 868.oo B: 868.48/942, ‘Political and Economic Effect of Refugees in Greek Macedonia’ by Moose, Thessaloniki, 23 Dec. 1929, 51–2. ³⁹ The dictator Pangalos was determined to take full credit for all major works undertaken in Greece and would not ratify any contract that he had not concluded himself. ⁴⁰ Government Gazette, A, No. 167, 25/5/1926, ‘Supplementary contract concerning the granting of a temporary loan of two million five hundred thousand American dollars ($2,500,000) by the Foundation Company for the continuation of works in the Thessaloniki plain’. ⁴¹ Cassimatis, American Influence, 179–81.

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cultivated successfully because of repeated flooding due to climatic conditions and topography, with frequent loss of both subsistence and cash crops. Apart from the fact that in such areas whole refugee settlements were doomed to failure, the Greek government was more sensitive to the danger of rural refugees abandoning the villages to seek employment in urban centres. The fear was that the outcome of such migrations would be the formation of a proletariat open to communist propaganda. Venizelos in his electoral speeches at Thessaloniki and Jannina during the later part of 1928 drew attention to the implications of the public works: The work of the drainage and irrigation of the Axios (Vardar) which was commenced two years ago must first be completed. Of the other drainage projects, those of the Strymon river and the Philippi marshes near Kavalla are the most urgent, not only because the general results to be derived from their execution are of the greatest importance, but also because the establishment of hundreds of thousands of refugees in Macedonia has created a dearth of land which must be remedied. Additional land suitable for agriculture must be provided for the rural refugees in order to prevent them from migrating to the cities to engage in parasitic occupations. Often the land holdings of the villagers in Macedonia are as small as 12 to 15 stremmata (one stremma is one quarter of an acre), which is quite insufficient to provide for the needs of an agricultural family. This is the reason why the works of the Strymon River and the Philippi marshes must be undertaken immediately.⁴²

Not only was the Axios project accelerated but a contract was immediately entered into with another American company, for works in the Strymon plain. The British firm of Boot & Co., financed by Herbert Wagg & Co., had, in fact, underbid the American contenders Monks & Ulen Co., but because Britain had won an earlier road contract for £6 million sterling, the Americans used the issue of the pending ratification of the War Debt Funding Agreement to tip the scales in their favour.⁴³ The involvement of American capital in large-scale public works projects, particularly in northern Greece, affected positively the development of Greco-American diplomatic relations during the inter-war period and prepared the ground for future political involvement of the USA. The Strymon was a larger project which entailed controlling the depth and course of the Strymon and its major tributaries (Agitis) with the ⁴² USNA, State Department files: 868.oo B: 868.48/942, ‘Political and Economic Effect of Refugees in Greek Macedonia’ by Moose, Thessaloniki, 23 Dec. 1929, 53. ⁴³ Cassimatis, American Influence, 182.

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construction of dams and the drainage of the Serres and Drama plains, with an expected reclamation of 1,500,000 stremmata (or 400,000 acres) of land as fertile as that of the Axios valley. It also included the possible enlargement and deepening, according to need, of the bed and mouth of the Strymon up to Lake Tachinos. A further stipulation of this contract bound the contracting company to the ‘reconstruction of villages destroyed and burned during the recent wars’ in the event of a balance remaining of the estimated US $ 21,000,000.⁴⁴ The world-wide economic crisis of 1929 onwards threw the Greek economy into chaos, even though, paradoxically, there was a relative increase in agricultural productivity. Loans were not floated for existing public works and monies for the completion of such projects were procured from the Refugee Stabilization Loan of 1928 and from the Greek state’s own meagre resources. Progress in these works was as irregular as the inflow of funds and, as a consequence, completion was not accomplished until 1939, having taken nearly twice as long as had initially been expected. In the first four years of the Axios project, only the drainage of Lakes Amatovo and Ardzan had been completed, making available 32,400 stremmata (8,000 acres) of land for agricultural use. By that time levees which had been constructed along the Axios protected a further 8,100 stremmata (20,000 acres) from flooding. The drainage of the Yannitsa swamp, which was by far the major part of the project, had only just begun. Similarly with the Strymon project, only the surveys had been completed by 1930.⁴⁵ The long-term benefits of these development works to the refugees and to the agrarian sector in general cannot be questioned. Malaria almost disappeared and no longer threatened life and productivity to a great extent. Both the population density and crop-yields increased in areas where drainage and irrigation works had been completed.⁴⁶ However, ⁴⁴ USNA State Department files: 868.oo B: 868.48/942, 53–4. ⁴⁵ Ibid.; also AAD, F. 36/7, Ta Ydravlika erga pediados Thessalonikis. Ti exetelesthi mechri simeron kai ti apomenei na ginei (The drainage works in the Thessaloniki plain. What has been done so far and what remains to be done), note by Sakolias, July 1932; AAD, F 36/13, Ypomnima peri ton prostatevtikon kai apoxirantikon ergon en Makedonia (Memorandum on the protective and drainage works in Macedonia), Feb. 1932 and Ydravlika erga ton pediadon Serron kai Dramas (Drainage works in the plains of Serres and Drama), 1934. ⁴⁶ Sir Eric Hambros emphasized the overall significance of these projects for the Greek economy: ‘From the industrial view-point, the very fact of the sudden increase of the population to the extent of 25 per cent has created a demand for every kind of manufactured

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they were not to be reaped for many years after their completion, in fact not until after the Second World War. During the 1930s and, in particular, while the works were still under construction, they did more damage than good in certain areas. To cite one example, the refugee settlements of Flambouro and Mavrolongos (Serres region) could not cultivate their fields for the duration of the works. They were flooded by water from the Strymon river while the course of the latter was being diverted and embankments were being constructed. As a consequence, the inhabitants of these settlements approached the Ministry of Agriculture, petitioning for their right to cultivate lands which, as they claimed, had been usurped by neighbouring villagers from Skoutari even though the latter had extensive tracts of their own.⁴⁷ The diversion of the river, together with the climatic conditions which prevailed in the 1930s, had disastrous effects on the crop-yield of all villages in the valley of the Serres. During the season of highest rainfall, extensive tracts of lowlands were flooded, whereas during the dry season up to as much as one-third of winter crops failed as the fields were deprived of the usual overflow of the Strymon river.

FRONTIER SET TLEMENTS The urgency for frontier settlement had been noticed by the local and military authorities from the beginning of the settlement. In 1923 it had been pointed out to both the Minister of Agriculture, A. Bakalbassis, as well as to high-ranking settlement officials, that the influx of large numbers of exchanged refugees into Macedonia and Thrace provided the opportunity for populating these frontier regions. It was further noted that, were such measures not taken, the whole settlement plan would in certain respects be a failure. Particular care was given to the frontier tract of Macedonia south of the Bulgarian border. The Greek army was goods and agricultural produce which can only be met by increased industrial and agricultural output . . . Another task which is being courageously undertaken and which will contribute enormously to the agricultural prosperity of Greece, is the drainage of large tracts of swamp land in Macedonia and Thessaly. These lands, hitherto useless, are being converted into rich alluvial plains, which will again help Greece in eliminating from her trade balance the necessity of importing great amounts of foodstuffs.’ Sir Eric Hambros, Financial News, 23 Apr. 1929. ⁴⁷ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.413, Koufokotsos, President of the Communities of Flambouro and Mavrolongos, to the Prefect of Serres, 1932; see also AAD, F. 36/13.

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interested in settling refugees in the abandoned villages near these borders⁴⁸. Defence Minister A. Mazarakis wrote on the matter to the ministries which supervised the resettlement process: We deem the settlement in question most advantageous and useful for the security of the frontier. The profits to be gained by such a move will be many and the opportunity unique for the improvement of the frontier zones by means of the settlement of a genuine Greek population, and the refugee population is just that, so we must reap the benefits even through monetary and material sacrifice.⁴⁹

In 1924 they suggested to the government a number of provisional measures which could guarantee settlement: to send the refugees immediately after their transfer to the border villages, because it was observed that long residence in the cities made them unwilling to be resettled in remote villages; in order to persuade them to remain there, it was proposed to cut immediately any kind of relief from those who abandoned the villages; to give priority to transporting tools and ploughing animals to refugees residing in frontier areas; to establish national guards to protect them from burglary by comitadji bandits.⁵⁰ Nevertheless, no organized effort was made (at least in the first two years) to move the refugees out of the urban centres, where they were mainly concentrated, to the frontier regions. The refugees were loath to move towards the border regions, which they regarded with apprehension, because of the continuing raids of comitadjis, whose ferocity had aquired mythical proportions. The majority of refugees from Asia Minor preferred to settle in areas adjacent to commercial centres. In August 1924 the Governor-General of Thrace reported that the establishment of refugee settlements in border areas of eastern Macedonia and western Thrace had been neglected up to that time by both the settlement services and the political authorities. In his view, the RSC had tried to tackle the problem realistically and so opted to settle the refugees wherever conditions were relatively more favourable. The reasons for such lack of interest were the absence of serious preliminary research and programming on the part of the bureaux responsible in Athens, as well as ⁴⁸ AYE,1924/B/59,9, No. 12634, Lieutenant E.Tsimikalis to the Governor-General of Thrace and to GCM, Kavala 28 Aug. 1924. ⁴⁹ AYE,1924/B/59,9, No. 11406/2930, General A. Mazarakis to Ministries of Relief and of Agriculture, Athens, 1 Sept. 1924. ⁵⁰ LNA, C 134. No. 2, ‘Confidential Telegrams of correspondence’, K. Tsimikalis, Lieutenant-General of the first Contingent of the Army to General Administrator of Thrace, Komotini, and to General Colonization Department, Thessaloniki, Kavala, 28 Aug. 1924.

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the fact that the indepedent settlement service, which was subordinate directly to the autonomous organization of the RSC, had few ties with the local services. As a consequence, the latter’s range of communication was restricted, thus weakening such collaboration as would allow the formation and application of a common programme wherein the need to secure the borders would be dominant. Consequently, the settlement of the frontiers, which required exceptional expenses, means, and measures, demanded particular consideration on the part of the government because of its political significance and urgency. Gerakas concludes his report by stating that the suggested plans were indeed realizable but only on condition that the government was willing to provide the refugee settlers with exceptional material backing, to make concessions, and to exempt them from taxes. He proposed that the local officials should pool their efforts in a bid to pressure the central government into taking effective action.⁵¹ The villages in question were those along the Bulgarian frontier north of the town of Sidirokastro and also the refugee settlements on the Yugoslav frontier, near Florina. As to the latter, according to the reports of the RSC officials, there were no difficulties. On the Bulgarian frontier, however, there were many. Conditions of settlement in the mountainous frontier regions of Macedonia and Thrace were appalling. These regions were unfit for cultivation and so the RSC formed 123 mountain colonies there which they populated with 20,000 pastoral settlers who were in the main from the Pontus region. They were provided by the state with some livestock, extensive pasture lands, and, wherever possible, a field to cultivate crops for their own consumption. Within the first years of colonization some were forced to migrate to the plains as a result of severe winters and the incursions of comitadjis, who were responsible for extensive damage to livestock. Communications with the plains were virtually non-existent as there was a complete lack of roads. These newly established colonies were in danger of being abandoned despite their being of great national importance. Eddy and Karamanos, who visited these villages in March 1927, were of the opinion that both the Commission and the government had to deal with the situation if the refugees were to remain in those settlements. They realized that the provision of tools and equipment to refugees was insufficient to allow those settled in remote ⁵¹ LNA, C 132, K. Geragas, Sub-Governor of Thrace, to E. Tsimikalis, Commandant of Fourth Army Corps. Geragas remarked on the fact that: ‘The Political Administration is restricted to simply making recommendations and maintaining hopes. It is not empowered to take any initiative, let alone impose its views.’

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areas to become self-sufficient. Settlements on marginally fertile lands, where public services, communications, etc. were virtually non-existent, were doomed to failure. It was therefore necessary to develop these rural areas in order to enable them to absorb the large and sudden increase in population. Karamanos was of the opinion that another important factor contributing to the desire on the part of the refugees to abandon the mountainous regions and settle in the plains was the activity of various ‘confidence tricksters’ (epitideioi) who sought easy personal gains at the cost of national security. They promised these simple highlanders that they were in a position through contacts in the higher bureaucratic strata to relocate not only families but whole villages. One frontier community was cheated out of 30,000 drachmas for such services while in others the sum of 1,000 drachmas was charged for the relocation of each family. As a first step towards this end Karamanos proposed the immediate abandonment of the belief that resettlement in the plains would be achieved through such ‘mediators’; and that everything humanly possible should be done to raise the morale of the refugee settlers in order to curb, and in fact reverse, the flow of populations from the border regions towards the plains.⁵² Eddy and Karamanos therefore suggested the establishment of a committee consisting of representatives of the army, the civil authorities, and the RSC, which would have summary powers to deal with urgent matters. Consequently, the government promulgated a special law to remedy the situation, particularly in view of the fact that the refugees settled there were a ‘sturdy and warlike’ race of men and, therefore, a most suitable vanguard for these unstable frontier regions.⁵³ By 1928 the RSC had received many applications from refugees established in frontier regions for additional allotments of land. Scarcity of land, however, made the granting of their requests impossible, as these could be fulfilled only when reclamation schemes were completed. After an inspection tour in Macedonia in 1929, A. Michalakopoulos suggested that special attention should be paid to the frontier villages. They should be given liberal provision of animals, comfortable houses, village roads and other essential facilities, to counterbalance the inaccessibility of these regions.⁵⁴ In view of the danger of the complete abandonment of the frontier villages the government promulgated a special law (No. 4124 of 23 April ⁵² LNA, C 134, I. Karamanos’s remarks on 26 March 1926, after his tour in the frontier villages in eastern Macedonia. ⁵³ LNA, C 124, Charles B. Eddy to Sir John Campbell, 6 June 1929. ⁵⁴ LNA, C 124, 42, 10 Jan. 1929. Conversation with Michalakopoulos. Settlement work in Macedonia and Thrace, 8 Jan. 1929.

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1929) to remedy the situation. A sum of 1,200,000 million drachmas was provided by a Presidential Decree to a service organized to meet the special needs of people settled near the borders and to reinforce their villages. Of this amount, 60 million was to be spent on housing the native population whose village had been destroyed in the war. This amount was to be advanced to the refugees by way of loans bearing interest at a rate of 6 per cent. Two Central Committees were established, one in Macedonia and one in Thrace, which took decisions on reports submitted by field officers who visited the colonies and made in situ inspections of the situation. Six sub-committees were charged with the supervision of the resettlement process in the regions of Florina, Ardea, Sidirokastro, and Ossenitsa in Macedonia and Komotini and Alexandroupolis in Thrace. The settlers were furnished with additional supplies and were exempted from taxation.⁵⁵ Public works such as the construction of roads, water supplies, irrigation, sanitation, and the erection of schools and churches were carried out.⁵⁶

TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE L ANDSCAPE AND SET TLEMENT With the arrival of the refugees begins a new era in the pattern of settlement and the demographic distribution of Macedonia. The post1923 period is characterized by the involvement of the public sector in all aspects of town planning, regulating spatial distribution, planning, and even housing. The process of modernization which had begun with the incorporation of Macedonia into the Greek state was reinforced and realized by the settlement of the refugees. The resettlement programme sanctioned state intervention to such an unprecedented degree that 1923 was regarded as the starting point of a new regime for the organization and evolution of the network of settlements and the urban fabric. The overall character and extent of intervention in conjunction with the new state of affairs and political priorities which emerged with the influx of refugees led to the overall reorganization of the network of settlements, changing even the pre-existing hierarchy between them. The spatial ⁵⁵ Refugees settled in the frontier villages before 13 Aug. 1921 were exempted from the payment of agricultural and stock taxes as of March 1929: USNA, op. cit. n. 42, 25. ⁵⁶ Ladas, Exchange, 658; A. D. Andreadis, The Work of the Greek State in Macedonia and Thrace (Athens, 1947), 19–24.

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distribution of the refugees acted as a catalyst in the transformation of both rural and urban areas.⁵⁷ The choice of sites for agrarian settlements was ordinarily determined by such physical factors as climate, availability of water, soil fertility, and the like. Under Ottoman rule, however, the prevailing political climate was an equally important consideration in determining the settlement of the subjugated populations. Christian populations preferred the remoteness of villages perched on mountainsides, where their seclusion away from administrative centres provided them with relative security and a sense of self-determination. A further reason which rendered the highlands and, in particular, the foothills preferable to the plains in Macedonia was that, prior to the reclamation works, large tracts of the plains were unsuitable for settlement and agricultural exploitation as they were waterlogged for the greater part of the year, particularly after the spring rains. In contrast, the terrain of the undulating foothills provided natural drainage and a constant supply of water from mountain streams, while the soil was relatively rich and arable.

Planning Rural Resettlement In the 1920s the plains acquired a more important role in settlement patterns. The rural resettlement project was dictated by more rational and economic criteria and not by topographical, climatic, and historical criteria alone, as had hitherto been the case. From the outset, both the Liberal governments and the RSC envisaged the exploitation of the promising rich arable tracts in the plains. Consequently, the majority of the new refugee settlements were established on former Turkish chiftliks in the lowlands, which were sparsely populated even prior to the exchange of populations and years before the marshlands were reclaimed. The changes to the physical landscape of Macedonia dictated the settlement pattern of the new as well as of the native population who received lands (plots) through the land reform scheme. As well as the resettling of existing villages, hundreds of new settlements were ⁵⁷ A. Karadimou-Yerolympos et al., ‘Poli kai Poleodomia sti Boreio Ellada meta to 1912’ (City and Town Planning in Northern Greece after 1912), in Neoelliniki Poli. Othomanikes Klironomies kai Elliniko Kratos, Proceedings of the Historical International Symposium Modern Greek City: Ottoman Heritages and the Greek State, ii (Athens, 1985), 397–421.

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established. By 1928 there were 1338 rural settlements in Macedonia, including numerous formerly abandoned villages which were resettled, new refugee neighbourhoods built in existing villages, as well as many completely new villages. On completion of the reclamation works and the spread of refugee settlements on to the plains of Macedonia came an increase in agricultural productivity. By the 1930s the balance between mountain rural settlements and those on the plains had been irrevocably upset and the highlands gradually fell into decline. In the post-war years the highland refugee villages provided the main flow of emigrants to Western European countries and to Australia. The reallocation of land use which resulted from the reclamation works brought many changes in its wake. There was an increase in the availability of fertile, arable land with a consequent rise towards commercial agriculture. Settlements were established where previously there were none and new commercial centres came into existence while old ones lost their importance. In short, the pre-existing rural services and commercial infrastructure were automatically made redundant and a pressing need arose for the creation of new facilities and, in particular, for an effective network of highways and thoroughfares.

Town-planning in the Countryside Between 1917 and 1920, the Liberal government of Venizelos in the person of A. Papanastassiou, the Minister of Communications who had been entrusted with the town-planning reform, had an enlightened outlook on the question of town-planning. The widespread devastation of towns and villages in eastern Macedonia between 1913 and 1918 and the great fire of Thessaloniki (1917) prompted a serious interest in organized, functional planning and led to the adoption of European, mainly British, prototypes. The opening of the new lands for resettlement provided a further incentive for the implementation of designs put forward by foreign planners with modern and progressive approaches to town-planning.⁵⁸ However, the scale and extent of the resettlement project and the urgency of housing the new population with as little disturbance to the social order as possible left little scope for deviation from a practical, functional approach and curtailed ⁵⁸ Ibid.; Kiki Kavkoula, I Idea tis Kipoupolis stin Elliniki Poleodomia tou Mesopolemou idea (The Idea of the Garden-city in Greek Town Planning in the Inter-War Period), Academic Register of the Faculty of Architecture, vol. 12, no. 4, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1990.

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any regard for the preservation of local features and elaboration of particularities.⁵⁹ After 1923 a uniform legal framework was set up for both rural and urban settlements, retaining only the most functional features of previously proposed town-planning schemes.⁶⁰ The decree law on rural resettlement of refugees specified that each settlement ‘be laid out according to a simple plan and divided into lots’, while all public buildings and sites (schools, churches, squares, and the like) were kept simple and uniform.⁶¹ As a consequence, a ‘carbon copy’ rudimentary rectangular layout was used with little if any variation from settlement to settlement. The study of mixed settlements in the Prefecture of Serres, made by a team of expert architects, civil engineers, surveyors, etc., clearly shows the sections of the settlements which date from before the resettlement programme for the refugees, and their organic layout is distinct from the rectangular layout of the attached section.⁶² The GDCM established a total of 42,826 settlements for the resettlement of the refugees. The houses built were rudimentary, catering for the most fundamental needs of the refugee families, and the majority were reproductions of the same simple plan. By the end of 1928 the houses built by the RSC numbered 39,077 and, stereotype replicas as they were, became known as ‘DeHaTeGe’ after the contracting company (DHTG) which had undertaken their construction. To this number must be added the 53,476 houses left by exchanged Turks and Bulgars, which were renovated to accommodate Greek refugees. Many of these houses were stone structures in highland settlements and the Greek state built a further 3,095 in a similar fashion. In many refugee settlements, the new arrivals built small, simple dwellings on their own initiative, using a variety of materials—usually fired bricks and timber but quite often hand-made sun-dried mud bricks reinforced with cut straw. They were mostly little more than simple huts but proved quite functional for the simple farmers who dwelt in them in the inter-war years. The new, ‘reduplicated’ settlements built by the RSC reflect, as well, the bid on the part of the Greek state for national homogeneity. With their regular rectangular layout and their evenly spaced plots, which were more or less of uniform size and ⁵⁹ A. Yerolympos, Urban Transformations in the Balkans, 1820–1920: Aspects of Balkan Town Planning and the Remaking of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki, 1996). ⁶⁰ According to the Legislative Decree of 1923 on the planning of cities. ⁶¹ ND ‘peri agrotikis egkatastaseos prosfygon’ (Legislative Decree regarding rural resettlement of refugees), Government Gazette, 6 July 1923–11 July 1923, Article 6. ⁶² Karadimou-Yerolympos, et al., ‘City and Town Planning in Northern Greece after 1912’, 397–421.

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shape, the new settlements in Macedonia presented a striking contrast to the irregular layout of the ‘traditional’ settlements, whose construction was usually determined by nothing other than the lie of the land.

Transformation of the Landscape A comparison of the military maps of Macedonia published between 1912 and 1920 with those made by the National Statistical Service of Greece after 1940 shows the dramatic transformation that the region had undergone. Besides the changes in terms of population distribution and the consequent development of new settlements, the very topography of the land changed as a result of the large-scale drainage and other reclamation works carried out throughout northern Greece. In central Macedonia, Lakes Artzan and Amatovon in Kilkis and Lake Yannitsa further west were drained completely and used as arable land. Similarly, in the Serres area in eastern Macedonia, tracts of arable land were reclaimed by the drainage of Lake Achinos (or Tachinos) and the construction of embankments along the Strymon river, which was also dredged. Other projects ranged in scale from the retaining/damming of Lake Doirani to the construction of floodgates and even lesser drainage and canal works executed by the RSC and the refugees themselves. When the works were completed by the end of the 1930s, a total of 797,000 stremmata were reclaimed for settlement and agricultural use. However, as invaluable as the reclaimed land was for agricultural exploitation, the reclamation works also provided another, most expedient service. In changing the topography, the extensive dredging and drainage works changed the bioclimatic conditions in the region with the immediate consequence of depriving mosquitoes of their breeding-grounds and so delivering from the scourge of malaria one of the most pestilent regions in the whole of the Balkan peninsula. Hundreds of new settlements appeared in the lowlands and basins which had formerly been no more than sloughs and marshlands.

Changing of Place-names Wherever they settled, with the refugees came a change in toponyms. Newly established settlements were named after homelands they had been forced to abandon. Indeed, even existing settlements were likewise renamed. The renaming or, more precisely, the Hellenization, of the

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majority of toponyms is indicative of the process of homogenization attempted by the nation-state in the context of the modernization of the region and more generally the country. This process was not limited to ethnological homogenization but embraced all spheres of life in the northern provinces. The geographical area of the Greek nation-state had been inhabited for centuries by populations of different ethnic origins and for centuries had been dominated by different foreign rulers. Political events, ethnic rivalries, dislocation of populations, and resettlement processes over such a long period had, as a consequence, left an indelible imprint on the geographical nomenclature of the region. The great array of Greek, Turkish, Slavic, and Albanian toponyms bore irrefutable witness to the ethnic multiplicity of the Balkan peninsula under Ottoman rule. In the light of the instability of the times and the confusion inherent in the mass resettling of populations, this was the cause of considerable concern to the Greek state and led to the foundation, in 1909, of the ‘Committee of Place-names’ (Epitropi Toponymion), in accordance with the Royal Act of 31 May, 1909.⁶³ A policy of Hellenizing toponyms had actually been set up soon after the establishment of the Greek nation-state in the nineteenth century. Scholars undertook to locate sites of antiquity, place-names that came up in classical geographical texts, and helped in the renaming of villages and cities. No little research was undertaken and the Committee did much delving into antiquity in the quest for historically substantiated, original Hellenic names. The Committee consisted of academics of renown—among whom Nikolaos Politis and Georgios Chatzidakis played a prominent role, other scholars coming from various disciplines, and state officials. Their primary concern was to study all dubious toponyms, to substantiate their incongruity, and subsequently to present their proposals for change to the Ministry of the Interior.⁶⁴ After the Balkan Wars, a more efficient policy for the re-establishment of Greek names in the entire country, and particularly in the recently annexed northern provinces, was required. In response to the need, the Greek government issued the law of 14 February 1914 on the constitution of municipalities and communes, in accordance with which the local ⁶³ Government Gazette, A, 125, 31 May 1909, 7. ⁶⁴ Fotini-Effi Gazi, ‘Spyridon Lambros (1851–1919): “Scientific” History in National Perspective in Nineteenth–Century Greece’, Ph.D. thesis, European University Institute, Nov. 1996, 180–3.

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councils could decide on the change of name of the municipality or the commune.⁶⁵ There arose instances, however, where the names proposed by the local authorities proved to be both inapt and inept. In such cases, and having discussed the issue with the community leaders, the Committee would again undertake to make its proposals to the Ministry. Paradoxically, some of the names proposed for Hellenization may well have been Greek in origin, though long corrupted by Turkish, Slavic, or Albanian influence. The policy of Hellenizing toponyms was fundamental to the more comprehensive process of establishing a collective ethnic consciousness and a sense of national identity rooted deeply in the profundity of time and history. Affinity with classical antiquity was looked upon as the ultimate proof of ethnic purity, historical continuity, and perpetuation. Characteristic of this attitude is Nikolaos Politis, according to whose view the use of foreign names, or for that matter even cacophonous Greek names, was a sad phenomenon. He found them detrimental to the Greek language itself and believed that they undermined the conviction of local inhabitants. He argued that, because a foreign name may indicate foreign origin, much could be misconstrued as to the ethnic make-up of a region.⁶⁶ A succinct expression of this attitude is the argument of D. Kambouroglou, who wrote that ‘on Greek soil there should remain nothing that is not Greek’.⁶⁷ Along with refugee resettlement, the Greek government attempted to eliminate all non-Greek names from the map. Enforcing the state policy of Hellenizing place-names in the New Lands was no problem in the refugee and mixed villages with a high portion of refugees, as the latter preferred of their own accord to transfer the names of their old homes to the new. Many of these names have Neos/Neo/Nea as the first word, designating ‘new’, such as Neos Skopos and Nea Bafra, though some, like Skoutari and Metalla do not. Other villages indicate their refugee heritage in a more descriptive way, such as Thrakiko (Thracian) and

⁶⁵ Gazi, ‘Spyridon Lambros (1851–1919)’, 182. ⁶⁶ Ibid. 181, citing N. G. Politis (ed.), Gnomodotiseis peri Metonomasias Synoikismon kai Koinotiton Ekdidomenes Apofasei tou Ypourgeiou ton Esoterikon (Opinions on the Changing of names of Villages and Communities, Published by a Decision of the Ministry of the Interior) (Athens, 1920). ⁶⁷ D. G. Kambouroglou, Toponymika Paradoxa (Peculiarities of Toponyms) (Athens, 1920), 5, cited by Mazower, Dark Continent, 41. It is worth noting that at that time there was a fervent pursuit of this goal. When a new territory was annexed, the procedure for the renaming of the settlements was immediately set up. See the new toponyms in eastern Thrace in the Appendix of the Government Gazette, 2/4, Adrianople, 18 Sept. 1921.

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Mavrothalassa (Black Sea) in the Perfecture of Serres. As for mixed and native villages, Hellenized names were usually the ancient Greek names of the locality or the extended district, where these were known. Wherever original ancient Greek names could not be traced, alternatives in any manner associated with the general area, whether historically or in mythology, were preferred. Otherwise they were translations of the Turkish and Slav names determined by the appropriate committee. In the mixed villages native villagers took part in the process along with the refugees and in some cases they even chose the new name of their village, while in others an appropriate official committee did so. In some cases the Church undertook the responsibility of proposing an acceptable name.⁶⁸ Thus Kerkini, the ancient name for Lake Achinos, was transferred to Lake Boutkovon as well as to the neighbouring village in the north-west of the Serres district. The name Axios was given to the river Vardar, while the Strymon seems to have generally retained its ancient name, even though at times it was also known as Karasu Chai (Black River). Such revivals of ancient names in the Perfecture of Serres include Irakleia, Gazoros, Skotoussa, Kerdyllion, Vergi, and the names of the eparchies of Sintiki and Vissaltia.⁶⁹ The vast majority of the new toponyms are descriptive of the landscape, either natural or cultural aspects of it. The description is often attached to common suffixes such as -chori (village), -komi (large village), -polis (town), -topos (place) -lofos (hill), -vouni (mountain), or prefixes such as kalo(good), palaio- (old), para- (near), meso- (between), mono- (only).⁷⁰ Other village names are indicative of their topographic location. Renaming was also prompted by a variety of factors of immediate concern to the new inhabitants and ranged from cultural characteristics of the inhabitants to environmental features of the surrounding land. They often indicated either the favourable or even the inhospitable nature of the area, the predominant vegetation, the type or quality of the soil or of the local water supply.⁷¹ In conclusion, the name changes which were made in the 1920s were haphazard or, better, were ultimately determined by a number of factors ⁶⁸ As e.g. in the Eparchy of Phyllidos, in the Prefecture of Serres, where the local bishop renamed many of the villages. Yaeger, ‘Refugee Settlement in Serres’, 228. ⁶⁹ Ibid. ⁷⁰ Kalochori (Kaskarka), Podochori (Top-Alti) in Thessaloniki, Xirokomi (Sentzeli), Monolofon (Daoutli). ⁷¹ The number of newly named and renamed settlements in the greater region of Macedonia amount to thousands and require a comprehensive study of their own. The examples cited are limited to the Prefectures of Thessaloniki and Serres and are drawn from

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which did not derive from a general and comprehensive underlying presumption. Still, they are indicative of more fundamental developments in Greek society in the inter-war period. Transposition of village names from Asia Minor, the Pontus, eastern Thrace, or Bulgaria symbolizes the transfer of the people themselves and their nostalgia for their old homes. By far the most significant process was the Hellenization of all toponyms, part of the basic transformation of the diverse groups regarding themselves as Greek into a homogeneous society.

the following studies: M. Maravelakis and A.Vakalopoulos, Ai prosfygikai egkatastaseis en ti periochi Thessalonikis (Refugee Settlements in the Region of Thessaloniki) (Thessaloniki, 1955; repr. Thessaloniki, 1993), and Yaeger, ‘Refugee Settlement in Serres’, 227–34. Petroto (Yeni-Machale), Vrachia (Kagiali), Adendron (Kirtzilar), Monopigadon (Tsili), Lakkia (Trochanli), Libadikion (Tsair-chiftlik), Revma (Dere-Machale), Kryoneron (Kara Giousouflar) are a few examples from the Prefecture of Thessaloniki, taken from Maravelakis and Vakalopoulos.

10 The Impact of Refugee Resettlement on Agriculture and Animal Husbandry AGRICULTURE: ECONOMIC IMPACT The RSC’s wide range of activities in the rural areas of northern Greece was striking. By the time it was liquidated, over half a million refugees were settled on 5,629,210 stremmata in Macedonia (out of which 3,676,960 were cultivable lands), in a total of 1,381 settlements, both new refugee settlements and existing villages.¹ Among its achievements, the RSC organized a cadastral survey that extended to more than 2 million acres (810,000 stremmata), built about 60,000 houses, provided livestock, seed, and agricultural machinery and tools. It established model farms, experimental plots, and stud farms. The introduction of the silkworm and its breeding were given great impetus by the refugees. Many mulberry trees were planted in Macedonia.² An early example of the way in which economic development can be linked to refugee settlement is the fact that the RSC constructed local roads, bridges, dispensaries, and schools, and dealt with works for water supply, drainage, and irrigation. Tractors and steel ploughs were introduced to cultivate the fallow lands of Macedonia and to increase the area of cultivated land. Rotation of crops was applied for the first time and polyculture replaced monoculture; agricultural resources were exploited more intensively. ¹ D. N. Afentakis, ‘Makedonia: Prosfygiki Egkatastasis’, Megali Elliniki Engyclopaideia, 16 (n.d.), 503–4, and A. A. Pallis, ‘Prosfygikon Zitima’ (The Refugee Question), in Megali Elliniki Engyclopaideia, x: Ellas [1927], 405–10. The total expenditure was £8.75 m., an average of some £61 per family. ² Seventy experimental agricultural stations were opened in Macedonia and Thrace, which carried on experiments in the growing of native and foreign types of grain. Vinegrowing, cultivation of cotton and hemp and of new crops such as clover, forage, sugar beets, millet, and the castor oil plant was also introduced into Macedonia. LN, Official Journal, Feb. 1926, 328.

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These achievements impressed both Greek and foreign contemporary observers. For example, M. Notaras wrote enthusiastically about the progress achieved: ‘Anyone who visited northern Greece, anywhere from Orestiada to Florina, and from Doirani to Olympus, and anyone who climbed up to the nation’s mountainous borders, could not help but be amazed, and confirm with the utmost certainty that a new order had been brought into being up there.’³ Eliot Grinnell Mears also remarked: ‘The agriculture of Greece has benefited immensely by the influx of the refugees. Waste lands are being reclaimed, new methods and products are being tried out, and agricultural industries which have been in bare existence in Greece for many centuries are being pushed ahead with new vigour.’⁴ The objective of this chapter is to place the achievements of the RSC in a long-term perspective, and to assess the economic consequences of transferring small plots to refugee farmers who were often ill-equipped to make good use of the land they received. Were the changes brought about in the agrarian sector conducive to the development of a peasant-led capitalism, or were they more likely to put the subsistence sector of the rural economy at risk?

FRAGMENTATION OF L AND HOLDINGS Land reform and the resettlement of refugees, particularly in the northern provinces of Greece, caused a dramatic transformation in the land use and tenure system. The changes in land use were introduced in response to refugee settlement and increased population density particularly in the New Lands. The implementation of the radical land reform project allowed the government to rehabilitate and integrate the enormous number of refugees who had flooded into the country via land distribution. The rural resettlement of the refugees transformed the ‘agricultural map’ of the country and spelt the end for large estates throughout Greece. In just a few years, Greece had turned into a nation of smallholders. ³ Notaras, Agrotiki Apokatastasis, 4. See also in Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 110–11, the favourable comments of Jacques Ancel (professor at the École des Hautes Études Internationales), ‘Those miserable Turkish hamlets, nothing but hovels of mud and straw lying in the midst of an uncultivated plain or of unhealthy marshes, are now replaced by large cheerful villages . . . All around one sees sheaves of maize, fields of tobacco, kitchen-gardens, orchards, and vines. What a miracle.’ ⁴ E. G. Mears, Greece Today: The Aftermath of the Refugee Impact (Stanford, Calif., and London, 1929), 79. E. G. Mears, Professor of Geography and International Trade at the Stanford University, California, had been American Resident Trade Commissioner in Greece.

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By 1928 the majority of Greek farmers owned the land they farmed: in Macedonia the figure was 178,756 smallholders out of a total of 202,483 farmers; in western Thrace it was 43,215 out of 46,428; and in the Peloponnese, 150,164 out of 167,318.⁵ The mass of farmers were now smallholders.⁶ Official policies, primarily intended to meet political and social requirements created by the upset of the demographic conditions in the rural areas following the influx of refugees, resulted in land tenure arrangements whose main feature was ‘irrational’ farm fragmentation.⁷ The distributions of smallholdings to landless peasants and refugees were carried out through a concern that all peasants receiving new farms should benefit equally from a share in the best-quality land in each district. But because of the uneven nature of the land in most districts, the attempt to effect a fair division was possible only by means of dividing up the estates into a number of different sections so that each peasant received the same proportion of good-quality and indifferent land. Consequently, the fertile parts of the region were divided into a complex pattern of small farms. Each cultivator received fields in several locations, since land was usually divided into five categories (A–E) before distribution. The 1928 census showed that three-quarters of the cultivated area was farmed in small units, each being less than 10 hectares.⁸ An additional reason for the fragmented nature of the holdings was that, on many large estates in which refugees and local landless peasants were established, there were peasants who possessed small properties in parts of the estate and had the right to keep them. During the distribution, no thought was given to any arrangements that could have reduced fragmentation, because the native peasants insisted on keeping the ⁵ Annual Statistics of Greece, Athens, 1930; Evgenia Bournova and G. Progoulakis, ‘O Agrotikos Kosmos, 1830–1940’ (The Agricultural World, 1830–1940), in V. Kremmydas (ed.), Eisagogi sti Neoelliniki Oikonomiki Istoria (Introduction to Modern Greek Economic History) (Athens, 1999), 82–5. ⁶ In the Serres area, only ten landowners still employed farming labour in 1932: Anagnostopoulos, O kampos ton Serron, 260–1. ⁷ Land fragmentation was, of course, due to other factors, e.g. inheritance and dowry, which will be discussed later in this chapter. For a definition of the ‘fragmented farm’ see Kenneth Thompson, Farm Fragmentation in Greece: the Problem and its Setting, Center of Economic Research, Research Monograph Series, 5 (Athens, 1963), also with relevant bibliography, pp. 5–6, 10: ‘A fragmented farm is one consisting of several plots or parcels of land distributed over a considerable area among land operated by other farmers . . . Three major categories of fragmentation may be identified: Rational, Incidental and Irrational . . . Irrational farm fragmentation is the division of land holdings into a great many small, awkwardly-shaped plots, which serves few, if any, considerations of agricultural efficiency or convenience.’ ⁸ Mazower, inter-war Economic Crisis, 78. One stremma ⫽ 0.1 hectare or 0.2471 acre.

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particular fields already in their possession. To cite one of numerous examples, the Katerini estate in central Macedonia was expropriated and settled by refugees and landless native farmers. The existing smallholdings within the estate were not subject to expropriation and the Ministry of Agriculture saw fit to allow the native peasants to keep the holdings which they had already been cultivating, in a bid to avoid disturbances.⁹ The size of the share allotted to each refugee family varied from place to place and from group to group for those established in the same area. Allotments were made on the basis of current crop values, according to the quality of the soil and the nature of cultivation.¹⁰ Thus the plots given to each family were very rarely in contiguous ownership. In Macedonia, land allocations made by the RSC varied in size according to the fertility of the soil, from 8 stremmata in eastern Macedonia (Kavala) to 55 stremmata in western Macedonia (Kastoria, Florina). Allotment of holdings also took account of the number of persons in each refugee family. The extent of land in stremmata with which a twomember family was provided was taken as the ‘basic agricultural share’ in each particular region. This increased by 25 per cent when a family consisted of three or four persons, by 50 per cent in families with five to seven members, and was doubled in families with eight or more persons. The size of holdings in the various regions of Macedonia in January 1930 was as follows: kavala (a) Nestos plain. The basic holding varied according to the productive capacity of the soil and the value of the crop grown between 8, 16, 30, and 40 stremmata. Eight stremmata were distributed to cultivators in the well-populated settlements near the bridge of the Nestos, where firstquality tobacco was produced; 16 stremmata in settlements in the foothills (giakades), where tobacco was again produced; 30 stremmata near the banks of the river, and 40 stremmata in the rest (Keramoti, Agiasma, etc.), where the soil was suitable for cereals (wheat) and had previously been mainly grassland pasture. (b) Philippi valley. The basic holding was 20 stremmata in settlements in the foothills of the mountains with both wheat- and tobacco-growing lands; 40 stremmata in settlements near the marshland of Philippi. The size of a share in Moustheni (Pieria valley) is not known because distributions were not completed even as late as 1930. ⁹ GAK, TYYG, F 361, C. Allamanis to Department for the Colonization of Macedonia (DCM), 8 June 1928. ¹⁰ LNA, C 129, Eddy’s file, No. 14, Letter to Felkin, 14 July 1926.

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drama At Myria, Prosotsani, and Doxato, producing first-quality tobacco, the basic holding was between 18 and 25 stremmata in settlements in the foothills of the mountains; in regions west and south of Drama producing tobacco and wheat, the basic holding extended from 25 to 30 stremmata; in settlements situated south of Drama, between the railway and the main road joining Drama and Kavala, and in the marshland of Philippi, where the soil favoured the production of cereals, maize, corn, and in some places tobacco, the basic holding varied between 30 and 35 stremmata.¹¹ serres The basic holding in the plains settlements, where the soil produced cereals, was 30 stremmata, and in the mountainous lands with mixed production of cereals and tobacco, between 20 and 25 stremmata. Sidirokastro In this province (eparchia) distributions were complete in several settlements, in which the basic holding was 25–30 stremmata and the produce was tobacco, cereals, cotton, clover, etc. In the other areas of the region of Serres, distributions were finalized in very few settlements by 1930. kilkis Here the basic holding was between 35 and 50 stremmata. In most places cereals were produced and in some others tobacco. thessaloniki and langadas Very few distributions of land were effected until 1930 and the size of the basic holding was 35–40 stremmata. yiannitsa In this province, a considerable area, of about 350,000 stremmata—extending between the lake of Yiannitsa, the town, the Axios river, and the northern settlements—was distributed to refugees and local cultivators. The basic holding was 24 stremmata around the town of Yiannitsa and 30–40 stremmata in other settlements, according to the quality of the soil. The categories of land distributed were lands suitable for orchards and tobacco, three groups of lands producing cereals, and one for viticulture. kozani Distributions were made in the regions of Anatoliko, Sofoular, and Ptolemais. The range in the size of holdings there was wider than in eastern and central Macedonia—from 20 stremmata to 40, and in a few settlements to 55 stremmata. kastoria and florina The same basic holding as in Kozani was to be found in these provinces, ranging from 20 to 55 stremmata. In most cases, however, it was between 35 and 40 stremmata. ¹¹ Because of the density of refugee settlements and the small size of each plot in the regions of Kavala and Drama, it was decided to cultivate tobacco in one or two of the three categories of land which initially had been determined for the cultivation of cereals, with the exception of settlements located near marshlands.

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The variety in the size of holdings in western Macedonia, and particularly in the regions of Florina and Kastoria, was attributed to great difficulties that the Commission had experienced during the process of distribution in trying to redefine the limits of some fields or to resettle some families of local cultivators on new fields. Lands of exchanged persons in these regions were fragmented into small plots dispersed in a dense land registry of indigenous smallholders who had the right to keep the particular fields in their possession.¹² Apart from the agricultural shares, lots were also distributed to viticulturists and market-gardeners as well as to tradesmen and others whose main occupation was not agriculture. The latter shares were generally smaller than the normal agricultural share (between 3 and 10 stremmata). Shares for viticulture were distributed in certain settlements in the Thessaloniki area (at Gefyra and neighbouring villages), Chalkidiki, and the Kilkis estate, where refugees from Bulgaria who were experts in viticulture were settled. Whereas the average size of plots for viticulturists in Kilkis was 12 stremmata, the average allotment in Macedonia was 15–30 stremmata, plus a field for cereals. For crops with a high market value, such as hemp or red peppers grown in the Karadjova district, it was 6 to 7 stremmata, whereas the normal market-gardening shares were from 8 to 15 stremmata. In most rural settlements the norm was for three categories of field to be distributed to each family: one for cereal crops, a smaller lot close to the settlement for each family’s market-gardening needs, and one or two stremmata intended for viticulture, although on rare occasions separate lots were distributed for specialized cultivation such as clover and mulberry trees. As the primary object of the settlement project was to help the refugees to become self-supporting in the minimum time required, about 76 per cent of the refugees were engaged in growing cereals, and chiefly wheat. ‘Cereals provided the quickest return from soil, and the destitution of the peasants did not permit of the delay inevitable with other crops. The peasant who planted wheat in the fall of 1923 could eat bread from his own land in the following spring’, explained the Chairman of the Commission.¹³ Besides the lots distributed to each family, each settlement also received communal pasture lands which were usually lands unsuitable for cultivation, being either rocky or having excessive moisture or salinity. ¹² LNA, C 127, ‘Report on the distribution of lands in Macedonia’, by C. Papastratos, Director of the Cadastral Department, Thessaloniki, 20 Jan. 1930. ¹³ Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens, 275.

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Communal pasture lands in the plains rarely exceeded one-fifth of the cultivable lands. For exclusively cattle-breeding settlements in the mountainous districts, the area of pasturage given to each refugee family was between 80 and 100 stremmata on average, plus a small field.¹⁴ Fragmentation was, furthermore, the result of the redistribution of property in each generation through the institutions of equal inheritance and dowry. These, however, concerned only households of the native farmers. During the inter-war period there was a fundamental difference as concerned inheritance rights of refugees, on the one hand, and settled landless natives; the children of the latter maintained full inheritance rights in accordance with the existing laws. For the children of a refugee who was allotted a holding, however, the situation was not the same. First of all, refugees could acquire ownership titles over houses and lands allotted to them only after their debts had been fully paid off to the RSC.¹⁵ The Agrarian Law precluded any kind of confiscation or subdivision of lands allotted to refugees. This law prevented refugees from selling, renting, or bequeathing their lot for a period of one decade after their lot had been fully paid off. Even then, however, they could only sell as much land as the law regarded as being surplus to the minimum land required for the needs of a family unit. Where such surplus land did exist, the law stipulated that it could only be sold to peasants who were either altogether landless or had inadequate lots, and who would cultivate it personally. Furthermore, if a peasant who had been allotted a full plot (kliros) happened to die, his heirs were entitled to equal shares—in accordance with the then current civil code (Astiko Dikaio)—only when they were entitled to receive a plot which had not yet been granted to them, or if they did not possess any other land in excess of the minimum extent of land as foreseen by the Agrarian Law.¹⁶ Consequently, when a settled refugee who had paid off his debts happened to die and his heirs happened not to be personally involved in agriculture and entitled to be allotted a plot, the latter would forfeit their inheritance, which automatically became state property once again.¹⁷ The preclusion of any subdivision of plots was determined as much by the desire to inhibit further fragmentation of the ¹⁴ Ibid. and LN, Greek Refugee Settlement, 46. ¹⁵ This restriction was maintained by the Papadatos–Eddy agreement over the liquidation of the RSC and Laws 4857 and 5151 which completed it. Notaras, Agrotiki Apokatastasis, 209. ¹⁶ Ibid. 211–15. ¹⁷ Ibid. Notaras proposes a number of measures that could eliminate the drawbacks of the prevailing laws and argues against those who insisted on their maintenance as a means of preventing fragmentation.

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already tiny plots as by the need to deter peasant refugees from abandoning their settlements and migrating to the centres. This had to be done in a period of twenty-five years, during which there was uncertainty with regard to the possession or not by the refugee of his plot. By comparison with lots distributed in other regions, the agricultural shares in Macedonia were small, particularly when the primitive state of agriculture in the region is taken into account. This, in conjunction with the fragmented nature of lands, prohibited economic expansion because profits, if any, were too meagre to allow for reinvestment in productive works. In order to increase the yield of the land and so ensure the subsistence of the rural population, intensive cultivation was introduced by the RSC. This was accomplished by the use of chemical fertilizers, irrigation networks, and the establishment of experimental agricultural stations. New, hardier strains of cereals were introduced from Australia and America, as well as new agricultural techniques and machinery. The GDCM, equipped with forty-seven ‘Stock’ motorized ploughs, undertook the tilling of former uncultivated pasture lands for the establishment of various refugee settlements. Around 225,000 stremmata were reclaimed in such a fashion between 1924 and 1928. Local cultivators, accustomed to their traditional ox-drawn ploughs, were astonished at first and were also quite concerned about the depth to which these mechanical plough-shares tilled the soil. The great advantages, however, were too obvious not to be appreciated even by these incredulous peasants, who were soon all too eager to acquire ‘tractors’ of their own. By 1929, over 375 of 700 tractors imported into Greece were registered in Thessaly and Macedonia.¹⁸ The consequences, technical, economic, and social, of the distribution policy were significant. The partitioning of the large estates often had disappointing social and economic results; for instance, the reduction in available pasture exacerbated the livestock shortage in the northern plains occurring after the Balkan Wars.¹⁹ And although the crisis may have encouraged agricultural restructuring in many areas—for example, planting fodder crops to replace lost pasture—this response was not typical and most areas specializing in animal husbandry were hard hit. It is also likely that the soil became less fertile in many areas, which led to a decline in cereal yields. ¹⁸ L. Kallivretakis, I Dynamiki tou agrotikou eksygchronismou stin Ellada tou 19ou aiona (The Dynamics of Agricultural Modernization in 19th-Century Greece) (Athens, 1990), 345. ¹⁹ This problem was further complicated for reasons discussed in a section that follows.

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The fragmented nature of the fields, which were shaped irregularly and were often enclosed by other fields, made the use of modern machinery very difficult. Access to fields had to be through property belonging to someone else. The peasants, in order to cover the distance between dispersed plots situated in different directions—many times exceeding 10 kilometres—had to spend many working hours travelling from one field to another, thus making impracticable the cultivation of crops requiring constant attention. This state of affairs discouraged investment of capital for irrigation, fertilizers, weed control, advanced crop rotations, and introduction of modern techniques to eliminate soil erosion. Agricultural productivity was also adversely affected by legal uncertainty regarding property rights. The main reason underlying the unwillingness of peasants to invest money and labour in their land was that the plots had been allocated to them on a provisional basis, and the issue of property rights was still a very uncertain one. The refugees had been granted provisional titles—what were known as parachoritiria—because, when the settlement agencies had begun work in northern Greece, the absence of cadastral surveys outlining the exact boundaries of properties had prevented them from assigning plots permanently. Moreover, attempts to acquire permanent titles often led to a number of additional legal problems, including inheritance rights and debt repayments. Indeed, just how significant a role the refugees’ uncertainty as to their legal rights to the land they farmed played in the low yields of their plots and the resignation of many to their poverty is stressed over and over again in League of Nations reports, articles in the press, and statements by refugees themselves.²⁰ The actual implementation of land distribution is well documented: a number of sources shed light on the technical, administrative, and especially ownership problems that were encountered, and how these prevented or delayed land allocations to refugees being finalized. This issue was the source of uncertainty above all in Macedonia, where disputed claims often remained unsettled—meaning that plot allocations remained temporary—throughout the inter-war years.²¹ Thus, despite the fact that credit was readily available to farmers, particularly through the co-operatives which were backed by the National Bank of Greece and, after 1929, by the Agricultural Bank, they were very reluctant to invest in land or equipment, because of the uncertainty that ²⁰ The problem had been highlighted since 1924 in Parliament by refugee and Liberal deputies. ESV, 63rd Session, 23 June 1924, 428. ²¹ Refugees settled in urban centres faced exactly the same problem. Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe, 70–3.

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shrouded their rights to their plots. Instead they preferred to increase consumption levels or to become small-scale traders. Many in fact sold their equipment and flocked to urban centres to seek their fortunes as wage-earners or in the hope of becoming shopkeepers.²² As the family unit was the basis of agricultural production and cultivation was carried out in a number of small, dispersed plots of land, the acquisition of advanced equipment was rendered particularly expensive and unprofitable. Most family concerns were consequently reduced to little more than subsistence farming. Their produce being governed by fluctuating weather conditions, and susceptible to crop diseases and pests, many farmers fell victim to moneylenders. Such circumstances made them wary of experimenting with crops and methods of cultivation that they were unfamiliar with. As a consequence old systems of farming with traditional tools continued to be the norm well into the inter-war period. Thus, although a number of machines and new crops were introduced by the RSC, and Agricultural Stations were established in certain areas, the agricultural sector largely remained unchanged.²³ The social benefits of partition were cancelled out by the fact that the plots were usually of insufficient size to support a family, even though the surveyors had divided the land by household. Anagnostopoulos, in his survey of the conditions in the plain of Serres carried out in the early 1930s, pointed out that: ‘The small-holders of the plains require money to cover genuine farming needs (buying in fertilizer and new seeds, and hiring extra hands during busy periods), but they mostly need money to support their families and feed their livestock when the harvest is not a good one or doesn’t fetch a good price, or when they face some family emergency or other.’²⁴ Some refugees settled in mountainous regions begged the Ministry of Agriculture to grant them permission to clear some waste or woodland, pointing out that they had a family of five young children to support and that the Commission had only given them a small allotment insufficient to meet their needs. Refugees also made requests for land to be granted to them collectively, a good example being the thirty-two refugee families from the Alonia settlement near the village of Koukos in the Pieria agricultural district, who complained about the lack of fields and the ²² Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 78. ²³ Alivizatos, Metapolemiki exelixis tis georgikis oikonomias, 14–15; K. Kostis, Agrotiki oikonomia kai Georgiki Trapeza, Opseis tis ellinikis oikonomias sto Mesopolemo (1919–1928) (Agrarian Economy and the Agricultural Bank: Aspects of the Greek Economy in the Inter-war Years (1919–1928)) (Athens, 1987), 110–24; Evelpidis, ‘Oikonomiki Istoria’. ²⁴ Anagnostopoulos, O kampos ton Serron, 260–1.

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insufficiency of the plots they had been given. In his reply to their request, A. Domestichos, the Director-General of the General Directorate for Colonization of Macedonia and Thrace, instructed that they were to be temporarily allocated expropriated land. However, in reply to their request that their plots be increased in size, he could only state that this was impossible since their land had been declared suitable for tobacco by the Committee for Expropriated Land, whose decision was final. Another, and probably more important, reason for his decision was that this particular group of refugees had been one of the last to arrive in the area, and had elected to settle in Alonia without official permission, and indeed in the face of recommendations to the contrary by the resettlement services, who were aware that there was already severe congestion and a shortage of land resources in the area. Consequently, the DirectorGeneral said that increasing the size of the plots given to the refugees in the above settlement ‘would be unfair and would work to the disadvantage of the other farmers who had been settled in the region since the beginning of the influx of refugees’, and therefore threaten social stability in the area.²⁵

AGRICULTURAL YIELDS AND THE AT TEMPT TO REVISE THE DISTRIBUTION OF HOLDINGS Between 1914 and 1922 the cultivated area in the whole of Greece had shrunk greatly owing to the country’s involvement in the First World War and then in the disastrous Asia Minor campaign. After 1922 the impact of the land reform and the resettlement of the refugees is illustrated in a steady and rapid expansion of the cultivated land, particularly in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace, where it almost doubled. In Macedonia this expansion in cultivated land was from 275,000,000 str. in 1922 to 550,000,000 str. in 1931, and in Thrace during the same period from 72,000,000 str. to 148,000,000 str. The total area of cultivated land in the whole of Greece rose by 8–10 million str. between 1923 and 1939, an increase that an agricultural engineer, expert in such matters, attributed to the increased number of farmers in rural areas. The increased agricultural productivity noted during that period was therefore due to the individual work of the settled peasants and not capital investment, which he ²⁵ AEV, F.128, General Director’s office, No. 22503, 10 Sept. 1932, A. Domestichos to Agricultural District of Pieria.

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considered grossly inadequate.²⁶ According to the report of the Chairman of the RSC, over 700,000 refugees had been settled by the Commission by 1927. As Kaklamanos pointed out: ‘Macedonia has been completely transformed. In places where there was once uncultivated or waste land, we can now see field after field of rich crops.’²⁷ As Panagiotopoulos remarked, when it comes to development in the agricultural sector, the labour force comes first and capital investment follows.²⁸ The newly settled refugees tilled and made full use of land that had once been left fallow to grow a number of crops: tobacco and cotton, grapes and fruit, fodder crops. In other localities the presence of refugees from Asia Minor gave stockbreeding, poultry farming, and sericulture a significant boost. In its reports the Commission stated that the effect of refugee settlement on the agricultural production of the country was remarkable. It pointed to the fact that the total production of cereal crops in 1924 (the year the RSC commenced operations) was 544,729 tons. In 1926 it was 850,565 tons and in 1927 and 1928 over one million tons. The growth in production of wheat between those years was also remarkable: 210,226 tons in 1924 to 450,200 tons in 1928.²⁹ As a consequence, the importation of wheat was steadily decreasing: in 1924 wheat imports amounted to 407,161 tons, two years later, 313,605 tons. ‘These figures would indicate’, reported the Commission’s Vice-chairman, ‘that the agricultural refugees are already producing more than sufficient for the consumption of the whole refugee population.’³⁰ The figures for the tobacco industry were also impressive. Tobacco became the major export crop in the 1920s, and in tobaccco-growing areas, which over the period of the RSC’s work multiplied approximately ²⁶ K. B. Sakantanis, ‘To problima tis paragogikis gis’, Antaios (The Problem of Productive Land, Antaios) (Athens, 1945), 35. ²⁷ LN, Records of Plenary Meetings (1923–6), Verbatim Record of the Seventh Ordinary Meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations, held on 21 Sept. 1926, ‘Work Report of the Second Committee on the Work of the Refugee Settlement Commission’, 3. ²⁸ B. Panagiotopoulos, ‘To IH’ aiona stin Peloponnisso: i aporrophisi ton oikonomikon poron kai tou plithismou apo tin anaptyxi tis georgias’, in S. Asdrachas (ed.), I Oikonomiki domi ton balkanikon choron sta chronia tis Othomanikis Kyriarchias (‘The EighteenthCentury Peloponnese: The Absorption of Economic and Human Resources into Agricultural Development’, in The Economic Structure of the Balkan Countries in the years of Ottoman Domination) (Athens, 1979), 470–1. The author states that the undisputed increase in agricultural yields in the 18th and early 19th century in the Peloponnese was related to the increase in the amount of cultivated lands made available either through land reclamation in mountainous regions or irrigation works in valleys. These small-scale works were dependent on local topography and the availability of labour and were the result of the increase in the rural population, particularly in mountain villages where there was no longer enough land to go round. ²⁹ LN, Official Journal, Oct. 1928, 1691–2. ³⁰ LNA, C 124, J. Hope Simpson, ‘The Greek Refugee Settlement Commission’ [1928].

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sixfold, increase in production was impressive.The output of the tobaccoproducing regions—particularly eastern Macedonia and western Thrace—was high and almost reached pre-war yields, thanks to intensive cultivation by refugees who were experienced cultivators of tobacco in their country of origin. In 1922 production totalled 25,300 tons. In 1927 it increased to 61,700 tons, in 1928 to 54,180 tons, and in 1929 to 85,944 tons. Tobacco had long been grown in Macedonia and Thrace, but the refugees found that its production brought the maximum value from their tiny plots and so expanded its cultivation.³¹ In these two regions tobacco cultivation increased from 50 million stremmata to 138 million stremmata.³² Refugee cultivators produced more than two-thirds of the total tobacco exported between 1924 and 1928, thus bringing foreign exchange to the value of £9 million into the country during those years. Over the same period, the Treasury benefited from refugee tobacco cultivation to the value of £1.8 million. The Vice- Chairman of the RSC claimed: When the settlement is successfully concluded the League will be able to congratulate itself on one more instance of its beneficent work. And from the point of view of Greece it is already clear that what appeared to be a disaster of the first magnitude has been converted with the League’s help into a source of prosperity and of strength for the nation.³³

However, Greek economists and agriculturalists contested this view and pointed out the shortcomings in the agrarian sector.³⁴ The higher production of wheat and tobacco was still less than proportional to the higher increase in cultivated lands.³⁵ During the 1920s yields failed to reach 1914 levels. This was most striking in the case of cereals, which were grown throughout the country, mainly for subsistence, and which covered almost 75 per cent of the total cultivated area.³⁶ The effects of reduced cereal production coupled with increased demand brought about by the sharp increase in population began to make themselves felt in 1925, and reached crisis point between 1928 and 1930, when extreme weather conditions ³¹ About 14% of the refugee peasants were engaged in the cultivation of this cash crop, which produced quick results. Morgenthau, I Was Sent to Athens, 259. ³² Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 79. ³³ LNA, C 124, J. Hope Simpson, ‘The Greek Refugee Settlement Commission’ [1928]. ³⁴ Vergopoulos, To agrotiko zitima, 174. The author questions the contribution of the refugees to the commercialization of Greek agriculture; Sakellaropoulos, Thesmikos metaschimatismos kai anaptyxi. ³⁵ Nicos P. Mouzelis, Modern Greece: Facets of Underdevelopment (London, 1978), 23. ³⁶ C. Evelpidis, I Georgia tis Ellados (Agriculture of Greece) (Athens, 1944), 42; Kostis, Agrotiki Oikonomia, 39–47. According to 1928 statistics out of 15,900,000 str. cultivated in that year, cereals took up 11,400,000 str.

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brought about the failure of the entire cereal crop in many areas, chiefly in Macedonia, and led to a severely reduced harvest elsewhere.³⁷Thus, despite the increase in production of cereals by one-third between 1922 and 1928, Greece still had to import over half of the wheat and flour she consumed and between one-sixth and one-third of other cereals; home production was not keeping up with the needs of the country.³⁸ Greece paid between £4 million and £8 million a year for cereal imports, a serious blow to the nation’s balance of payments.³⁹ During the crisis, bread consumption rose from 900,000 tons in 1929 to 1,065,000 tons in 1933. Bread was the staple diet of the Greek population throughout the inter-war period.⁴⁰ The agrarian policy’s failure to achieve self-sufficiency in the production of wheat and cereals—despite the increase in land under cultivation and the number of farmers involved in production—led to doubts being cast on the economic efficiency of the RSC’s land reform and distribution policies. Among the conservative opponents of the agrarian policy, as Mazower indicates, these criticisms were not limited to economic outcomes but were an expression of the ideology of the anti-Venizelists who considered that the expansion of co-operatives, as a consequence of the land reforms, facilitated the spread of communistic ideas among the peasants and ‘threatened family cohesion and even Greek society itself ’.⁴¹

THE STATE RESPONDS: THE AGRARIAN POLICY OF THE VENIZELOS GOVERNMENT The ensuing crisis led to the adoption of measures and the setting up of mechanisms aimed at protecting cereal producers, safeguarding the nation’s supply of food, and setting aside sufficient foreign exchange to ³⁷ Kostis, Agrotiki Oikonomia, 147; The country’s need for cereals had in the mean time increased because the rate of births was high in the regions where the refugees were settled and in the decade 1925–35 exceeded the rate of deaths, thus contributing to the increase of the population of Greece from 6,204,684 in 1928 to 6,933,000 in 1936. For demographic trends between 1922 and 1936, see Valaoras, To Dimographikon Problima, 17–18, 47–61. ³⁸ Agricultural yields of other crops such as fodder crops, grapes, and legumes was low as well and did not meet the expectations of the policy-makers. ³⁹ Kostis, Agrotiki Oikonomia, 147. Imports of wheat and flour represented, in terms of value, 19.8% of the total imports in 1913, 36% in 1923, and 26.6% in 1926. ⁴⁰ E. Karpodini-Dimitriadi, ‘Problimata paragogis kai katanalosis sitou kai artou kata tin krisimi dekaetia 1925–1935’ (Problems Posed by the Production and Consumption of Wheat and Bread during the Critical Decade 1925–1935), in ‘O artos imon’. Apo to Sitari sto psomi (‘Our daily bread’: From Wheat to Bread), ETBA Cultural Foundation (Athens, 1992), 292–305. ⁴¹ Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 79, 88.

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pay for cereal crop imports. The government introduced interventionist policies to support the production of wheat in 1927, when progress in rationalization and investment proved slow. A. Papanastassiou, the Minister of Agriculture in the Zaimis coalition Cabinet, introduced tariffs and a domestic price support mechanism intended to bring about parity in the price of domestic and imported wheat in an attempt to protect cereal-growers. An important politician on the left of the Venizelist camp, Papanastassiou had played a pivotal role in the implementation of land reforms. The Central Committee for the Protection of Domestic Wheat (KEPES) was set up the following year by the Ministry of Agriculture to protect wheat-producers from dependence on merchants.⁴² On his return to the political arena in spring 1928, Venizelos made no bones about his desire to boost the national economy through improvements in the agrarian sector. Greece’s balance of payment deficit, coupled with demographic pressures and the social problems facing the country, meant that priority had to be given to tackling the problems faced by the nation’s agriculture sector. Families could not make ends meet because of the low yields of their tiny plots, and politicians turned their attention to making better and immediate use of the natural resources of the country’s northern plains and the agrarian sector in general. As we have seen, the Venizelos government floated large loans in both 1928 and 1931 to finance large-scale drainage and reclamation projects in Macedonia and Thrace. According to the schedule drawn up in 1928 for drainage and irrigation projects in the Axios and Strymon plains, work should have been completed by 1932, and with the scourge of malaria now a thing of the past, fertile alluvial land suited to intensive, mechanized cultivation methods should then have been made immediately available for the settlement of refugee families. Unfortunately, only 100,000 of a total of 2 million stremmata had actually been drained by 1932, and it was soon apparent that plans for introducing modern farming methods to the marshy plains of Macedonia would have to be postponed.⁴³ In 1930 the Ministry of Agriculture introduced a package of measures— including land consolidation in the northern provinces—designed to improve farming techniques and increase wheat yields so as to render the country self-sufficient in terms of cereal crops. Venizelos had repeatedly ⁴² Ibid. 89–91. ⁴³ I. Pepelassi-Minoglou, ‘O Venizelos kai to xeno kefalaio (1918–1932)’ (Venizelos and Foreign Capital, 1918–1932), Proceedings of the Congress on Eleftherios Venizelos (Athens, 1988), 148.

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stressed that his economic policies would centre on developing and modernizing the agrarian sector. However, it had become apparent by 1930 that the fragmentation of the more fertile land constituted a serious obstacle to modernization in the sector. Indeed, doubts were voiced as to the desirability of the land distribution policy within the Ministry of Agriculture itself. In fact, it was the way in which these fragmented smallholdings were being cultivated that was to blame for low productivity. Farmers in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace could be divided into three categories depending on their chief crop: 75 per cent of the total grew cereals; 15 per cent tobacco; and the remaining 10 per cent was made up of marketgardeners or grape, olive, and fruit growers. The largest of these groups devoted an average of four-fifths of their land to growing wheat and other cereals—mainly for subsistence—while the remaining land was set aside for cash crops such as tobacco and vegetables with a high market value, in order to supplement their income. Although family members generally tilled and hoed their fields themselves, and took care of their own sowing and harvesting, the cost of threshing and transportation was still prohibitively high in most villages, and made it extremely difficult for most rural families to get by. Moreover, since tobacco brought in a considerably higher gross income per stremma than cereal crops and most families could not produce enough cereals because of the limited size of the holdings, many farmers—particularly refugees—tried to increase their income by devoting more stremmata to tobacco cultivation. This was certainly the case in the mountain villages of western Macedonia, where the majority of plots were unsuited to cereal crops and inadequate to cover for the needs of the families who settled on them. The situation was somewhat different in the fertile plains of Serres and Kavalla, where the refugees’ plots were so small that they had no choice but to grow high-value crops, mainly tobacco. Greece’s increased tobacco production during the 1920s was hailed as a great success, but the country paid dearly after the onset of world recession in 1929. Cereal crops brought in a significantly lower gross income per stremma than tobacco, and in most cases plots were too small for cereal production to meet a family’s needs.⁴⁴ Consequently, an increasing number of farmers, particularly refugees, dedicated more of their land to tobacco in order to increase their earnings. But more cash crops meant decreased cereal cultivation, and the fall in tobacco prices in the years after 1929 hit many refugee families very hard indeed. Thus it was that despite ⁴⁴ ESV, 38th Session, 17 Feb. 1930, 650–65.

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the increase in the amount of fertile land in the north of the country and the vast increase in the number of farmers, the cereal harvests were so poor in the late 1920s that they served to further depress the economy. The solution lay in the introduction of modern, mechanized farming methods. Only thus could cereal cultivation be rendered more efficient, but since such methods could only be applied to continuous fields of not less than 20 stremmata, it was imperative that the permanent allocation of plots to refugees was considerably less fragmentary than the temporary distribution had been. Epameinondas Kypriades, the Director of Applied Agricultural Practices at the Ministry of Agriculture, introduced a campaign in 1930 to revise the principles governing the ‘distribution of holdings’ to refugees and landless cultivators in Macedonia and Thrace; although Kypriades failed, this was the first attempt to consolidate fragmentary holdings. Kypriades’s proposal centred on increasing productivity, particularly of cereals, by replacing the RSC’s old-fashioned, non-mechanized farming methods by more efficient, economical, mechanized methods. Of course, since modern machinery worked best on large expanses of land—and would bring few improvements to Greece’s fragmentary holdings—it was imperative that the RSC abandoned its principle of dividing holdings according to different classes of land, and thereby ensured that holdings were not divided among different sites. It was proposed that the land be redistributed, and that the old system of equal shares in all categories of land be replaced by one ensuring that each new plot was of equal value. This was to be achieved via a formula for balancing out the size and quality of each plot; in other words, shares were to be equal in value but not necessarily of equal size. It was also proposed that farmers be classified according to their means: the machinery, equipment, and livestock in their possession. Although the scheme received the support of Spyridis, the Minister of Agriculture himself, and the agriculturalists employed by the Ministry of Agriculture, it failed to receive parliamentary approval. Spyridis analysed the programme of the Ministry of Agriculture in an interview he gave to newspaper Estia. The most important aspects of it concerned introduction of mechanical means for the increase of the cereal yields, completion of hydraulic works, and the provision of agricultural credit.⁴⁵ ⁴⁵ Estia, 14–15 Feb. 1930. AKDK, F27, Minutes of the meeting of the agriculturists of the Ministry of Agriculture [1930], signed by E. Kypriadis, K. Koudesis, M. Troulinos, P. Papadopoulos, I. Mantzikos, A. Tsokalis, I. Konstantinidis, G. Tsimakopoulos, and C. Papageorgiou.

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Technical, economic, and social considerations led both the RSC and the Association of Greek Agriculturists of Macedonia and Thrace (hereafter SEGMT) to regard these proposals with great reservation.⁴⁶ The latter organization claimed that the low-productivity exploitation of land and the general wretchedness of farmers in Macedonia were direct consequences of the inadequacy of smallholdings, the limited capital, and the lack of systematic, mechanized farming methods. It was further realized that both refugee and native farmers were disorientated because of the uncertainty created by the non-finalization of land distribution. Moreover, they argued that fragmentation in Macedonia was of secondary importance and, in fact, a necessary evil because the distribution of plots over different areas was a precautionary measure to protect the farmers from unfavourable topographical and weather conditions. A dry spell, for example, could be disastrous for the higher fields whereas it was of little consequence to lower lying lands. I. Karamanos, General Director of Agriculture at the time, who had wide experience in the matter, opposed the new system of land distribution, pointing out that ‘were plots to be distributed contiguously, the first adverse weather would destroy all farmers with holdings in that particular affected area and would create a social issue within the village and civil strife which would be fanned by demagogues whilst the distribution system would collapse like a castle of cards.’⁴⁷ In a meeting between the RSC and the Ministry of Agriculture on 4 March 1930, Pistolakis, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Agriculture, in order to persuade the Commission to accept the new system of distribution, pointed out that with the increased number of the technical staff the ministry expected distributions would be completed in sixteen months at the maximum. Sir John Simpson, however, who had wide experience in the matter, was in disagreement. He emphasized that the new scheme, however good in theory, was not realistic and, were it to be applied, it would take several years to implement.⁴⁸ To determine a fair distribution of plots equal in value but differing in extent in a relatively short period of time was not feasible. As it affected almost the entire country and qualified agriculturists and surveyors were relatively few, such an undertaking was doomed to failure. Were such ⁴⁶ SEGMT consisted of D. Avrasoglou, A. Mozer, I. Palaiologou, D. Tsapoulis, G. Papachristou, C. Vasmatzidis, Vosniakos, I. Papadakis, and K. Panagiotopoulos. ⁴⁷ AKDK, F27, ‘Note concerning the distribution of lands’ by I. Karamanos, 1930. ⁴⁸ LNA, C 127, ‘Notes on a meeting held at the Ministry of Agriculture on the afternoon of 4 March 1930’, Sir John Hope Simpson to General Headquarters.

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a scheme to be introduced, the gravest objections would be raised by farmers, both refugees and natives, whose interests it was intended to serve. The Commission (RSC) further pointed out that the discontent which would grow in the minds of those—refugees and native farmers alike—who had already received permanent plots, would raise serious political issues. Kypriades’s proposal was strongly opposed by the RSC as being based on ‘quite unjustifiable assumptions’. First, the average basic plot in most areas did not exceed 40 stremmata. A necessary prerequisite for cultivation by mechanical means was the formation of an association by farmers who obtained contiguous plots to secure an extensive area of, say, 500 stremmata. If this could happen, the size of individual plots would be rendered irrelevant, as well as the argument that the whole of the holding of each refugee should lie in one area. Second, it was wiser agricultural practice to instruct the farmer to obtain the kind of machinery which was best suited to his land. Third, the argument that it was more profitable to employ a contractor instead of an animal, which costs 600 drachmas per month in food, was ‘fallacious’. If the farm animals were to be replaced, no farmyard manure would be available to fertilize the fields and the returns would diminish. To replenish the soil with the nutrients taken up by the plants, artificial fertilizers would have to be used. But uninterrupted use of fertilizers produced lower returns and farmyard manure was necessary in order to ensure stable returns and increase. So, far from desiring to reduce the number of cattle in a village, the object of anyone who had the interest of the village at heart should have been the increase of livestock of all kinds, except perhaps goats. This had been the policy of the RSC and it was with this purpose in mind that successful attempts had been made to induce the refugees on the land to increase the cultivation of fodder crops. This would have made up for the pasture lands which had been tilled by and for the use of the refugees. In most Western countries, cultivation of fodder crops in fields used mainly for the growing of cereals was practised in rotation at least once every two years to restore nitrogenous elements and to enable the cultivator to clean his field. Were draught animals to be replaced by mechanical means, there would be no need to grow fodder crops. But maintenance of some animals was also important because they provided dairy products and meat for the consumption of the villagers, and in some cases they even provided supplementary income. From a political point of view, the most important reason why the RSC found Kypriades’s proposal impractical and rejected it outright was

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related to the psychology of the Greek peasant. The soil in most villages consisted of at least three or four different classes. The land value varied according to class, and distribution of plots in the same area meant that a peasant would receive 20 stremmata of the first class, or 60 stremmata of the third class, because the value was taken into consideration in fixing the area of every holding. Though these two holdings might be estimated as being equal in value, the peasants were very reluctant—if not opposed—to accept this, because they all preferred to have a share in firstclass lands and they could not understand that it was fair that one family should have 60 stremmata—even of lands inferior in quality—and another had to be limited to a plot of only 20 stremmata. Consequently, the Commission found the new scheme unrealistic. Sir John Hope Simpson stated: It may be accepted as an axiom that no distribution is possible except with the consent of those among whom the land is to be distributed. The Survey Department has a very wide experience of this question, and it is by force of circumstances that it has arrived at its present method of distribution, which is the only method acceptable to the refugees who get the land.

Distribution of plots in different areas was also adopted to protect the villagers from unfavourable natural conditions. Climatic conditions favoured one class and plagued another; dry seasons benefited lowlands, for example, while the high lands suffered. ‘The distribution of holdings so that in each holding there is a piece of the various categories of land into which a village is divided, creates a kind of automatic assurance against climatic and other misfortunes. This is an important fact from the point of view of the small holder.’⁴⁹ Venizelos, in a meeting with the RSC, drew their attention to the fact that the Supervising Committees’ findings on the permanent distributions which had been completed up to 1930 showed that most often a farmer’s share was fragmented into ten separate plots of land; as this was not in compliance with the Agrarian Law, efforts should be made on the part of all authorities involved to induce the refugees to receive all their land in one lot instead of taking a number of small plots scattered about the village. Domestichos pointed out that, although the agricultural bureaux had tried to attain this goal, it was found impossible in practice as each of the refugees was determined to have a portion of each category ⁴⁹ LNA, C 124, Sir John Hope Simpson (Vice-President of RSC) to A. Papadatos, 27 Feb. 1930.

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of land. Pallis said that in all villages there were at least five different categories of land and in some villages as many as ten, from each of which the refugees wanted their share. Venizelos answered that this desire had to be repressed and the refugees induced to accept their lots in one class of land wherever this was possible. He added that economically the system of dividing a holding into a number of small plots scattered throughout the village had proved to be undesirable, and that while efforts were being made in other countries to unify holdings, it was foolish that in Greece new problems should be created by their division.⁵⁰ The RSC further pointed out that an essential feature of the rural resettlement in Greece was the substitution of intensive for extensive cultivation: Almost everywhere else, the immigrants arriving in a country to be colonised have been able to cultivate the land on a large scale, and thus to make up by the extent of the land at their disposal for lack of experience and of capital. In Greece, the contrary has been the case. Two essential facts, the small size of the holdings and the poverty of the colonists, have made labour the principal element of production.⁵¹

Apart from the economic and political objections put forward by the Commission, the government was bound to the Convention on the Liquidation of the RSC of 24 January 1930, in which provision was made ‘for legalisation by the Government of the distribution which the Cadastral Service of the RSC had made to that date’. Thus, even if the government had the intention to commence a survey in refugee areas where distribution had not yet been made by the services of the RSC, it would have been very difficult to realize its plan because a different principle would have ruled the resettlement policy elsewhere. This was in spirit contrary to the Convention, according to which all refugees were to receive equal treatment, and was expected to be strongly opposed by the latter.⁵² As a result, the scheme was abandoned and the plan to legislate against the principles that governed distribution of lands to cultivators was foiled. However, an attempt was made in 1931 to curb further fragmentation. The Ministry of Agriculture instructed all civil authorities involved with distribution to restrict fragmentation to no more than three plots and ⁵⁰ LNA, C 124, Procès-verbal of a Meeting between Venizelos, Papadatos, Eddy, Sir John Hope Simpson, Lambros, Pallis, and Domestichos, 10 Feb. 1930. ⁵¹ LN, Twenty-Seventh Quarterly Report of the RSC, C.444.M.202.1930.II Geneva, 25 Aug. 1930, 1476–7. ⁵² LNA, C 124, Sir John Hope Simpson (Vice-President of RSC) to A. Papadatos, 27 Feb. 1930.

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to allocate as few areas as possible to the cultivation of cash crops. Finally, the Supervising Committees were to refrain from recommending the ratification of distributions which did not comply with the above.⁵³ However, there were other factors that affected productivity. Not only how much land the refugees were granted, but where they were settled and allocated land was also of critical importance. Indeed, the shortage of land led to some refugees being settled in areas where farming simply was not practicable; on mountain slopes, for example, or in areas where dynamite had to be used to break up the soil. At the same time, many inappropriate allocations were made, especially in the first years, when refugees were settled hastily. Refugees from coastal areas, who had made their living from the sea in their old homelands, were installed inland or in mountainous areas, and vice versa, and townsfolk and peasants from mountainous areas in the Pontus were resettled in marshy plains which they simply did not know how to cultivate efficiently: inexperienced cereal producers, they could not even produce enough to meet their own needs and, unaccustomed as they were to the climate, many fell victim to disease.⁵⁴ The fact that considerable numbers of refugees with extensive knowledge and experience of farming procedures remained unsettled, or were living in wretched conditions, also led to reduced productivity, while others lucky enough to have been provided with land, equipment, and technical advice still failed to improve their standard of living. The Commission’s nineteenth Quarterly Report (on the progress of the settlement project up to 30 June 1928) is particularly revealing in its classification of agricultural refugees settled in Macedonia into three categories. The first category—representing a third of the whole—were the contented families who were in a position to pay off their debts to the Commission and enjoy ‘successful village life’; the second category— representing 40 per cent of the settled refugees—consisted of those who had failed to do as well as might have been expected ‘owing to a lack of frugal spirit, or a want of agricultural skill’, and who consequently needed further support. The remaining quarter were those who had failed to ⁵³ GAK, AYG, TYYG, F.371, A. Papadatos to all Agricultural Bureaux of the country, Inspection Offices of Agriculture and TYYG, Athens, 31 Mar. 1931. ⁵⁴ LN, Seventeenth Quarterly Report, C.51.M.25.1928; ESV, 63rd Session, 23 June 1924, 428; for morbidity and death rates among the refugees see LN, Fourth Quarterly Report on the operations of the RSC, C.767.M.269, 25 Nov. 1924, 4–5; LN, Fifth Quarterly Report on the operations of the RSC, C.112.M.53, 25 Feb. 1925, 8; LN, Twenty-Second Quarterly Report on the operations of the RSC, C.214.M.79, 27 May 1929, 11–12.

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make any progress at all, despite the provision of animals, agricultural tools, and seeds, a failure the Commission attributed in part to personal qualities—few of the refugees in this group had farmed in their old homelands—and in part to natural disasters. Sir John Hope Simpson had this to say: ‘Hunger is a frequent visitor to their homes; theirs is a hand-to-mouth existence, made up of loans from the moneylender or casual work with their neighbours, and the cultivation of their own fields is neglected.’⁵⁵ As late as the end of November 1929, the RSC estimated that despite its obligation to do so, the government still had to settle between 3,000 and 9,000 agriculturist refugee families. An RSC Council report to the Financial Committee of the League of Nations contained the following appraisal of the refugee problem: ‘the settlement of agricultural refugees by the RSC is not yet complete, and even after all the funds have been spent, a good deal will remain to be done before they can be considered satisfactorily settled’.⁵⁶ The Ministry of Agriculture, the KEPES, and the League of Nations all called upon the government to take action to revitalize the economy and encourage farmers to stay in the countryside. The Venizelos government persisted with its interventionist policies, the most important of which was the foundation of the Agricultural Bank in 1929, on the recommendation of the RSC, to provide farmers with loans at reduced rates of interest and provide further support for cereal farmers. The Bank suspended agricultural debts owed to private individuals for five years in 1930, and this action combined with the introduction of improved wheat strains after 1930, the introduction of new crop rotation systems, and increased cultivation in the north following irrigation projects led to wheat yields recovering as early as 1933. Indeed, following the crisis of 1932, more and more Greek technocrats, senior bankers, and supporters of mainstream neo-classical economic theory came to see state intervention in the economy as a practical solution to the country’s socio-economic ills.⁵⁷ The Populists proved every bit as interventionist as the Venizelos administration, even extending the ambit of institutions created during the Venizelist era. Three times more wheat was produced in 1939 than in 1925, which impacted positively on domestic manufacturing. In fact, the state’s policies of protecting cereal growers in order to make the nation economically self-sufficient led to Greece enjoying an economic ⁵⁵ LN, Nineteenth Quarterly Report of the RSC, C.406.M.128, 22 Aug. 1928, 4. ⁵⁶ LNA, C 124.1.L2 (B), Sir John Hope Simpson to Finlayson, 6 Nov. 1929. ⁵⁷ M. Psalidopoulos, I Krisi tou 1929 kai oi Ellines Oikonomologoi Symvoli stin Istoria tis Oikonomikis Skepsis stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou (Athens, 1989), 403–11.

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recovery—particularly in the agrarian sector—well before other European countries. In conclusion, the fact that national and political objectives, such as promoting homogeneity in multi-ethnic Macedonia and preventing civil unrest, were given priority over economic ones partially explains why the modernization of Greek agriculture was such a lengthy affair, and why the country took so long to industrialize and develop a capitalist economy. Although Greek agriculture undoubtedly improved during the 1920s, the fact was that the sector could not be rationalized or thoroughly modernized and mechanized, given the existing institutional framework. The international economic crisis ushered in by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, coupled with increasing global competition, made it exceedingly difficult for Greece to increase agricultural exports, led to an international tobacco crisis, further reduced farmers’ incomes, and aggravated Greece’s serious balance of payments deficit. Faced with all these problems, it was clear that larger-scale state intervention would be required if the work of the Commission was to be consolidated and built upon.⁵⁸ The government was also concerned that farmers would flock into the cities if it proved impossible for them to make a living on their allotted plots, where they would swell the ranks of the casual labourers and the unemployed, the social groups most likely to espouse radical and communist ideals. Consequently, the Venizelos government’s agricultural policy aimed to increase the smallholders’ income to an adequate level, encourage farmers to diversify their cultivation so as not to be over-dependent on tobacco, and support wheat producers. In Mazower’s words: in 1931 the Liberals ‘realized that the burden of relieving rural indebtedness would have to be borne by domestic rather than foreign creditors’.⁵⁹ Only a year later, the state was bankrupt. The measures paid off, however: cereal production increased in 1933, and imports were cut from 660,000 tons in 1931 to 215,000 in 1934.⁶⁰ The benefits to Greek agriculture of the protectionist measures introduced after 1929 also proved a boost to the development of industrial capitalism. Agricultural performance improved to such an extent after 1933, particularly in the northern provinces, that it encouraged short–term industrial growth which, coupled with the effects of depreciation, and default on foreign debt, led to the Greek economy ⁵⁸ LN, The Agricultural Crisis, i (Geneva, 1931), 188. ⁵⁹ Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 133. ⁶⁰ Bournova and Progoulakis, ‘O Agrotikos Kosmos, 1830–1940’ (The Agricultural World, 1830–1940), in V. Kremmidas (ed.), Eisagogi sti Neoelliniki Oikonomiki Istoria (Introduction to Modern Greek Economic History) (Athens, 1999), 88.

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recovering by the end of that year.⁶¹ Mouzelis stated that ‘despite these shortcomings and the very low per capita income of the post land reform cultivator, there is no doubt that the break-up of the highly inefficient chiftlik properties did contribute to the further commercialisation of Greek agriculture and, indirectly, gave a major boost to the development of industrial capitalism.’⁶²

THE QUESTION OF PASTURE L ANDS AND THE IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL SET TLEMENT ON ANIMAL HUSBANDRY Animal husbandry, which thrived under the chiftlik system, fell into decline as a result of the agrarian reform, the expropriation and distribution of chiftlik properties to landless farmers and refugees, and, finally, the abolition of the damka system. The last was a traditional system under which communal arable lands lying fallow in alternate years were made available to semi-nomadic shepherds, mainly Sarakatsans and Vlachs.⁶³ In the 1920s, as the extent of pasture lands diminished in direct proportion to the increase of cultivated lands, fees for grazing rights rose sharply and severely afflicted the middle economic bracket of graziers.⁶⁴ Furthermore, restricted pastures led to over-grazing and animal husbandry suffered irreparable damage. Under these conditions, animal grazing became an agricultural preoccupation in competition with, rather than complementary to land cultivation, as it had formerly been. In a bid to forestall the imminent crisis, both the RSC and the Ministry of Agriculture encouraged the development of domestic husbandry, mainly sheep and goats, for the provision of immediate family needs, on communal pasture lands. During the 1920s, however, the question of communal pasture lands, that is, the question as to which authority would have rights of ownership over the pasture lands, became a complicated ⁶¹ Mazower, Inter-War Economic Crisis, 238–50, 301. ⁶² Mouzelis, Modern Greece, 23. ⁶³ Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece, 322. ⁶⁴ In order to afford some protection to the graziers, the government intervened with a series of laws concerning pasture land rentals (e.g. ND 17/23 Peri enoikiostassiou boskon—decree on pastureland rentals) whereby it was forbidden to evict graziers who in the past had used pastures for their own flocks and who had been punctual in the payment of grazing rights.

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issue. Much of the pasture land formerly owned by Muslim and Bulgarian exchanged populations was being claimed as exploitable public land by no fewer than four claimants: the National Bank, as rightful administrators; the Air Defence Ministry; the local communities through the Ministry for the Interior; and the RSC.⁶⁵ The last rested its claims on the term of the Protocol of Geneva which stipulated that all former Muslim properties were to be set aside for the exclusive purpose of resettling Greek Asia Minor and Thracian refugees. The pasture lands which under Ottoman law were common property of the Muslim, Slavophone, or mixed communities, after the Balkan Wars were declared communal property and, as such, were subject to the law governing communal revenue which was administered by the communes themselves under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior.⁶⁶ This, however, was the view held by the Ministry of the Interior, while other parties interpreted the legal position concerning the ownership of these pastures in a different manner. These land disputes concerned the pasture land of ex-Muslim and mixed communities mainly in Macedonia, where it was deemed that the pasture lands should come under the administration of the Exchange Bureau (Ypiresia Antallagis). The latter supported the view that the lands in question be handed over to be administered by the National Bank of Greece, which acted as guarantor for all exchangeable properties in Greece. The Ministry of the Interior, however, claimed that this argument was legally invalid in view of the fact that most communities had not at any given time been entirely depleted of inhabitants, and therefore did not constitute vacated lands which required to be considered by the state but rather, the exchange of incoming and outgoing populations did not at any time result in the ‘interruption of communal life’. Consequently, and in accordance with the Article 1 of Law 2074 of 13 March 1920 regarding the communal lands in the New Provinces, the communities in question reserved all rights over former communal Muslim pasture lands.⁶⁷ This interpretation was supported by the Ministry of Agriculture and by the Political Bureau in accordance with the recommendation of the Legal Council (No. 184 of 26 ⁶⁵ The National Bank of Greece claimed these pasture lands as guarantor for the exchangeable properties in Greece and the Air Ministry as guarantor for the state properties in the New Lands. The purpose of these two institutions was to ensure the maximum extent of these properties. Evidently they were not interested in either the progress of the communities or the agricultural refugees. ⁶⁶ LNA, C 127, Note on Pasture Lands, 3 Mar. 1928. ⁶⁷ C. A. Kossyva, Nomothesia Mousoulmanikon kai antallaximon, 356–9.

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November 1926).⁶⁸ As the RSC, however, insisted on its own claims of rightful ownership of these pasture lands, the Ministry of the Interior hastened to point out that its intention to distribute these lands to the respective communities was in effect identical with that of the RSC, which was first and foremost to accommodate the needs of animal husbandry of either mixed or entirely refugee communities.⁶⁹ Moreover, in accordance with Articles 4 and 6 of Law 2074 of 13 March 1920, the communities reserved their right to hire out pasture land to the highest bidder and to use the profits thus gained for communal purposes such as the construction and maintenance of schools, roads, and other community buildings.⁷⁰ The RSC’s claims found further support in the Legislative Decree of 15 May 1926, which acknowledged the Commission as the rightful and sole administrator of all lands on which it had already resettled or had planned to settle refugees. This decree further invalidated Circular No. 112057 of 1925 on which the Air Ministry had rested its claims for the exploitation of such pasture lands as had not yet been distributed to refugees.⁷¹ The Air Ministry, however, continued with its exploitation of unused pasture lands in western Thrace and Macedonia. The RSC, in turn, protested, demanding that the exploitation of lands which were irrefutably theirs to administer (according to the Geneva Protocol) should stop being exploited by any authority other than itself. The RSC Vice-President Sir John Campbell argued that although some lands were not yet being used by refugees, this was due to the fact that the latter lacked the necessary equipment and the financial means either to cultivate the land or use it as pasture land. Furthermore, some of these disputed lands had been left fallow, as the agricultural practice of the times demanded. Without these lands, it was claimed, the share of plots per refugee family would be below the minimum required to ensure the refugees’ self-sufficiency.⁷² The Ministry of Agriculture, finding the RSC’s claims the soundest, recommended that the Air Ministry instruct its local agents (oikonomikous eforous) to refrain from further exploitation of the lands in question.⁷³ Feeling reassured as to their role of sole ⁶⁸ AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 54114, T. Petimezas, Minister of the Interior, to RSC, Athens 27 Oct. 1926. ⁶⁹ AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 59003, T. Petimezas to RSC, Athens, 6 Nov. 1926. ⁷⁰ Kossyva, Nomothesia Mousoulmanikon kai antallaximon, 356–9. ⁷¹ AYE/1927/A/4, No. 151629, Dept. of Settlement, Minister A. Anastasiadis to Air Ministry, 16 Nov. 1926. ⁷² AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 37512, Sir John Campbell to Air Ministry, 23 Nov. 1926. ⁷³ AYE/1927/A/4, No. 151629, Ministry of Agriculture, Dept. of Settlement, Minister A. Anastasiadis to Air Ministry, 16 Nov. 1926.

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administrator, the RSC proceeded to rent out pasture lands to graziers with a view to using the monies so gained for the construction of essential works for the refugee communities.⁷⁴ In complete disregard for the above recommendations, the Air Ministry continued to dispute the right of the RSC to gain income from lands which, the former insisted, had been handed over to the Commission not for exploitation but for the sole purpose of being distributed among the refugees. In the Air Ministry’s view, such lands as had not been distributed to refugees came under the administration of the state, because the latter and not the RSC was bound by the Conventions to recompense former Muslim or Slavophone owners. Consequently, it instructed its local agents to collect rents from graziers, irrespective of whether the latter had already paid for the use of the land to the RSC.⁷⁵ The effects were disastrous. Graziers were made bankrupt, evicted, or even imprisoned on non-payment of the second rent, and husbandry in Macedonia was thrown into confusion. A thousand such cases were reported to Sir John Hope Simpson by Karamanos, the General Director of the Colonization of Macedonia, in January 1928, including a large number where the RSC’s lessees were imprisoned because they were charged a second rent, which they were unable to pay. In one case in fact the Commission was sued by refugees settled by its own offices, and lost the case. But a more typical case of the complicated question of pasture lands in Macedonia is the following, which was again cited by Karamanos, in a conversation with the Council of the RSC and A. Papadatos, Under-Secretary of State. A shepherd in the Kilkis area who owned about 2,000 head of sheep for many years grazed his flock on rented winter pasture lands in the area, which were suddenly auctioned by the Bank in November 1928 and he was asked to pay a sum of 167 drachmas per head. Occurring at the time of year that it did, the charge for the winter pastures in effect amounted to extortion. Unable to find alternative pastures, the shepherd was forced to sell part of his flock in order to stay out of prison.⁷⁶ In December 1926 the RSC’s Vice-Chairman, Sir John Campbell, protested to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and asked for their intervention ⁷⁴ AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 37512, Sir John Campbell to Air Ministry, 23 Nov. 1926. ⁷⁵ AYE/1927/A/4, No. 29240, Z. Papathanasiou, President of the Aerial Defence, Dept. of Public Lands, to Minister of Agriculture, Dept. of Settlement, Athens, 10 Jan. 1927. ⁷⁶ LNA, C 125. J.H.S. Private Files of John Hope Simpson: ‘Notes on a conversation between A. Papadatos, Undersecretary of State, and the Council of the, RSC, at the Offices of the Commission on the morning of the 15th January 1929.’

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in order to bring an end to the dispute.⁷⁷ The Ministry recognized the RSC’s rights to rent out part of the pasture lands which had been handed over to it (according to Articles 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 12 of the Decree of 15 May 1926) but which had not as yet been distributed to refugees. They further recommended to the Air Ministry that it should act in accordance with this decision.⁷⁸ The latter, however, refused to compromise and demanded that the issue be settled by the Cabinet (Ypourgiko Symboulio), which proposal the Commission readily accepted.⁷⁹ The government’s tardiness in resolving the problem left the Commission little choice but to bring the matter before the League of Nations: There may possibly be a question as to our rights in communal pastures, as to which we are having a good deal of difficulty with the government at the moment. It seems to me undoubted that we shall have to inform the government that unless the matter is decided to our satisfaction before the next meeting of the League of Nations, we shall be compelled to take the matter there for decision, under article XII of the [Geneva] Protocol which empowers us to do this.⁸⁰

A few months later, the Minister of Agriculture, A. Papanastassiou, asked all interested parties to assign representatives in order to settle the question of pasture lands at a joint meeting under its own supervision. In April 1927, the Ministry of Agriculture decided in favour of the attitude of the RSC and instructed the Air Ministry to transfer all the lands in question to the Commission, which should administer them at its own discretion.⁸¹ On 2 March 1927, Hill and Pallis discussed the matter with Minister of the Interior Maris in order to ascertain his views on the question of the disputed pasture lands in Macedonia, Thrace, etc. Maris argued that these lands, having been declared communal property, could not be regarded as being included among the state properties, private, or exchangeable estates transferred by the Protocol of Geneva to the Commission, the administration of whose revenues belonged to the latter. He further explained that, according to the law, refugee communes ⁷⁷ AYE, 1927/A/4, RSC No. 40912, John Campbell to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 22 Dec. 1926. ⁷⁸ AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 15025, Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Air Ministry, the Minister of Agriculture, and the Political Bureau of the Prime Minister, Athens, 5 Jan. 1927. ⁷⁹ AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 2971, Sir John Hope Simpson to the Ministry of Agriculture, 8 Feb. 1927. ⁸⁰ LNA, C 127, J. Hope Simpson to Felkin, 19 Jan. 1928. ⁸¹ AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 175653, A. Papanastassiou to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 21 Feb. 1927; AYE, 1927/A/4, No. 20735, A. Papanastassiou to Air Ministry, 4 Apr. 1927.

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should be placed in the same position as regards their rights to administer the revenues from communal property. A distinction by which indigenous communes would be free to administer the communal revenues while refugee communes would be obliged to have them administered by the RSC, apart from being contrary to the principle of communal self-government, would prompt additional problems and the reaction of the refugees. He recognized, however, the right of the RSC to administer half of the communal pasture in the cases in which the Commission had erected new refugee villages within the area of an indigenous commune, and he proposed that a special law should resolve this matter. Finally, he suggested that a special committee composed of delegates of the Ministries of the Interior and Agriculture and of the RSC should draw up a draft bill for submission to the Chamber.⁸² The question, however, had become so complicated and such serious difficulties had arisen in many parts of Macedonia and Thrace, that the situation was largely unresolved, while the government was obliged to issue separate orders to settle individual cases. Of the 701 pastures under the administration of the RSC in Macedonia, 538, with an income of 12 million drachmas, were classified as communal, that is, as belonging exclusively to refugee communities. In 1929, of the 12 million drachmas in total, 7 million had been collected, while the remaining 5 million were in the process of being collected; and 1,300,000 drachmas of the revenues had already been spent in the construction of public utility works. A further sixteen pastures posed a problem with the disposal of their 689,399 drachmas annual income, as these pastures belonged to the RSC and not to the communities. These sixteen pastures were among the lands handed over to the Commission as security for the first loan at the commencement of its operation, with the intention that they should be settled, but they proved to be entirely unsuitable for agricultural settlement. The Commission collected and deposited the annual income with the GDCM, which was instructed ‘to apply these funds to the construction of schools, roads, and other public services as if the pastures were commune’. Thirty-four pastures were deemed the property of mixed communities but administered by the RSC, while another nineteen mixed community pastures had been handed over by the National Bank for administration by the RSC. Finally, ninety-four pastures belonging to fifty-two communities of either mixed or entirely refugee population which were to be administered by the RSC ⁸² LNA, C 127, Note on Pasture Lands, 3 Mar. 1928.

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created perhaps the greatest problem, as the communities themselves refused the Commission its right to administer them.⁸³ In fact, these were really cases where the Ministry of the Interior was at variance with the RSC. The latter recognized that there was indeed a problem where mixed communities with communal rights over the pastures were concerned. The Commission had in effect inherited the rights to the previous Turkish portion of the pastures in question, but as there was no divided share to which it could lay claim of absolute proprietary right, it claimed a right to the whole under the Law of 15/22 May 1926. This right, however, was subject to a servitude in favour of the remaining indigenous villagers. Entirely refugee communities posed no such complication from the point of view of the RSC because, with the departure of the Turkish communities, the pastures were handed over to the Commission subject to no servitude other than, of course, to the Geneva Protocol.⁸⁴ The negative effects on husbandry of these conflicting attitudes on the part of the interested parties are best illustrated by the two following cases, one from Kalambaka in the region of Drama and the other from Makrynitsa in the region of Sidirokastro, reported by Sir John Hope Simpson: the shepherds to whom we had let the pastures, and who had paid the rent to us, have been put in prison at the instance of the communes for non-payment of rent to them. There are two other cases against our tenants which practically means against the Commission, one at Langada, where the commune has sued the refugees because land broken up by the orders of the Commission and occupied as cultivable land by the refugees is alleged to be communal pasture and to belong to the community. In the second case, in the Cavalla region the commune of Kinari has sued the shepherds who rent from us on the grounds that is communal pasture of Kinari. We alleged in court that it did not belong to Kinari , but to Herakleitsa, a Commission colony. The commune has won the case and we have appealed.⁸⁵

A year later, in January 1929, at a meeting between the Council of the League of Nations, A. Papadatos, Under-Secretary of State, and Karamanos, then Director-General at the Ministry of Agriculture, Papadatos upheld the view that ‘all the pastures should be designated as property of the communities, as it was to the advantage of the State that the communities should be rich and should have the money to spend on ⁸³ Ibid., ‘Note on the Pastures in Macedonia’, J. Hope Simpson, Thessaloniki, 18 Jan. 1928. ⁸⁴ Ibid. ⁸⁵ Ibid.

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their public improvements, education, churches, etc.’⁸⁶ In view of the fact, however, that the pastures were being claimed by the Bank, the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of the Interior, and the RSC, he suggested a conference of all authorities (including the government) interested in the pastures, in order to resolve the question. Meanwhile, he suggested that the government could issue separate orders in individual cases.⁸⁷ As a result of this conference, an order was sent to all interested parties to regulate provisionally the question of the pastures. It was further decided that an immediate study of the problem be made with the aim of settling it legally once and for all. It was not until 1932, however, that the matter was finalized. All remaining lands following a permanent distribution (wherever it had been effected) were handed over to the communities as communal land free of servitude and without any charge or compensation whatsoever, for the common use of both refugee and native residents in each community. Each resident was entitled to graze up to twenty-five sheep or goats and four cattle entirely free of charge.⁸⁸ The growing lack of pastures gradually prompted nomadic husbandry to decline. The subsequent crisis was so extensive that in 1938 the government endeavoured to bring the matter under some control by passing a law (A.N. 1.23/1938) concerning the settlement of nomadic graziers and their enrolment on the registers of agricultural communities. As concerns domestic husbandry, among the newly settled refugees, both Agricultural Bank (ATE) and RSC statistics show that 40 per cent of the refugees settled in Macedonia did not have any animals with which to cultivate their lands, let alone for husbandry purposes, and that such animals as were available were unsuitable for breeding purposes.⁸⁹ The RSC had imported large numbers of sheep from Bulgaria and Romania which they distributed to refugees in the mountainous frontier districts. The refugees’ lack of experience in managing livestock, and the fact that the animals were not acclimatized to local conditions and were afflicted by disease, resulted, according to the President of the Commission, in the loss of an estimated 80 per cent of their number in Macedonia and Thrace. Furthermore, in certain areas, such as Chalkidiki, the refugees were forced to sell their livestock in order to meet their obligations in ⁸⁶ LNA, C 125. J.H.S. Private Files of John Hope Simpson: ‘Notes on a conversation between A. Papadatos, Undersecretary of State, and the Council of the RSC., at the Offices of the Commission on the morning of the 15th January 1929.’ ⁸⁷ Ibid. ⁸⁸ See Law 89490/23-7-1932 of the Ministry of Agriculture published in the Government Gazette, 2nd issue, No. 69/25-7-1932. ⁸⁹ Kostis, Agrotiki Oikonomia.

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debts to the National Bank of Greece.⁹⁰ The refugees ‘inexperienced’ in animal husbandry were mainly from the coastal plains of Asia Minor and eastern Thrace. Many, understandably enough, were not at a loss as to what to do with their animals, considering the fact that hunger was constantly knocking at their door. Despite all the efforts and good intentions of the RSC by the time of its liquidation, in 1929, animal husbandry among the refugees was still in such a deplorable condition that an estimated 80 million drachmas was needed to replenish refugee herds and flocks.⁹¹ ⁹⁰ Eddy, Greece and the Greek Refugees, 112. ⁹¹ LNA, C 127, Confidential ‘Note on the work which has still to be undertaken in Greece, if the refugee problem is to be finally settled’, the Council of the RSC to the Financial Committee of the League of Nations, 28 Feb. 1929.

Epilogue The resettlement of Greek refugees was the first major project in the twentieth century which involved such large numbers of displaced people and was supervised by an international body, the League of Nations. The RSC carefully planned the reconstruction of the livelihoods of the uprooted and exchanged Greek refugees. The strategic goal of this international organization was to execute its programme in a constructive way in order to help the successful re-establishment of the refugees’ livelihoods in both rural and urban areas. Priority, however, was given to the establishment of agricultural settlements in the provinces of northern Greece, Macedonia and western Thrace in particular. The ‘national political’ dimension of the emphasis on resettlement along northern frontiers highlights the predominance of the national defence factor over economic considerations. The entire planning of refugee resettlement was dominated by the necessity of defending and consolidating the northern and north-eastern frontiers of Greece. The RSC’s work was a ‘monument to rational methodology’, and remains an unparalleled achievement in so far as the organization achieved every one of the aims it had so realistically set itself at the start. A huge number of refugees, uniquely large at the time and enormous even by modern standards, were successfully resettled in a remarkably short space of time. Because it was operating under the auspices of the League of Nations, the RSC was in a position to pressure the Greek government into fulfilling its obligations regarding the provision of land suitable for cultivation, and to promote its own work. Despite its weaknesses and mistakes, the RSC managed to complete its task, overcoming the resistance of local communities and, perhaps more significantly, preventing the anti-Venizelists from making good their promise to reverse or revise the RSC’s decisions re resettlement. The dispersal of refugees in the countryside was conducive to both ethnic homogeneity and domestic tranquillity. The rehabilitation in the ‘New Lands’ of Greece of the incoming populations—who were viewed as a resource in the interests of national goals—was advantageous in that it achieved all of the above. The refugees not only provided a population with a Greek national identity which outweighed the

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remaining linguistic and cultural minorities in an otherwise thinly populated area and, therefore, secured the northern borders, but they also provided the necessary rural population and labour force. Even more important, however, is the fact that they were instrumental in developing a Greek Macedonian identity and by so doing secured the Hellenization of the region. However, the cost of the whole enterprise was too much for the frail Greek post-war economy. The population of Greece increased by a quarter, and the strain of resettling so many refugees imposed on her an awesome social and economic burden. In several of the years between 1922 and 1932 it is estimated that the programme of supporting and settling refugees absorbed more than 40 per cent of the country’s ordinary budget and accounted for a similar proportion of external borrowing.¹ As A. Papanastassiou remarked in 1932: ‘From a financial point of view the refugee settlement has resulted in an excessive indebtedness of the state abroad as well as at home. Naturally, this indebtedness has aggravated the economic crisis in Greece.’² Apart from the cost of providing the refugees with immediate relief and resettling them, land reform and land distribution had other long-term economic and social repercussions, which in the end minimized the political benefits of the reforms. A very sizeable area was involved in the land reform and distribution processes: between 1917 and 1936, 305,000 peasant families (1,300,000 individuals in all), both refugees and natives, were settled on 17,000 square kilometres of land. However, official rural policies resulted in such a high degree of farm fragmentation that it was virtually impossible to develop effective irrigation systems, improve livestock, intensify cultivation, or rotate crops. Moreover, farming was to become even more inefficient over the years to come as fields were further parcelled out among the peasants’ heirs. Kenneth Thompson, who carried out a survey of agricultural holdings in Greece in the early 1960s, states: ‘Usually a single farm consists of a number, even 30 or more, of widely separated, tiny plots. The dismemberment of land has gone so far that a plot of 20 stremmata is now considered a large piece of property. Truly, the fabric of Greek agriculture has been cut to pieces.’³ A pattern of proprietorship of this sort resulted in serious economic problems. Fragmentation entailed a formidable waste ¹ Campbell and Sherrard, Modern Greece, 141; Pepelassi-Minoglou, ‘Venizelos kai xeno kefalaio’, 164 n. 3. ² Cited in Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 149. ³ Thomson, Farm Fragmentation, 1.

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of manpower, draft power, equipment, and land, and impeded any rational organization of farm work as well as any thoroughgoing modernization and mechanization of Greek agriculture. Mavrogordatos has pointed out that following the implementation of their agrarian reforms and the resettlement of the refugees, the Liberals, to the degree to which they had achieved their national, social, and political goals via the creation of a new class of small-holders and small businessmen who were firmly behind the Greek State, the bourgeois status quo, the Uncrowned Democracy, and Venizelos himself, the Liberals also found themselves supporting native petit bourgeois resistance to capitalistic development and modernisation.

It was this political paradox that led to their defeat in the election of 1933.⁴ The performance of the Greek agricultural sector rendered it incapable of meeting the demands of the nation, and trailed behind that of other European countries. Population growth only added to the problems underlying Greece’s poor rates of production—which included the country’s meagre and depleted natural resources, low technological skills, a lack of investment in capital, and the lack of sufficient credit available at reasonable interest rates—by making plots even tinier and more awkwardly shaped, and eventually rendering them financially non-viable. Farmers, who now lived in single family working units, became less self-reliant⁵ and more dependent on the cultivation of cash crops. However, crops such as currants, tobacco, and cotton were affected by fluctuations in the international market and, as prices fell, the peasants’ income became more and more inadequate to sustain a family. Nevertheless, they continued to bear the brunt of the national tax burden, which was mostly levied as indirect taxes on consumer goods. Inter-war economic stagnation impoverished farmers; they had no choice but to go into debt. The price of almost all crops fell during the inter-war years following the onset of a world depression in 1929, and peasants sank into debt.⁶ A farmer’s average yearly income was limited, and insufficient to cover the family’s yearly expenditure. Moreover, there were no jobs ⁴ Mavrogordatos, ‘Venizelismos kai Astikos Eksygchronismos’, in G. T. Mavrogordatos and C. Chatziiosif, Venizelismos kai Astikos Eksygchronismos (Venizelism and Bongeois Modernization) (Herakleion, 1988), 19. ⁵ In the collective farming pattern characteristic of the Balkan Slavs and the Pontics in Asia Minor during the Ottoman period, two or three related families formed a working unit. ⁶ It has been estimated that almost 75% of all farmers were in debt by 1935. The amount owed rose to over 9bn. drachmas, and farmers had to set aside 50-80% of their yearly income for debt repayments. See N. Psyroukis, O fasismos kai i tetarti Augoustou (Fascism and the Fourth of August) (Athens, 1977), 107–10.

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available for a large proportion of the rural labour force—which was steadily increasing owing to the high birth rate—because of the lack of cultivated land and industry in most of the northern provinces. The state had implemented land reforms, but, as Mouzelis puts it, ‘washed its hands on the matter and left the small peasant-owners to their own fate’.⁷ Poverty-stricken peasants quit the land and headed for urban centres, only to find that not only were social problems there even more pronounced, but the absence of industry in the cities made it almost impossible to find employment. The economic crisis led to social problems in both rural and urban areas. However, the increasingly inflexible Liberal Party, dominated by militaristic and chauvinistic factions and the fear of popular mobilization, was unable to come up with effective solutions. As Mazower has so clearly demonstrated, it was the economic crisis that finally undermined confidence in political liberalism and led to the rise of bourgeois autocracy in the mid-1930s.⁸ Peasants were unlikely to mobilize, however, as long as the Agrarian Party failed to come up with a comprehensive programme for tackling the country’s economic problems, while remaining largely irrelevant in a system polarized between royalists and republicans. Despite attempts by intellectuals, such as Amantos, to highlight the national and economic importance of the rural population staying where they were and the need to prevent internal migration into the cities, the structural problems of overpopulation and low industrialization indicated that the solution lay in emigration.⁹ The mass emigration of peasants from every part of Macedonia to Western Europe and further afield during the 1950s and 1960s provided a way out, a safety-valve for young men from villages, whether in the mountains, foothills, or plains, characterized by agrarian congestion and the unavailability of land for new families who did not possess any holdings at all but found it difficult to gain employment elsewhere owing to lack of industries.¹⁰

⁷ Mouzelis, Modern Greece, 23. ⁸ Mazower, Inter-war Economic Crisis, 294–305. ⁹ E. Kontogiorgi, ‘O Konstantinos Amantos kai oi apopseis tou gia ti simasia kai ton eksygchronismo tis ypaithrou’ (Konstantinos Amantos’s Views on the Importance of Rural Areas and their Modernization), Deltio tou Kentrou Erevnis tis Historias tou Neoterou Hellinismou (Bulletin of the Research Centre of Modern Greek History, Academy of Athens), 1 (1998), 155–90. ¹⁰ Social Sciences Centre, Athens, Migration Series, 1, Essays on Greek Migration, (Athens, 1967): V. J. Filias, ‘Emigration: Its Causes and Effects’, pp. 11–38, and P. Merlopoulos, ‘Emigration in Greece during the Post-War Years’, pp. 39–48.

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In the almost exclusively agricultural province of Drama, 13.51 per cent of the population emigrated to European countries (mostly West Germany) in the five years between 1959 and 1964.¹¹ Data relating to the same period show that the mountainous province of Florina, with a population amounting to a mere 0.8 per cent of the total Greek population, accounted for 2.76 per cent of the nation’s total emigrants, which made it one of the largest exporters of people in Greece at the time. Emigration from the region of Florina, one of the less developed areas with a high unemployed rate, had also a political dimension.¹² And in Imathia, one of the wealthiest provinces in the country, a total of 7,969 individuals (4,953 men and 3,016 women) emigrated during the same period. Given a total population of 114,515, the emigrants constituted around 7% of the population of the region. Mountainous and semi-mountainous areas accounted for 50 per cent and 100 per cent, respectively, more emigrants than the plains. The money the migrants sent back home ensured that the families they had left behind did not starve, as well as contributing to the national economy. Nevertheless, the departure of the most active and productive members of rural society meant that agricultural production remained low, and led to a number of social problems, since many children lost both their parents to emigration.¹³ The radical effects of the modernization and nation-building process which underlay the resettlement plan changed the Macedonian landscape not only physically but also culturally. Prior to the Balkan Wars, Macedonia had for centuries hosted an intermixture of cultures, with numerous—at least five—distinct ethnic groups distinguished not only by their own dialects, but by religion and highly localized cultural traits and loyalties. The exchange of populations in the Balkans and the resettlement of Greek refugees in the region settled the question of the national character of Greek Macedonia, since 85 per cent of its population was thenceforth Greek. Cultural diversity continued to exist, however, as the incoming populations brought with them their centuries-old heritage. The refugees were quite distinct culturally not only in relation to the natives but ¹¹ Essays on Greek Migration, Georges Syrpis, ‘Research in the Province of Drama’, 69–77 (69–71). ¹² Ibid., Vassilis Filias, ‘Research in the Province of Florina’, pp. 78–85 (80); Danforth, Macedonian Conflict, 185. ¹³ Social Sciences Centre, Essays on Migration, Panagiotis Skoufis, ‘Research in the Province of Imathia’, 86–94 (88).

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between themselves, depending upon their place of origin. Thus, cultural variety continued to exist between the various quarters within mixed villages as well as between neighbouring villages. The first generation held on to their cultural heritage tenaciously, and they were quick to establish cultural societies which, as a norm, they named after their place of origin. The first generation indeed never ceased to regard themselves as temporary ‘guests’ in mainland Greece, unwilling to give up hopes of repatriation, in spite of their being aware of the futility of such dreams. The end of the Second World War and the Civil War found the second generation fully assimilated and integrated into Greek society. No longer did they contrast refugees and natives but rather leftists and rightists. They continued, however, to maintain the refugee associations and with them, a spark of ‘refugee’ identity because of the ‘vested interests’ which they inherited from their fathers. Although, unlike many of the older generation, they had given up all dreams of ‘repatriation’, they never let go of the hope that they might be compensated, either by Greece or by Turkey, for the loss of their families’ properties. Moreover, in the post-war era, certain historical events of forced migration or forced ‘repatriation’ of the Greeks of the Diaspora contributed to the maintenance of a collective memory of their fathers’ uprooting and refugee identity. The expulsion of Greeks from Constantinople, Imbros, and Tenedos in the 1950s and from Egypt in the 1960s, the occupation of Northern Cyprus and the consequent, still unresolved, tragedy of the Greek Cypriot refugees, and the on-going coercion of the now scanty Greek population of the islands Imbros and Tenedos never allowed old wounds to heal fully. Recent upheavals and the ‘New World Order’ have reawakened the memories of older generations and rekindled in the young an interest in past events. Ordinarily, the involvement of refugee descendants in the culture of their fathers is in the main limited nominally to maintaining certain customs of a socio-religious nature, as one would expect to find in marriages, baptisms, eating habits, and the like. Today, however, ‘refugee’ youth has become increasingly interested in the history and politics of the ‘uprooting of populations’. The Pontic Greeks, whose turbulent history and antiquated dialect had welded them together into a ‘closed’ society, have retained the strongest cultural and ethnic identity, and it is only to be expected that they are, as they have always been, more active in claiming their rights. The resurgence of nationalism in the former Soviet Union in the years of perestroika encouraged a stream of Pontic refugees, in particular from the Black Sea region. Their ‘repatriation’ to Greece and

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the interest and activities of the Pontian societies have revived and strengthened cultural identity among the young. The Greek refugees who with the exchange of populations found new homes in the villages and towns of Macedonia where they were resettled, on the whole accepted their lot peacefully, although initially they had reacted. They respected all the international and bilateral agreements which Greece had concluded with her neighbours, even the Greco–Turkish agreement of 1930 which, apart from settling definitively the question of compensation for their abandoned properties, also dashed all hopes of repatriation. Although the uprooting left an indelible trauma among the refugees, the nostalgia and references to their lost home could do no more than preserve in the collective memory of the Hellenic world the history of the thousands of Greek communities in Asia Minor and eastern Thrace, and above all the tragedy of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the sufferings which followed. The integration of the refugees was not an easy task and did not follow a smooth pattern. Refugees experienced discrimination and exclusion. In the process of land reform and the distribution of the former Muslim estates much social tension was created and conflicts between refugees and locals, who were strongly biased against the newcomers, was common. Endogamy was the rule in mixed villages during the inter-war period. Intermarriage between the various refugee groups and the local population remained unusual and, as we have seen, when such marriages did occur they led to problems, occasioned the intervention of the RSC and the state authorities, and were, at least until 1930, discouraged. This endogamic pattern, coupled with residence in specific neighbourhoods in the villages, allowed the members of each culturally distinct group to share symbolic idioms of belonging (common customs, language, or dialect, or regional identity) and kept the different groups apart. However, there has been a great deal of intermarriage between the old and distinct linguistic communities of Greek Macedonia and the newcomers in the period since the Second World War. Indigenous Greekspeaking Greeks, Vlachs, Slav Macedonians and Pontic, Caucasian, Asia Minor Greek or Turkish-speaking refugees began intermarrying in both villages and towns. The interaction between refugees and locals which occurred in the 1940s, and the emergence of new political and party political criteria for social categorization led to a change in marital strategies and facilitated the mixing of the population. Indeed, intermarriage between distinct cultural and linguistic refugee groups and indigenous groups in mixed villages during the 1950s played

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a decisive role in their gradual integration into a single community. G. Angelopoulos, who studied the pattern of intermarriages between five distinct groups in a village in central Macedonia—two linguistically and culturally distinct indigenous groups and three refugee groups (from eastern Thrace, Asia Minor, and Bulgaria)—has shown that while the village was divided during the inter-war years, these intermarriages have now led to the formation of a single community with a single culture.¹⁴ The refugees who settled in rural Macedonia were in no way a homogeneous population; they were a highly multicultural entity. Among the settlers were refugees from eastern Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Black Sea; Black Sea Greeks from Vatoum and the Caucasus who spoke Greek (a large proportion of them spoke the Pontian dialect), Bulgarian speakers, and Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians. These differences are no longer obvious among the population of Macedonia; they were deliberately obliterated by decisions imposed on Greek society during its homogenization programme in order to equip the country to deal with an extraordinarily complex, difficult, and dramatic reality. The immediate naturalization of the refugees, the allocation of plots, and their education fostered their national consciousness and contributed to the creation of a feeling of belonging to the nation-state. The differences between the various groups of refugees due to geographical isolation or the social limitations in force in their original homelands were subsumed under a single heading, ‘refugee’, a concept consisting of a common sense of displacement, a shared collective experience of the drama of flight, and the need to legitimize their settling in their new homeland and to lay claim to the interests they had as violently uprooted populations.¹⁵ The refugees have never received any compensation for the property and businesses they left behind. However, they have still not given up the fight for the recognition of rights explicitly guaranteed by the treaties. As was discussed in detail in the section on the permanent distribution of land, the acquisition of titles of ownership was deferred until the post-war period. In addition, although refugee debts were cancelled in 1944 as part of the financial overhaul introduced after the Axis Occupation, the problem of definitive titles and other ¹⁴ G. Angelopoulos, ‘From Bulgarievo to Nea Krasia, from “Two Settlements” to “One Village”: Community Formation, Collective Identities and the Role of the Individual’, in P. Mackridge and E. Yannakakis, Ourselves and Others (Oxford, 1977), 133–51. ¹⁵ Hirschon, Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe, 245–6.

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aspects of ownership continued into the post-war period, and indeed in many cases up to the present.¹⁶ The integration of the refugees was a slow and difficult process, and for at least the first generation, their experiences of the Greek reality reinforced their own view of themselves as refugees. The views, character traits, and qualities ascribed to them by the locals, their stance and the way they behaved in their everyday lives led to the creation of two worlds, and the imposition of serious limits on their social interactions. In villages where refugees and locals lived together, they did so in separate neighbourhoods. Finally, the political use to which the refugee question was put in the inter-war years served to split the nation down the middle into pro and anti-Venizelist factions. Agrarian resettlement, however, led to the transformation of both groups into smallholders, a development that made the full integration of the refugees possible during the second half of the 1930s, the Axis Occupation, and the Civil War. The refugees ceased to behave as a united political unit, and threw in their lot with locals with the same social or ideological background.¹⁷ The economic and social incorporation of the refugees during the inter-war years into an agrarian society with traditional institutions which had to deal with the problems of modernization as well as the particularly thorny refugee phenomenon, was considered a great success because it achieved both its national and political aims. In modern Greek society, the retention of the collective memory of a refugee past, and the contribution of the refugees to the ethnic homogenization of the regions along Greece’s northern borders were pivotal in planning resettlement programmes for ethnic Greeks from the former Soviet Union in Thrace, as well as in the recent refugees’ own view of themselves and their social status, and the fact that they describe themselves as Greek refugees.¹⁸

¹⁶ Pentzopoulos, Balkan Exchange, 234. ¹⁷ Mavrogordatos, ‘Anepanalipto epitergma’, 12. ¹⁸ Effie Voutira, ‘Pontic Greeks Today: Migrants or Refugees?’ Journal of Refugee Studies, 4/4, (1991).

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Index Abbot 127 n. 42 Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey 36, 42, 45 Achinos, lake 21, 292, 295 Achmetaga 127 n. 42 Adali 270 Adnan Bey 195 Adosides A. 60 Adramyteinos Gulf 132 n. 55 Adrianople vilayet 33 Adriatic Sea 14, 29, 68, 69 Aegean: coast 37, 96, 166 n. 3, 230; islands 30, 32, 46, 49, 52–3, 56, 60, 67, 74, 78; region 96; sea 11, 13, 14, 29 Africa 143 Afyonkarahisar 53 Agalaioi (estate) 151 Aggelakos, Panagiotou (monk) 138 n. 68 Agia Eleni 160 Agia Kyriaki 258 Agiasma 300 Aginatoi (Ekichtse) 258 Agios Antonios (Lilovo) 205 Agios Pavlos 275 Agios Vasileios, Lake 13, 266 Agitis, River 282 Agra (estate) 153 n. 23 Agrarian Code 183 Agrarian Party 129, 180, 185, 190–1, 333 and refugees 191, 333 Agrarian Reform Laws 124, 126, 128, 133–6, 227, 303, 316 Agricultural Bank of Greece (ATE) 105, 152, 305, 319, 328 Agricultural Bank of Macedonia and Epirus 278 Agricultural stations 306 agriculture 257, 297–8, 302, 304–21; commercialization of 114, 321; modernization of 281, 293, 320, 332; see also Macedonia: agricultural economy Aidin 267

Aigineion 275 Ak-Dag Maden 257 Akropolis 182 Albania 13, 86 n. 54, 91, 95, 101, 228 Albanian(s) 20, 45, 50, 63, 130, 200, 210, 212, 228, 250, 252, 294 Muslim Albanians 21, 235 from Kosovo 197–8 toponyms 293 villages 23 Alexandroupolis (Dedeagatch) 37, 39, 156, 288 Alden Percy 170 Aliakmon river (Vistritsa) 12, 13, 20–1, 105, 266; valley 20–1 Alistrati 153 Allied blockade (1916–17) 103–4 Allied Powers 51–3, 54, 58, 62, 64 All-Thracian Refugee Congress 186 Almopia 155 Alonia 306, 307 Amantos, Konstantinos 107–8, 333 Amaseia(s) 261 Amatovo(n) 275, 281, 283, 292 America 184, 203, 230, 267, 304 see also USA American Commission General of Immigration 18 American Committee for Relief in the Near East 79, 84 American Red Cross 60, 65, 75, 79, 80, 83, 266, 269 American Women’s Hospital (AWH) 275 Amissos 267 Anagnostopoulos, A. M. 99, 106, 159, 306 Anasselitsa 18 n. 18, 21, 55, 132 n. 55, 199, 203, 245, 248, 250 Anatolia 3, 4, 39, 40, 42–3, 52–3, 56–7, 61–2, 65–8, 70, 73–4, 77, 95, 157, 218, 227 see also Asia Minor Anatoliko 301 Anchialos 36 Andreades, Andreas 78 Angelopoulos, Giorgos 337 Anglo-American Relief Committee 267

366 Anglo-Greek Treaty (of 1886) 127 Anglo-Russian meeting at Reval 41 animal husbandry 104, 113–14, 116, 119–20, 183, 321–9 Angora see Ankara Ankara 53, 62, 65, 195 Ano Kalinniki 183 Ano Kleinai 275 Ano Kolovot 275 Ano Poroia 237 Ano Theodoraki 205 Antalya 52 Antic (Serbian diplomat) 218 Antivenizelism-Antivenizelists: and Muslims 121, and natives 178–85 and refugees 168, 175, 186–8 Apilladatoi 258 Apollonia 258 Apolloniada 257 Apsalon 275 Ardea 155, 288 Ardzan 281 Argos 92, 98 Argyropoulos, Periclis 90 n. 46 Armenians 4, 25, 40, 43, 45, 47–8, 50–1, 54, 56, 58, 61, 64–6, 69–70, 73, 77–9, 84, 89 massacres of 79 Soviet Armenians 84 Armoutsi 275 Arnaia 251 Arta 135 Artzan 283, 292 Asar-Bey 275 Asbestopetra 221 Asia Central 20 Asia Minor 2, 4, 6, 30, 32, 38–41, 44, 46–67, 69, 70, 73, 76–80, 89, 95–6, 99, 101, 103–4, 108, 109, 120, 134, 137, 144, 167, 171, 177, 186–7, 196–7, 199, 204, 220, 236, 238, 254–6, 258–61, 267, 285, 296, 307, 308, 322, 329, 336–7; refugees from 64, 76, 144, 177, 236, 322 Asia Minor Catastrophe 4, 6, 53, 58, 62, 93, 95, 99, 102, 125, 193, 336 Askilar 275 Association for the Social and Political Sciences on the Refugee Question 253

Index Association of Doctors of Macedonia 266 Association of Greek Agriculturists of Macedonia and Thrace (SEGMT) 314 Athens Workers’ Centre 167 Athens 5, 11–12, 15, 18, 22, 25–6, 31–7, 41–2, 47, 50–5, 57–61, 64–5, 68, 73, 75, 77–82, 84–6, 89, 91, 94, 96, 101, 106, 123–4, 128, 157–8, 222, 254, 261, 285 Athos, Mount 137–8 Attica-Boeotia 92, 100, 106, 158 Australia 75, 227, 230, 290, 304 Austria 33, 77 Austria-Hungary 29, 32, 36, 44 Avrasoglou A. 109 Axios River (Vardar), 12–14, 105, 134, 266, 279–83, 295, 301 Valley 266, 279, 281 Axis Occupation of Greece 337–8 Bafra 257 Bailey, British engineer 279 Bakalbassis, Anastassios 94, 138 n. 68, 179, 253, 284 Baker Mrs 127 n. 42 Balaban monastery 275 Balkan League (1912) 36 Balkan Peninsula 14, 24–5, 38, 40, 44, 234, 292, 293 Balkan states 4, 7, 20, 25, 26, 28–32, 36–42, 44, 47, 85, 90, 232 Balkan Wars 5, 15, 19, 20, 29, 33, 37, 39, 42, 45–6, 48, 50, 53–4, 79, 83–4, 89, 97, 108, 117–18, 120, 122, 202–4, 233, 234, 241, 265, 293, 304, 322, 334 migrations after the 38–9 Balkan(s) 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 14, 23, 26–30, 32–3, 35, 37, 39–42, 44–5, 48, 50–1, 54–5, 70, 75, 82, 87, 90, 129, 193, 214, 216, 334 nationalism 25–7, 31–2, 34–5, 40, 69 Bambakophyto 160 Banitsa (Bevi) 153, 215 Bank of England 80, 83, 84, 88 Barbanos (supervisor of surveying teams) 155 Barnus (Peristeri) Mt. 13 Belgian government-Belgians 126–7 Belgrade 14, 85, 90, 217 Belotintsa 275

Index Bentinck C. H. 195 Bermion Mt. 13 Bernon Mt. (Vitsi) 13 Bertholf Dr 270–2 Bible Lands Mission Aid Society 126, 127 n. 42 Bizzo, J. 127 n. 42 Black Sea 4, 21, 36, 60, 65, 68–9, 74, 95–6, 165, 167, 335, 337 Black Sea Greeks 165, 337 see Pontics Blair, Colonel 208 Boemitsa 272 n. 20, 275 Boetia 92, 100, 158 Bolsheviks-Bolshevism 59, 68, 96, 223 Boot & Co., British firm 282 Boras Mt. (Kaimaktsalan) 13 borders 58, 100–1 settlements in border areas 100–1, 178, 180, 182, 208–9, 224, 241, 284–8 boundaries 37–8 Borovon 275 Bosnia 20, 29, 30, 44, 47 Bougarievon 275 Bouretzik 207 Bousios, Georgios 180 Boutkovon 275, Lake 295 brigandage 114, 197 Britain, British 7, 29, 30, 44, 47, 51–6, 58, 65, 68, 74–5, 78–80, 84–6, 89, 109, 126–9, 132, 195, 204, 226–7, 280–2, 290 Brussa 52 Bucharest 39, 40, 238, Bulgaria 1, 4, 20, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 35–41, 44, 47–8, 50–2, 54–5, 73, 75, 77, 84–5, 89–90, 93–4, 96–7, 99–101, 121, 193, 200–2, 204–5, 207–8, 212, 214, 217, 225–30, 233–4, 296, 302, 328, 337 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences 233 Bulgarian Agrarian Bank 216 Bulgarian: army 39, 41, 121, 203–4 atrocities against Greeks 213–14 bands 19, 38, 206, 214 border 101, 284 expansionism 34 government 85, 90, 214, 217 language 22, 26, 27, 233 minority 217, see Kalfov-Politis Protocol

367 nationalism/nationalists 25, 26–8 press 217, 226 propaganda 27, 31, 204, 212, 213, 215, 243 Bulgarian Exarchate (or Church) 25–8, 34, 36, 214, 234 Bulgarian Comitate 215 Bulgarian Communist Party 188 Bulgarian Consulate in Thessaloniki 204 Bulgarian Macedonian Committees 234 Bulgarian National Bank 216 Bulgarian(s) or Bulgars 21–2, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38, 41, 136, 142, 200, 201, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 216, 219, 224, 226, 229, 230, 231–5, 255, 286, 322 Bulgarizers see Bulgarophiles Bulgaro-Macedonians 200 Bulgarophiles 200, 204, 221, 231 Bulgarophones 224, 337 Burgas 4, 36, 214 Byzantine Hellenism 29 Campbell John K. 188 Campbell, Sir John 96, 133, 134, 218, 224, 323 Cappadocia, Cappadocians 57, 61, 96, 160, 255 Caucasian(s) 96, 185, 336 Caucasus 39, 52, 69, 73–4, 77, 93, 96, 99, 109, 203, 205, 238, 257, 259, 260, 267, 337 Cecil, Lord Robert 196 Central Powers 51, 54–5 Central Relief Commission for the Resettlement of Refugees in Macedonia 49, 50, 123 Centre for Asia Minor Studies 255 cereals 103, 222, 302–4, 308–13, 319–20 çetes 47 Chaldeia-as 261 Chalkidiki 13, 21, 23, 137–8, 148, 191–2, 228, 248, 250, 261, 271–2, 275–6, 302, 328 Chania 157 Charatzidis 185 Chassia Mt. 13, 21 Chatalja line 52 Chatzidakis Georgios 293

368 Chatzi-Osman 228, 229 Cheetham, Sir M. 226 Chersovon 275 Cheimaros (estate) 150 chiftlik(s) 16, 17, 108, 111–19, 124, 131, 134, 171, 215, 216, 289, 321 Chios 47, 51, 86 Chomondos 275 Chorouda (Karatsova) 258 Christian(s) 2, 21–2, 24–6, 34–6, 40, 42, 45, 47, 49–50, 54, 57, 60, 63, 65, 68–9, 73, 75, 99, 112, 116–18, 122–3, 130, 132–3, 193–4, 199, 202, 209, 234, 289 Chrysostomos, Metropolitan of Drama (1902) Archbishop of Smyrna (1910–22) 34, 36, 54 Churchill, Sir Winston 54, 84 Cilicia 57, 61; coast of 69 Circassian 64 Civil War 57, 61, 335, 338 client-patron relationship 190 Colocotronis V. 200, 202 Colonization Bureaux/departments 92, 105, 126–7, 138, 178, 210, 211, 219, 324, 327 Comintern 188 comitadji bandits 32–4, 35, 101, 116, 215, 285–6 Commissions of Expropriation 136–7, 307 Committee of Place-names (Epitropi Toponymion) 293 Committee of Union and Progress 41–2, 44–5, 47–8 communism 107, 126 Communist Party (KKE) 188–9, 191–2, 201, 243–4 Communist(s) 84, 106, 189, 201 Constantinatoi (Tsatal-Agil) 258 Constantine, King of Greece 50–4, 57–8, 124, 186 Constantinople 4, 14, 26, 36, 41, 43, 46, 49, 56–8, 60, 61–3, 65–6, 68–70, 77, 79, 84, 86, 93, 96, 195, 238, 335 Constituent Assembly 54, 55 Convention of the Liquidation of the RSC (24-1-1930) 317 co-operatives: rural refugee 143–4, 191, 197, 305 Corfe A. C., Colonel 60, 65, 210, 212, 213, 279

Index Cosmidis 186 cotton 15, 16, 18, 114 Council of Four 52 Country Court Committees 177 Cowan J. K. 19 Crete, Cretans 30, 32, 36, 44, 47, 92, 98, 132 Administration Inspectorate Department of Crete, 92 Crimea 96 Cunliffe-Owen 229 Curzon Lord 53, 65, 67 Cypriot refugees 335 Cyprus 6, Northern 335 damka 114, 116, 321 Danish Red Cross 45, 48 Dardanelles 68 Dedeagatch (Alexandroupolis) 37 Delta Ettiene 90 n. 46, 126 Department of Cadastral Register (TYYG) 150, 153, 155 Department of Industry, Agriculture and Trade 110 deportations: of Greeks and Armenians 39, 45, 47 of Slavophones 206–7, 213–14 Derkon, eparchy of 261 Didimoteicho 157 Diomidis Alexandros 216 Directorate of Colonization of Thrace 92 Djumaya 32, 34 Dobreff, Bulgarian minister 214 Dodecanese Islands 52, 53 Doirani Lake 37, 292, 298 Dollar Diplomacy 280 Domestichos A. 161, 307, 316 Domocos 135 Doxato 301 Doxiadis A. 175, 273 Dragoumis Ion 34, 43, 46 Dragoumis Philippos 180, 183, 184 drainage and irrigation works 104, 109–10, 170, 265, 279–84, 289–92, 311 Drama 12–14, 16, 20–1, 23–5, 34, 36, 49, 52, 121, 148–9, 153, 156, 169, 171, 174, 178–80, 189, 195, 199, 203–4, 206–7, 209, 211, 229, 230, 246, 247–8, 250, 266, 275, 283, 301, 327 Drimos 171 Drummond, Sir Eric 77

Index Eastern crisis (1897) 32 Eastern Rumelia 32 Ebes 257 Ecumenical Patriarch 25–7, 234 Ecumenical Patriarchate 20–2, 27, 34–5, 60, 214, 234, 237 and nationalism 34–5 Eddy Charles 86–7, 94, 96, 100, 134, 255–6, 286–7 Edessa (Vodena) 18, 21, 23, 109, 156, 198, 210–11, 213, 216, 230, 238, 245, 247, 275 Edward VII, King of England 41, 44 Egnatia Via 14 Egri-Basza 275 Egypt 78, 279, 335 Ekaterini 254, 271 Elassona 98, 105 Eleftheron Vema 182–3 Eleftheroupolis (Pravi) 154, 156, 195, 203, 248, 266 emigrant remittances 103 England, English 80, 229 Entente 51, 52, 186 Epirus 4, 5, 25, 30, 32, 35, 40, 47, 50, 52, 55, 98, 117, 124, 125, 130, 135, 136 Ereseli 275 Erivan 84 Eskishehir 53 établis 63 ethnic cleansing 39, 45 ethnika ktimata 121 Euphrates river 95 Europe 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 11–15, 22–3, 25, 34–5, 37, 38, 44, 47, 64, 74, 76, 78, 80, 84–5, 89, 90 European: banks 17 capitals 64 countries 290 diplomats and statesmen 44, 47 economic centers 16–17 merchants 14 travellers 11 European Powers 11, 51, 54, 195 see also Great Powers Evropos 275 Evros (Maritza) River 56, 60, 206, 258 Exarchists 31, 33, 200, 202–3, 210, 235–6, 248, 250, 252 exchange of populations 1, 2, 6, 41–2, 51, 63, 65, 67–70, 75, 80, 88, 93,

369 101, 117, 132–3, 194, 196, 198, 223, 322 and Fr. Nansen 57–62, 64–8 and E.Venizelos 57–68 Greeks of Constantinople exempted 63–4 Turks of Western Thrace exempted 63 see also Lausanne, Convention of Exissou 203 Eziovi 275 Falakron Mt. 12 Ferres 258 First World War 2, 3, 39, 41, 45, 47, 48, 50–2, 93–4, 99, 101, 104, 120, 123, 125, 186, 207, 265, 279, 280, 307 Flambouro 284 Florina 13, 24, 94, 101, 148, 155–6, 183–4, 200, 203, 207, 210–11, 215, 220, 236, 242–3, 245–8, 250, 268, 275, 286, 288, 298, 300, 301–2, 334 Fokaia 261 Foundation Company of New York 280 Fousiani 275 France, French 52–3, 68, 78, 109, 126–7, 226, 279 fronima 123 Gallicos river 281 Ganos-Chora 50, 254 Gastouni 99, 105 Gavriilidou N. 277 Gazoros 295 Gefyra 302 General Directorate of Colonization of Macedonia (GDCM) 91–2, 97, 147, 155, 271, 291, 304, 307, 326 General Directorship for Agriculture and Resettlement in Macedonia and Thrace 155 General Union of Greek Labour 106 Geneva Protocol of 78, 81–5, 88–9, 93, 95, 99, 129, 134, 173, 176, 180, 223, 269, 270, 322–3, 325, 327 Geneva 57, 61, 64, 76, 86, 106, 128, 147, 240, 269 George II, King of Greece 54 Georgia 267 Georgiadis Neofoitos 155, 223 Gerakas 286

370 Germanos, Karavangelis, Metropolitan of Kastoria (1900–1907) 34, 36 Gevgeli 39, 198, 219, 226 Gialantzik 275 Giannitsa 18, 21, 236, 245, 248, 250, 258 Glenny, Misha 14, 22, 26, 33 Gonatas Stylianos, Colonel 100, 107, 197 Gonimon 160 Gorna-Djoumaya 205 Goudas S. 105, 112 Goudi military coup d’ état 122 Goumenitsa 229, 230, 248, 250, 268 Gounaris Dimitrios 53, 57 Governorship-General for Agriculture and Colonization of Macedonia and Thrace 184 Governorship-General of Macedonia 49 Grammatiko 221 Grammatikovo 221 Grammos 13 Great Idea 29, 31, 51–2, 54, 56 Great Powers 14, 24, 28–9, 33, 36, 42, 44, 46–7, 49, 59, 64, 66, 68, 73, 76, 80, 91, 101, 108, 128 intervention in Turkish domestic affairs 28, 36, 44 Grecomani 233, 235, 242 Greco-Turkish agreement (1930) 336 Greece: Old 98–9, 104, 109, 119, 142, 156, 190, 192, 218 Greeks (of ) diaspora 22, 122, 335 Greek minority in Romania 240 Greek Orthodox Church 3, 63 see also Ecumenical Patriarchate Greek Parliament 30, 32, 135, 138–9, 175, 177, 179, 181, 217, 228, 279 Greek-Bulgarian border incident (1925) 85 Greek-Bulgarian Mixed Commission for the exchange of populations 83, 201, 210–13, 222, 231 Greek-Romanian accord of conciliation and arbitration (21/3/1928) 240 Greek-Turkish Convention (1 Dec. 1926) 127, 138 Greek-Turkish Mixed Commission for the exchange of populations 68, 83, 193–8 Gregoriades 176, 185 Grevena 13, 23, 151, 156, 183, 199, 234, 245, 248, 250

Index Guvezna (Langadas) 171 Gypsies 24 50, 54, 199, 200 Habsburg(s) 2 Hambros Bank 81 Hamid Bey 65 Hanotaux (French foreign minister) 40, 43 Hasan-kioi (Asvestopetra) 220–1 Hasluck Margaret 195, 206 Hatt-i Humayun 26 health 59, 75, 79, 276, 278 Bureau of Public Health in Salonica 265, 273 condotta system 271 dispensaries 270–5 epidemics 59, 75, 268, 273, 276 morbidity-mortality 266–8, 271 services 265, 268, 273–4, 276 see also malaria; tuberculosis Health Bureau of Macedonia 265 Hellenism 5, 22, 28, 29, 31, 34, 43, 46–9, 95 hellenization of toponyms 293, 294, 296 Hemingway Ernest 56, 61 Hentsch, Swiss member of the ILO 197 Herakleitsa 327 Herbert Wagg & Co. 282 Herzegovina 44, 47 High Commissioners of the Allied Powers in Constantinople 58, 61–2, 64, 65–6, 69 Hill Ross Dr 60, 65, 80–1, 86, 88, 325 Howland Charles P. 69, 75, 101, 130, 146 Hungary 23, 24, 30, 34, 47, 77, 81 Iberian peninsula 23 identity (ies) 25–6, 225–9, 331 Ikonio 261 Ilinden rising 18, 34 Imatheia 240 n. 140, Imbros 4, 49, 63, 68, 335 Imera 184, 185 Inavli 183 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) 31, 33–6, 85, 90, 205, 214, 230 International Financial Commission (IFC) 76, 128, 139, 146 International Labour Organization 85, 197 International Red Cross 60

Index Ioannina (Jannina) 92, 157, 282 Ionia 52, 55, 96 Irakleia 261, 295 Iraq 68 irredentism 31–2 irregular transactions 136, 148, 176–9, 181 Islam 25, 26, 199 Ismet Pasha 62, 215 Italo-Turkish War (of 1911) 36 Italy, Italian(s) 52–3, 23, 55, 78, 126, 128, 229 Itea 151 Ivanoff J. 233 Izmit peninsula 52 Jackson, Sir John 279 Jarvis E. H. 267 Jews 16, 22–5, 50, 54, 75, 112,187, 206, 210, 235, 248, 250 Ashkenazim 23 Sefardim 23 Kafantaris Georgios 125, 176 Kailaria (Ptolemaida) 189, 198–9, 203, 210–11, 220–2, 245, 248, 250, 256, 268 Kaiser 51 Kaklamanos, Dimitrios 308 Kalamaria 245 Kalambaka 327 Kalfov-Politis Protocol 217–18 Kallidopoulos P. 192 Kalligas P. 242 Kallipolis 171 Kamariotatoi 258 Kambounia Mt. 13 Kambouroglou Dimitrios 294 Kannavos I. 225, 236 Kapnotopos 150 Kapoutzides 182 Karabounar 275 Karadjali 171 Karakasidou, Anastasia 171 Karamanlides 166 Karamanos I. 105, 112, 160, 161, 286, 287, 314, 324, 327 Karatzova (Karadjova) 109, 175, 179, 198, 234, 236, 245, 248, 250, 302 Karavidas Kostas D. 108–9, 181, 211, 223–4 Kars 259–60

371 Karvali 255 Kastoria 13, 21, 23–4, 34–5, 37, 148, 155–6, 183, 203, 206, 209–11, 236, 245, 247–8, 250, 257, 300–2 Katerini 109, 156, 210–11, 245, 248, 250, 268, 275, 300 Kato Theodoraki 205, 275 Katranitsa 181 Kavala 13–14, 21, 23–5, 37, 49, 52, 121, 148, 154–6, 185, 189, 190–1, 195, 199, 203, 210–11, 247–8, 250, 255, 266, 268, 275, 282, 300–1, 312, 327 kazas (provinces) 16 kefalochoria (head villages) 16, 112–13, 116, 131, 134, 159 Kemal, Mustafa (Ataturk) 23, 52–3, 56–8, 60, 62, 65–6, 70, 174, 255 Kemalist(s) 52–4, 65–6, 73 Kenneth Thompson 331 KEPES 311, 319 Keramoti 300 Kerasous-ntos 261 Kerdylion Mt. 12, 22, 295 Kerkini (Belles) Mt. 12, 295 Kerme Gulf 95, 101 Keyder Caglar 42, 45 Kideia 258 Kileler 122 Kilkis 21, 23, 108–9, 148, 156, 186, 204–5, 210–13, 234, 245, 247, 248, 251, 255, 258, 268, 271, 275, 277, 292, 301–2, 324 Kinari 327 Kioup-kioi (Proti) 174, 175 Kiteiani (Karakoutza) 258 Kitros 127 n. 42, 275 Klampoutsista 221 Kofinas Giorgos 216 Kofos Evangelos 11, 22, 31, 201 Kokkinia (Kousovo) 205 koligoi 115–16, 124 see also tenants; sharecroppers Koliopoulos, Ioannis 31–2, 37, 69, 114, 244 Kolonia 261 Komotini 156, 169, 288 Konstantinato 160 Kopais Lake 279 Koritsa 22 Koromilas Lambros 35

372 Kosovo 11, 27, 198 Koufalia 275 Koukleni 213 Koukos 306 koulouktsides 115, 116 Koumanitsi 153 Koumoundouros, Alexandros 122 Koumpalista (Kokkinogeia) 178 Kourfali 127 n. 242 Koutsovlachs 22, 210, 234 Kouvouklion 160 Kozani 13, 18, 23–5, 148, 150, 155–6, 181, 184, 189, 195–6, 199, 200, 210–11, 220–3, 234, 238, 245–7, 249, 251, 259, 275, 301 Kraniotakis N. 187 Krimbas Basileios 161 Krithia 171 Kroussia Mt. 12 Kryftsion 275 Kurds 4, 45, 48 Kypriades Epameinondas 313, 315 labour battalions 45, 48, 62, 67 Labour Unions 106 Ladas, Stephen 67 Ladik district Lambros Achilleas 212, 214 Lampsidis Odysseus 166 Land Code 112 Land Registry Department 147 land reform(s) 81, 121–6, 129–30, 298 and Liberals 121–6 landowners or landlords 31, 38, 49, 112–19, 121–3, 125–8, 135, 171–3, 178–9, 280 foreign 126–30, 135 Langadas 35, 69, 109, 148, 156, 210–11, 245, 249, 251, 275–6, 301, 327 Langadikia 270 Lantsa 13, 266 Laodikino 255 Larisa 98, 157 Latsista 153 Lausanne Conference 57, 62, 64, 65, 68, 70, 75, 84, 89 Lausanne, Convention of 62–70, 73, 75–7, 81, 170, 176, 193, 197 Lausanne, Treaty of 78, 173, 217, 241 Law for the Prevention of Brigandage and Sedition 44

Index League of Nations 5, 6, 7, 53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 99, 101, 106, 126, 129, 193, 194, 196, 198, 208, 217, 218, 220, 222, 223, 226, 229, 231, 268, 269, 270, 273, 305, 309, 319, 325, 327, 330 Epidemics Committee 61, 268 Financial Committee 77, 79, 81, 83, 91, 93, 319 Lesvos 47, 51, 158 Levant, Levantine 21, 64, 69 Liakos Antonis 274 Liberal(s) 45–6, 103, 105, 121, 123, 125, 129, 154–5, 178, 182, 185–8, 191–2, 243, 332–3 see also Venizelists; Venizelos Eleftherios Lipnica 220 Lipos 237 loans 59, 77–82, 84–5, 88, 280–1: refugee loans 82, 86, 91 stabilization loan 283 London 80, 81, 177 Loutros 258 Lozanovon (Palaifyton) 275 Macedonia: the term 11–12 Central 41, 155, 156, 198, 204, 209, 210, 230, 266, 270, 292, 301, 337 Eastern 18, 21, 91, 93, 98, 124, 156, 169, 174, 203, 204, 209, 235, 236, 266, 309 of the Aegean 232 Southern 21 Western 14, 21, 52, 91, 101, 113, 155, 180, 198, 203, 204, 207, 209, 210, 211, 221, 224, 228, 230, 235, 242, 245, 300, 302 Macedonia: agricultural economy (in Ottoman M.) 15–18, 111–17; (in Greek M.) 118–22, 134, 297–310, 327–9, 331–3 agricultural land distribution in 151–7 arrival and resettlement of refugees in Greek M. (1913–15) 47–50 bands in 32, 34–5, 114–16 brigandage in 101, 114 chiftliks in 109, 118

Index climate 14 communications 13–14, 228, 286 deportations of farmers from 35 displacement of population (1912–22) 37–40 economic growth 18–19, 103, 109, 333 emigration 17, 202–4, 207, 333 Greek policy towards 29–30 land tenure system in Ottoman M. 111–12, 117 massacres 37 mountains 12 national awakening in Ottoman M. 24–37, 69 pastoral life 112–14, 120, 238–9 peasants in Ottoman M. 114–16, 121 population -ethnic mix of 19–24, 38 reasons for establishing refugee settlements in Greek M. 97–110 schools in 32–4, 241 tax system in Ottoman M. 116–17 topography 12–13 trade 18 violence in 32–4 Macedonian Bortherhoods 205 Macedonian Committee in Athens 35 Macedonian Question 11, 19, 24, 29, 35, 37 Macedonian Struggle Association 179 Macedonian Struggle 35, 36, 37, 117, 235, 236 Macedonian vilayets 35 Madytos-ou 261 Makedones 201 Makriotissa 150 Makrynitsa 327 Malakopi (Ano Toumba) 257, 258 malaria 104–5, 158, 160, 214, 266–9, 271, 273, 276–9, 283 Malouchos Nikos 118 Maravelakis Michalis 259 marshes 266, 272, 277–9, 282, 300–1 Marmara Sea 52, 95, 101 massacres 40, 45 Mavrogordatos George T. 89, 166, 171, 178, 185, 189, 332 Mavrolongos 284 Mavrothalassa 295 Mavrovon 13, 266 Mayadagh 245 Mazarades 270

373 Mazarakis A. 285 Mazower Mark 39–40, 105, 243, 310, 320, 333 Mears, Eliot Grinnell 298 Melas Pavlos 35 Melenikitsi 159 Meliki 275 Melisourgio (Mouznterek) 205 Meliti 221 Menoikion Mt. 12, 22 merchants 23 Jewish 52 merigie (public estates) 175 Mesiremma 275 Messolongi 92, 98 Metalla 294 Metallinos M., Dr 271, 276, 277 Metaxas Ioannis 243–4 metayer 16 Metra-on 261 Michalakopoulos Andreas 176, 216, 287 Michalitsi 258 Middle East 14, 18, 19, 201 migrant remittances 184 Milea 151 millet 21, 25, 26, 42, 45–6, 234 Rum millet 25, 168, 234 Minare Chiftlik 275 Ministry of Agriculture 92, 98–9, 124, 133–4, 142, 150–4, 172, 177, 209, 222, 228, 239–40, 253, 259, 270, 284, 300, 306, 311–14, 317, 319, 321, 323, 325–8 Ministry of Air Defence 322–5, 328 Ministry of Finance 49 Ministry of Foreign Affairs 324 Ministry of Health 91 Ministry of Hygiene 269, 274, 275 Ministry of Interior 293, 322–3, 326–8 Ministry of Public Welfare 91 Ministry of Relief 266 minorities 1–5, 7, 39–40, 44, 48, 52, 75–6, 187, 201, 217–18, 225 Minorities Treaties 70 misakariko system 115 Mitkas K. 222 Mixed Commission for the Exchange of Populations 132–3, 193 Modis G. 199 monastic lands 137–8 Monastir 11, 14, 18, 21–3, 33–5, 37, 39, 183, 230 Monks & Ulen Co., American firm 282

374 Montague Norman 80 Montenegrin 37 Morava Valley 14 Morgenthau Henry 56, 60, 79, 81, 83–4, 91, 96, 97, 174 mortites 124 Moskopol 22 Moslems see Muslims Moudanya 56, 60, 96, 272 Mouralar 256 Moustheni (Pieria Valley) 300 Mouzelis, Nikos 321, 333 Murzsteg agrrement 33 Muslim irregulars 33 Muslim landlords/ landowners 16, 31, 32, 40, 112, 118, 119, 121, 127 Muslim(s) 21, 23, 25, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 83, 91, 98, 101, 102, 112, 118, 123, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 143, 144, 150, 151, 152, 169, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 187, 193, 194, 195,196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 208, 209, 212, 218, 220, 221, 228, 234, 235, 245, 248, 250, 255, 322, 324, 336 Muslim refugees 4, 46, 50 Mylonas Alexandros 279 Myria 301 Myriophyto-ou 261 Nalban-kioi [Perdikkas] (Birintsi) 220–1 Nansen, Dr Fridtjof 57, 58, 59, 60, 61–70, 73–7, 80, 81, 84–93 Naoussa 35, 104, 245, 247, 268 National Bank of Greece 80–1, 91, 134, 138, 305, 322, 326, 329 National Radical Party 154 National Schism (Ethnikos Dichasmos) 51, 54–5, 59, 104, 121–3, 216 National Society (Ethniki Etaireia) 32, 34 National Statistical Service of Greece 292 Nea Bafra 175, 294 Nea Fokaia 261 Nea Herakleia 275 Nea Kallikrateia 275 Nea Kallipoli 270 Nea Kamila 275 Nea Karvali 255, 275 Nea Krithia 256

Index Nea Madytos 256 Nea Moudania 228, 256, 275 Nea Peramos 275 Nea Pergamos 256 Nea Sinopi 255 Near and Middle East Association 195–6 Near East 28, 30, 57, 60, 61, 64, 65, 68, 70, 73, 74, 76, 80, 90, 93, 96, 171; Near East refugees 57 Neo Constantinato 258 Neo Eleftherochori 275 Neo Kamaroto 258 Neochoraki 221 Neochori (Irakleia) 160 Neokazi 221 Neos Skopos 275, 294 Nestos (Mesta) river 11, 12, 13, 21, 37, 160, 300 plain of 258, 300 Netherlands Legation in Athens 197 Neuilly, Convention of 69 n. 84, 75, 93, 99, 193, 201–3, 205, 208, 212, 213 n. 56, 222, 227, 229, 241 Nevrokop 13, 205 New Anchialos 36 New Lands 5, 6, 38, 40, 63, 101, 117, 121, 123, 142, 168, 174, 179, 216, 265, 294, 298, 322, 330 New Provinces 142, 322 New World 202, 227, 233 New York 81 New Zealand 86 Newspaper of the Balkans 168, 173 niamata 176 Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia 41, 44 Niemeyer, Sir Otto 80, 84 Nigrita 156, 203, 247, 251, 268 Nikaia 261 Niki 183 Nikolaidis F. 173 Nikolaidis Sp. 154 Nikomideia 258, 261 Nish 14, 26 Noel-Baker P. J. 59, 64 nomoi 158 Norman Bentwich 82 Notaras Michalis 298 November elections 125 Novi Pazar 30 Ochrid 11 Odessa 96

Index Ogantzilar 275 Olympia 99, 106 Olympus Mt. 11, 13, 298 Ompar 258 Orestiada 298 Organization of Constantinople 43 Orliakon 275 Ossenitsa 149, 275, 288 Ostitsa (Mikromilea) 160 Ostrovo 21 Ottoman empire 2, 17, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 43, 49, 55, 59, 73, 89, 94, 168, 253, 259, 260 assimilation of ethnic minorities 39, 42, 45–6, 122 Christian minorities in 45–6 dismemberment of 40, 41, 42 elections (of 1912) 44 European provinces 18, 29, 34, 38–9, 44, 46–7, 49 liberals 42 percecution against Greek Ottoman citizens 46–8 Turkish nationalism 46 Ottoman Refugee Office 46, 50 Ottoman(s) 1–6, 11, 14–26, 29–31, 33–5, 37–52, 56, 59, 73, 78, 94, 111, 112, 114, 119, 120–2, 174, 177, 184, 209, 217, 221, 222, 237, 289, 293 Paikon Mt. 12 Paionia 12 Palehora 171 Palestine 68 Pallis, Alexandros A. 42, 50, 54, 58, 61, 63, 96, 200, 202, 231, 317, 325 Panagiotopoulos Basilis 308 Pangaion Mt. 12, 94, 100, 191 Pangalos Theodoros 55, 59, 139, 217, 226, 281 Pan-Hellenism 46 Papadakis I. S. 278 Papadatos Achilleas 154, 324, 327 Papadatos-Eddy Agreement 193, 152 Papagiannis (Popazianis) 221 Papanastassiou Alexandros 41, 55, 59, 105, 130, 133, 147, 238, 280, 290, 311, 325, 331 parachoritiria 305 parakentedes 115–16 Paralimnion 159 Paramythia 92

375 Paranestion (Boukion) 275 Paris 203 Paris Peace Conference 52–3 Parliament, Ottoman (of 1912) 44 Passalidis I. 185 Pasteur Institute at Athens 273 pasture lands 119, 174, 183, 298, 304; disputes over communal pasture lands: 321–8 Patra 92, 98, 125 Patriarchists 31, 33, 35, 200, 202, 235, 236, 248, 250, 252 Paxos 130 Pearson R. 68 Pek-alan 255 Pelagonia plain 21 Pelargos 256 Pella 236, 240, 249, 250 Peloponnese 29, 31, 99, 106, 299 Pentzopoulos Dimitris 67–8, 185 People’s Republic of Macedonia 233 Peponia 258 Percy Alden 170 Perdikkas 130, 221 perestroika 335 Peristasis 50, 261, 275 Perni 258 Petritch 205, 213, 222 Petropoulos, John 67, 161 Philippi marshes 282, 300–1 valley 300 Philippoupolis 22, 36, 213 Pieria 148, 300, 306 Pindus Mt. 11, 13, 22 Piraeus 56, 60, 106, 114 Pirot 26 Pisticochoria 259 Pistolakis 314 Pladatoi (Sou-Mpasi) 258 Plastiras Nikolaos 125 Platanakia (estate) 99, 106 Platy 275 Plevna (Petroussa) 174, 178 Poland 61, 66, 136 polemopathes (victims of war) 93, 99, 100, 101 Politis Nicolaos 77, 279, 293, 294 Polyplatanos 183, 221 Pomaks 22, 200 Pontic Alps 96 Pontics 4, 45, 48, 51,60, 65, 96, 160,165–7, 182, 185, 187, 259, 335–7

376 Pontus 47, 48, 51, 56, 61, 64, 66, 69, 96, 131, 196, 253, 258, 267, 286, 296, 318 Popovich 240 Populist Party 53, 57, 125, 129, 154, 180, 182, 192, 199, 242 Populists 187, 191, 319 Porna 275 Poroia 245 Portaria 228 Pourlia 171 Prespa Lakes 11, 37 Preveza 92, 98, 131, 255 Prilip 18 Primikir 258 Primikiratoi 258 Prisoners of War 62 Pro-Bulgarian activists 34 Proctor, Colonel, The Deputy High Commissioner for refugees in Constantinople 85, 87–8, 90, 93, 134 Proikonnison 261 Promachon 150 prosfygopateres 141 Prosotsani 301 Protestantism 26 Proti 179 Proussa 258 Provisional Government 51 and land reform 124 Provlakos 275 Psomiades Harry J. 67 Ptolemais 301 Pyrgoi (Katranitsa) 181 Pyrgos 213 Raidestos 261 Rassovo (Leimon) 207 Red Corss 198 Refet Pasha 65 Refugee Settlement Commission (RSC) 6, 7, 77–8, 81–4, 86, 87, 88, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 104, 106, 107, 126, 129, 131, 133, 134, 135, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, 148, 152, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 175, 176, 178, 180, 181, 182, 183, 190, 216, 212, 218, 222, 223, 224, 232, 240, 253, 254, 256, 265, 267, 272, 273, 276, 278, 281, 285, 286, 287, 289, 291, 292, 297, 298, 300, 303, 306, 308, 309,

Index 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 336 establishment of 78–9 purpose of 82 n. 29, 83, 86 structure of 89–92 Refugee Treasury Fund 75, 79 Refugee Village Co-operative Association 270 refugees 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 35, 37, 38, 40, 44, 50–3, 59, 60, 61, 63–6, 69, 70, 73, 74, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 99, 100, 101, 102, 106, 118, 120, 126, 131, 132, 133, 135, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 149, 151, 155, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180, 181, 183, 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 205, 207, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 227, 239, 241, 248, 252, 253, 256, 261, 265, 268, 269, 270, 271, 273, 281, 292, 298, 302, 303, 305, 307, 308, 309, 313, 315, 324, 329, 330, 331, 332, 334, 336, 337, 338 antallaximoi 93, 95–7, 254, 256 assimilation of 166 n. 3 settled in border areas 178, 182, 284–8 categories of 93, 95–7, 318–19 conditions of their departure 56–7 debts of 143–5, 303, 319 discrimination against 166, 336 from Bulgaria (1906–7) 36 marriages 158, 160–2, 336–7 mobility 254–5, 257 and November pogrom (1916) 186 number of 73 relief for 75–6 urban 74, 77, 94, 88, 97, 151, 257, 289 and KKE 188–91 waves of 55–7 refugees of Europe 41, 74 Regional Committees for the exchange of populations 259, 260 religion: 25–32, 165, 256 Christians’ indifference to nationalist categories 25 communal life and 256 and national aspirations 26–7

Index Orthodox/Catholic relationship 26 rivalries among churches 31–2 see also Christians; Muslims republicans 333 Resettlement Accounting Department 149 Reval meeting 44 Revolution (of 1821) 121 Revolution (of 1922): Revolutionary Government 54, 57, 58, 59, 125, 129, 169, 177, 187, 239 Rhodope Mt. 11, 12, 23, 234 Rission 270 Robinson Jacob 70 Rodoleivos 266 Rodopolis,-eos 261 Roman Catholicism 26 Romania, Romanian(s) 23, 28–9, 37, 85, 90, 184, 230, 234, 237–40, 248, 328 Royalists 121, 333 Rumbold, Sir H. 67 Rumelia Eastern 29, 31 Rumenov V. 233 Rupel, Fort of 51 Russia 2, 27, 32, 34, 48, 56, 57, 61, 68, 74, 89, 93, 99 see also Russian-Turkish War (of 1877–8) 29 Sakarya river 53 Salonica 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 33–7, 41, 44, 106, 149, 156, 267, 275, 280 see also Thessaloniki Salter, Sir Arthur 80–2, 146 Sampsous 255 Samsun 56 Sanjak of Novi Pazar 29 Sarakatsani 22, 159, 321 Sarakatsaneiko 159 Sarakina 151 Saranta Ekklesiai-on 261 Sarantis Adamos 151 Sari Ghiol (Eordaia) 20 Sari-Pazar 275 Sari-Shaban 194, 203, 249, 258 Saunders, Major 212, 221 Save the Children Fund 170 Schismatics 235, 236 Schweinfurth-green 272 Sdravikion 182, 275 Sebinkarahissar 256 Second World War 153, 244, 284, 335, 336

377 Sedes 270 Semalto 182 senetia 177, 219 Serafeimidis, Supervisor of the Agricultural District of Kozani 150 Serb-Croat-Slovene Government 208 Serbia 20, 27, 28, 30, 32, 37, 39–41, 50, 54–5, 84, 90, 94, 101, 198, 202, 219–20, 225–8 Serbian Ministry for Foreign Affairs 218–19 Serbian propaganda 27, 243 Serbian schools 27, 231 Serbian(s) 21, 28, 198, 211, 217–22, 233–4 Serbs see Serbians Serres 12, 13, 14, 16, 18, 21–5, 94, 100–1, 121,138, 148–50, 156, 159, 174–5, 190, 203–4, 206, 210, 211, 215, 236, 245–7, 251, 257, 259, 266, 268, 271, 283–4, 291–2, 295, 301, 312 Servia 245 Sevasteia 61 Seventekli 275 Sfanitsa 127 n. 42 Shar Mt. 11 share-tenants or sharecroppers 49, 111, 115–16, 122, 131, 134, 171, 197–8 Sideris G. 239 Sidirokastro(n) (Demir-Hissar) 149, 160, 183, 206, 210–11, 237, 245, 251, 257, 275, 286, 288, 301, 327 Simpson, Sir John Hope 4, 68, 78, 90, 94, 96, 100, 314, 316, 319, 324, 327 Sinope 131 Sintiki 150, 295 Sivignon M. 13 Six, execution of 54 Skala of Lacedaimon 99, 105 Skopje (Uskup) 11, 18, 21, 24, 227 Skotoussa 295 Skoutari 258, 284, 294 Slav Macedonians 193, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 242, 243, 244 Slav(s) 1, 21, 100, 101, 107, 110, 227, 241 language 233, 244 toponyms 293, 294

378 Slavizers 200 Slavo-Macedonians 223, 336 Slavophiles 200 Slavophone(s) 6, 18, 26, 33, 50, 53, 107, 175, 182, 189, 200, 206, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 219, 222, 223, 226, 235, 236, 237, 241, 242, 243, 244, 248, 249, 322, 324; assimilation of 107–8, 201, 211, 241–4 discrimination against 244 see also Slav-speakers Slav-speakers 21, 22, 27, 118, 170, 177, 200–4, 207, 209, 212, 216, 218, 223, 230–6, 242, 250–2 Smith Llewellyn 49, 51, 54, 57, 58, 67 Smyrna 52–4 Society for the Anti-Malaria Campaign 268 Society of St. Sava 27 Sofia 31, 33, 85, 90, 213, 217, 233 Sofoular 275, 301 Sorchoun 98, 105 Souflar 275 Soufli 157 Souliotis Athanassios 43, 46 Soviet Union -Russia 52, 57, 61, 84, 85, 89, 90, 335, 338 Spain 23, 24 Speyer & Company’s Bank of New York 81 Spiliotopoulos Sotiris 238 Spyridis S. 313 Stathmos Aggistis 275 Stavros 275 Stenimachos 36 Straits 68 Struggle for Macedonia 29 Strumnitsa 234 Strymon (Strumna or Kara-Shu) 4, 12, 13, 21, 37, 39, 105, 134, 266, 279, 282–3, 295, 311 Strymoniko 150 Sublime Porte 33, 44, 112 Suez 68 Sultan 26, 42, 110 Supreme Committee 31, 32 Svolopoulos Konstantinos 67 Sylivria-as 261 Syntagma Square 171 Syrianatoi or Syrianoi 258

Index Tachinos Lake 13, 266, 283 Taurus Mt. 95 taxation 17, 79, 116–17, 143 Tekeli 275 Telikostoglou Christos 255 tenant(s) 16, 17, 53, 108, 112, 115, 171, 215 Tenedos 4, 49, 63, 68, 94, 101, 335 ter-oglans 115 tessaruf 111 Thasos 191, 249 Thebes 99, 106 Theodosioupolis-eos 261 Theotokis Georgios 34 Thermaikos Bay 279 Thessaloniki 11, 21–2, 24, 27, 35, 46–52, 55, 60, 64, 69–70, 77, 80, 86, 98, 109, 121, 123, 132, 138, 182, 195–9, 204, 208, 210–12, 216, 218, 222–3, 225–6, 228, 235, 237, 245–7, 249, 251, 254–9, 265–6, 275, 282, 290, 301–2 Thessaly 25, 30, 32, 38, 98–9, 122, 124, 125, 135, 176, 206–7, 304, 312 Third World 143 Thomas Albert 85, 90 Thompson Kenneth 331 Thrace, Eastern 39, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 73, 95, 96, 109, 171, 186, 187, 204, 206, 238, 258, 259, 296, 336, 337 Thrace Western 4, 5, 41, 61, 63, 65, 68, 70, 86, 87, 91, 92, 101, 129, 161, 169, 201, 206, 269, 285, 299, 309, 323, 330 Thrace 4, 5, 30, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 60, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 77, 78, 91, 93, 94, 98, 100, 101, 117, 120, 123, 124, 135, 136, 148, 158, 167, 185, 188, 205, 207, 208, 213, 235, 238, 244, 266, 267, 268, 270, 284, 285, 288, 307, 309, 311, 312, 313, 325, 326, 328, 329, 338 Thracian(s) 73, 97, 254, 256, 322 Thrakiko 294 Tigris River 95 tobacco 13, 15, 17, 18, 52, 65, 86, 99, 106, 134, 169, 189–90, 308–9, 312, 320 Toland Judith D. 228 Topsin 275

Index Toritsa 275 Tosks 20 Toumba 257 Toynbee Arnold 40, 42 Transjordan 68 Trapezous-ntos 261 see Trebizond Treaty of Berlin (1878) 29, 44, 47 Treaty of Bucharest (1913) 37–9, 202 Treaty of Constantinople (1913) 39 Treaty of London (May 1913) 36, 38, 49 Treaty of San Stefano 29 Treaty of Sèvres (1920) 52, 53, 56, 186 Treaty of Versailles 2 Trebizond 56, 61, 257 Trias (estate) 150 Trikoupis Charilaos 30 tritakariko system 115 Tsaktsiras I. 243 Tservitsa 237 Tsinar Tserpanti 255 Tsinganades 270 Tsoumlek Dere 257 tuberculosis 160, 273, 275–6, 279 Turkey 4, 12, 16, 20, 24, 25, 28, 31, 35, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 50, 52, 56, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 75, 76, 78, 80, 93, 94, 99, 100, 118, 121, 122, 127, 132, 133, 145, 170, 176, 188, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199, 206, 207, 335 see also Ottoman Empire Turkification 65, 186 Turkish: Albanians 130 army/troops 54, 56, 58 authorities 18, 33, 66, 128 brutality 64, 69 civilians 58 gendarme 48 nationalism 44, 46, 48, 51 nationalist(s) 53, 65 police 58 question 36 Turkish Red Crescent 198 Turks 3, 4, 12, 16, 20, 21, 25, 37, 38, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 78, 100, 101, 120, 122, 130, 132, 134, 136, 142, 168, 172, 195, 200, 206, 229, 234, 255, 256, 291 Tyrnavos 98, 105 tzormpatjides 118–19, 171

379 Uncrowned Democracy 332 Uniate 26 Union Agronomique de la Macédoine et de la Thrace 105, 112 USA 18, 35, 75, 79, 82, 84, 89, 98, 103, 280–2; immigration 184 Vakalopoulos Apostolos 259 Valaades 21, 199 Valaoras V. G. 158 Vamvakousa 258 Vandervelde M. 85, 91 Vardar see Axios Varna 36, 213 Vatolakos 151 Vatoum 337 Veles 26 Velvendos 184, 185 Venizelists 54, 55, 58, 103, 107, 124, 170, 183, 187, 188, 191, 243, 311, 31 and peasants 106–7, 130 and refugees 186–8 Venizelos Eleftherios 38, 40, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 73, 77, 81, 94, 100, 103, 105, 106, 110, 118, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 130, 154, 162, 177, 182, 186, 188, 199, 216, 266, 274, 281, 282, 290, 311, 316, 317, 319, 320, 332 on agricultural policy 118, 122–5, 281–2, 310–13 and Muslims in the New Lands 38 Vergi 295 Veria 22, 24, 109, 149, 156, 210, 211, 238, 240, 245, 247, 249, 251, 275 Vertecop (Skydra) 198 Vertiskos Mt. 12 Vetrina 275 Vienna scheme 33, 34 Viglista 13 vilayets 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 33, 34, 89, 94 Visotsani (Xiropotamos) 178 Vissaltia 295 Vistritsa see Aliakmon Vlach (s) 6, 21, 22, 26, 50, 54, 98, 183, 210, 212, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 252, 321, 336 Romanophile 237–8, 240 Vlachophones 248 see Vlach-speakers

380 Vlach-speakers 6, 193, 201, 235–7, 239, 240, 248, 250 Voemitsa 210–11 Volos 36 Vosterani (Meliti) 220 Voulgaratoi 258 Vourlatoi (Bastar-kioi) 258 Vranje 29 Vyroneia 275 Wall Street Crash (of 1929)-economic crisis 283, 320, 333 War Debt Funding Agreement 282 West Germany 334 westernization 43 wheat 16, 114, 308, 312, 319–20 White Norman Dr 269 Wilson Woodrow 2 Wilsonian principles 49

Index Xanthi 157, 257 Xerias 258 Xydis A. 211 Yiannitsa 12, 149, 210–11, 266, 271, 275, 280, 283, 292, 301 Young Turks 36, 41–7, 50–1, 123, 186 Yugoslav(s) 217, 230, 232–3 Yugoslavia 40, 42–3, 85, 90, 225, 230 zadruga 157–8 n. 32, 242 Zaimis Andreas 55, 59, 311 Zarifis N. 275 Zevgolatio 150 Zichni 203, 251 Zogou 275 Zyrnovo 203, 249, 251