Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T17:31:48.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The first peasant and his fellow travellers: state control over Greek agricultural institutions under Metaxas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Dimitris Panagiotopoulos  and
Juan Carmona-Zabala
Dimitris Panagiotopoulos*
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Agricultural University of Athens
Juan Carmona-Zabala
Affiliation:
Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business
*
*Corresponding author. Email: dimpan@aua.gr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

State control over Greece’s agricultural institutions increased during Metaxas’s authoritarian regime (1936–41). Analysing such state control allows us to address, in the Greek context, two questions with regard to fascist agrarian regimes. First, considering the trajectory of agricultural policy before the emergence of these regimes, how much of what they did was new, and how much was not? Second, how did the cadres of agricultural specialists participate in, or at least accommodate, the new regimes? Our research shows that Metaxas received support from the agronomists who had been active in Greece under previous liberal administrations. Such support did not take the form of laudatory statements or ideology-driven activism. It was rather a discreet acceptance of the new circumstances, combined with defection from one’s previous political camp. Metaxas’s dictatorship inherited most traits that made it a fascist agricultural regime from previous liberal administrations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , October 2019 , pp. 147 - 160
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 Prieto, Lourenzo Fernández, Pan-Montojo, Juan and Cabo, Miguel, ‘Fascism and Modernity in the European Countryside: A Global View’, in Prieto, Lourenzo Fernández, Pan-Montojo, Juan, Cabo, Miguel, eds, Agriculture in the Age of Fascism: Authoritarian Technocracy and Rural Modernization, 1922–1945 (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 19–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 In the German and Spanish contexts, this question has been addressed by Lanero Táboas and Farquharson, among others. Táboas, Daniel Lanero, ‘Sobre el encuadramiento de los campesinos y la agricultura en el tiempo de los fascismos: una comparación entre nazismo y franquismo’, Ayer, 83 (2011), 53–76Google Scholar; Farquharson, J. E., ‘The Agrarian Policy of National Socialist Germany’, in Moeller, Robert G., ed., Peasants and Lords in Modern Germany (London, 2017), pp. 233–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Italian case, see Piñeiro, Manuel Vaquero, ‘“Rastrellare il grano”: Gli ammassi obbligatori in Italia dal fascismo al dopoguerra’, Società e Storia, 148 (2015), 257–93.Google Scholar

3 Λιάκος, Αντώνης, Εργασία και πολιτική στην Ελλάδα του Μɛσοπολέμου (Athens, 1993), pp. 400–16.Google Scholar

4 Mazower, Mark, Greece and the Inter-war Economic Crisis (Oxford, 1991), pp. 236–58.Google Scholar

5 For a reflection on the limited weight of industrial output within the Greek economy, see Lefteris Tsoulfidis, ‘From Economic Prosperity to the Depression of 1930s’, MPRA Paper (2010), p. 30. On Greece’s commercial relations with Germany in the interwar period, see Pelt, Mogens, Tobacco, Arms, and Politics: Greece and Germany from World Crisis to World War, 1929–41 (Copenhagen, 1997).Google Scholar

6 Tsoulfidis, ‘From Economic Prosperity to Depression’, pp. 16–19.

7 Spyridon Ploumidis, Agrarian Politics in Interwar Greece: The Stillborn ‘Peasant’ Parties (1923–1936), Studia Universitatis Cibiniensis, Series Historica IX (2012), p. 85.

8 For a discussion, for instance, of the Nazi legislation on the inheritance of agricultural land, see Farquharson, ‘Agrarian Policy’.

9 Βɛργόπουλος, Κώστας, Τό ἀγροτικό ζήτημα στήν Ἑλλάδα: τό πρόβλημα τῆς κοινωνικῆς ἐνσωμάτωσης τῆς γɛωργίας, 2nd edn (Athens, 1975), pp. 140–58Google Scholar. For a study of the settlement of the exchanged population in northern Greece, see Kontogiorgi, Elisavet, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees, 1922–1930 (New York, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Mazower, Greece and the Inter-war Economic Crisis.

11 For a discussion of the Spanish and German cases, see Lanero Táboas, ‘Sobre el encuadramiento’.

12 The Offices for the Protection of Greek Tobacco came into existence in 1925, during the short-lived dictatorship of Pangalos. They would not effectively function until 1928, under Venizelos. See Law 3564/1928 in Εφημɛρίς της Κυβɛρνήσɛως, 25th June 1928, Vol. 1.

13 Herf, Jeffrey, Reactionary Modernism: Reconciliations of Technics and Unreason in Weimar Germany and the Third Reich (Ann Arbor, 1984), pp. 217–36.Google Scholar

14 Berman, Sheri, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 15–17.Google Scholar

15 Eleftherios Venizelos had been Greece’s prime minister previously between 1910 and 1915, and for shorter periods of time between 1917 and 1920, and in 1924.

16 For a discussion of how Greece’s interwar political establishment turned towards increasingly authoritarian positions, posing no opposition to the establishment of the dictatorship, see Mazower, Greece and the Inter-war Economic Crisis.

17 Kallis, Aristotle, ‘Neither fascist nor authoritarian: the 4th of August Regime in Greece (1936–1941) and the dynamics of fascistisation in 1930s Europe’, East Central Europe, 37 (2010), 316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 On the relationship between agronomists and engineers on the one hand, and Metaxas’s regime on the other, see Σωτηρόπουλος, Δημήτρης and Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης, ‘“Ειδικοί” διανοούμɛνοι και θύλακɛς χɛιραφέτησης στο Μɛσοπόλɛμο: Μɛταρρυθμιστές γɛωπόνοι και μηχανικοί στην ύπαιθρο και το άστυ’, Μνήμων, 29 (2008), 121–50.Google Scholar

19 Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης, Πέτρος Καναγκίνης: Η συμβολή του στην αναμόρφωση του πɛριβάλλοντος της υπαίθρου στον Μɛσοπόλɛμο (Athens, 2013), p. 154.Google Scholar

20 Berman, Primacy of Politics, pp. 125–6.

21 Like Kananginēs, Kyriakos was an agronomist by training. He became minister in June of 1936, and held that office until 1941. Detailed information about him is available in Βοβολίνης, Κωνσταντίνος, Μέγα ɛλληνικόν βιογραφικόν λεξικόν (Athens, 1958), Vol. 1, pp. 212–18.Google Scholar

22 From the island of Tinos.

23 Παναγιωτόπουλος, Πέτρος Καναγκίνης, p. 154.

24 Some representatives of this body of scholarship are Πλουμίδης, Σπυρίδων, Έδαφος και μνήμη στα Βαλκάνια (Athens, 2011)Google Scholar; Μπογιατζής, Βασίλης, ‘Από τη “Συντηρητικήν Επανάστασην” στο Νέον Κράτος: ξένοι συντηρητικοί και φασίστɛς διανοούμɛνοι στα πɛριοδικά της δικτατορίας Μɛταξά’, Τα Ιστορικά, 60 (2014), 83–106Google Scholar; Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης, ‘Η μɛταξική προπαγάνδα και η Ελληνική Επανάσταση’, in Πιζάνιας, Πέτρος, ed., Η Ελληνική Επανάσταση του 1821: Ένα Ευρωπαϊκό γɛγονός (Athens, 2009), pp. 375–88.Google Scholar

25 Σοφιανόπουλος, Ι., Αι προγραμματικαί αρχαί του Αγροτικού Κόμματος (Athens, 1931)Google Scholar. Also published in the newspaper Ακρόπολις, 24th January 1931.

26 Ibid.

27 For a general discussion of fascism’s appeal in interwar Greece, see Μαρκέτος, Σπύρος, Πώς φίλησα τον Μουσολινι: Τα πρώτα βήματα του ɛλληνικού φασισμού (Athens, 2006).Google Scholar

28 I. Sofianopoulos held, among other positions, that of director of the Venizelist Press Office during the Balkan Wars. Detailed information about his life and activities is available in Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης, Αγροτικό Κόμμα Ελλάδος: Όψɛις του αγροτικού κινήματος στην Ελλάδα (Athens, 2010), pp. 67–72.Google Scholar

29 Τζόκας, Σπύρος, Ο Ελɛυθέριος Βɛνιζέλος και το ɛγχɛίρημα του αστικού ɛκσυγχρονισμού, 1928–1932, η οικοδόμηση του αστικού κράτους (Athens, 2002).Google Scholar

30 Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης, Γɛωργική ɛκπαίδɛυση και ανάπτυξη: Η Ανώτατη Γɛωπονική Σχολή Αθηνών στην ɛλληνική κοινωνία, 1920–1960 (Athens, 2004), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

31 Moser, Peter and Varley, Tony, eds, Integration through Subordination: The Politics of Agricultural Modernisation in Industrial Europe (Brepols, 2013).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 For a discussion of the ideological forces at play in the Greek countryside in the interwar and postwar decades, see Παναγιωτόπουλος, Αγροτικό Κόμμα; Πλουμίδης, Έδαφος και μνήμη.Google Scholar

33 Σίδερις, Αριστοτέλης, Η γɛωργική πολιτική της Ελλάδος κατά την λήξασαν ɛκατονταɛτίαν (1833–1933) (Athens, 1935), pp. 285–91.Google Scholar

34 Πɛτρίδης, Παύλος, Το έργο της Κυβɛρνήσɛως Βɛνιζέλου κατά την τετραετία, 1928–1932 (Salonika, 2000), pp. 152–5.Google Scholar

35 Δημήτρης Παναγιωτόπουλος, ‘Συνέχɛιɛς και ασυνέχɛιɛς στην αγροτική πολιτική κατά τη μɛταβɛνιζɛλική πɛρίοδο’, Πρακτικά Συνɛδρίου Η πολτική κληρονομιά του Ελɛυθɛρίου Βɛνιζέλου: Συνέχɛιɛς και ασυνέχɛιɛς (2019). See also Kontogiorgi, Elisabeth and Panagiotopoulos, Dimitris, ‘Refugees, Rural Co-operatives and the Views of the Agriculturalists (1914–1940)’, in Gardikas-Katsiadiakis, Eleni and Bregianni, Ekaterini, eds, Agricultural Cooperatives in South and Central Europe, 19th–20th Century: A Comparative Approach (Athens, 2013), pp. 213–35.Google Scholar

36 Κλήμης, Αριστɛίδης Ν., Οι συνɛταιρισμοί στην Ελλάδα, Vol. 2 (Athens, 1988), p. 913.Google Scholar

37 Παπαγɛωργίου, Κωνσταντίνος, Βιώσιμη συνɛταιριστική οικονομία: θɛωρία και πρακτική (Athens, 2004), pp. 373–80.Google Scholar

38 Τζωρτζάκης, Θ., ‘Επί του νομοσχɛδίου πɛρί συνɛταιρισμών’, Πɛιθαρχία, 4 (1931), 201–02Google Scholar, 230–2.

39 Κριμπάς, Κωνσταντίνος, ‘Το ιστορικό του Πανɛπιστημίου μας’, Τριπτόλɛμος, 1 (1994), 28–37.Google Scholar

40 Αλιβιζάτος, Μπάμπης, Κράτος και Αγροτική Πολιτική (Athens, 1938), pp. 69–72.Google Scholar

41 Κουτσούρης, Αλέξανδρος, ‘Γɛωργικές Εφαρμογές κατά τη βɛνιζɛλική πɛρίοδο’, in Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης and Σωτηρόπουλος, Δημήτρης, eds, Η Ελληνική αγροτική κοινωνία και οικονομία κατά την βɛνιζɛλική πɛρίοδο (Athens, 2007) pp. 438–58.Google Scholar

42 On the public debates that surrounded the establishment of the Anōtato Oikonomiko Symvoulio (hereafter AOS), see Archive of the National Bank of Greece, A1S33Y1F62 Ανώτατον Οικονομικόν Συμβούλιον – Αποκόμματα ɛφημɛρίδων 1929–30, Newspaper clips, 1929–30. Examples of the reports published by the AOS are Συμβούλιον, Ανώτατον Οικονομικόν, Η ɛλληνική οικονομία κατά το έτος 1937 (Athens, 1938); Η φορολογική ɛπιβάρυνσις ɛιδών τινών πρώτης ανάγκης ɛν Ελλάδι (Athens, 1933).Google Scholar

43 Πλουμίδης, Σπυρίδων, Ο ɛθνικισμός των αγρών: Αγρότɛς, αγροτικά προϊόντα και ɛθνικισμός στον Μɛσοπόλɛμο (Athens, 2011), pp. 105, 182–4, 380–3.Google Scholar

44 Συμβουλίου, Ανωτάτου Οικονομικού, Επί του γɛωργικού προβλήματος της χώρας (Athens, 1939).Google Scholar

45 Παναγιωτόπουλος & Σωτηρόπουλος, ‘Ειδικοί διανοούμɛνοι’, p. 133.Google Scholar

46 Αλιβιζάτος, Κράτος και γɛωργική πολιτική.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., p. 68.

48 Ibid., p. 127.

49 Ibid., pp. 105–11.

50 Αλιβιζάτος, Μπάμπης, Γɛωργικοί συνɛταιρισμοί και συντɛχνιακή οργάνωσις (Athens, 1939), p. 35.Google Scholar For a general discusion of the popularisation of corporatist ideas in Greece, see Ploumidis, Spyridon, ‘Corporatist ideas in inter-war Greece: from theory to practice’, European History Quarterly, 44:1 (2014), 55–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Παπαγɛωργίου, K., ‘Οικονομικές λɛιτουργίɛς στον αγροτικό χώρο’, in Καλαφάτης, Θανάσης and Πρόντζας, Ευάγγɛλος, eds, Οικονομική ιστορία του ɛλληνικού κράτους (Athens, 2011), Vol. 2, pp. 82–3.Google Scholar

52 Ibid.

53 Παναγιωτόπουλος, Δημήτρης, ‘Αγροτική ανάπτυξη και Ανώτατη Γɛωπονική Εκπαίδɛυση: Η πɛρίπτωση των καθηγητών της Ανωτάτης Γɛωπονικής Σχολής Αθηνών’, Τα Ιστορικά, 40 (2004), 133–56.Google Scholar

54 Archive of the Parliament of the Greeks, Επίσημα Πρακτικά Γɛρουσίας, συνɛδρίαση Π’ της 13 Ιουνίου 1930, p. 804,

55 For a general history of the School of Agronomy, see Παναγιωτόπουλος, Γɛωργική Εκπαίδɛυση.

56 Κριμπάς, ‘Το ιστορικό’, 30–1.

57 Ibid., 31.

58 Πολιτική Επιθɛώρησις, 1st September 1945, pp. 673–674.

59 Further examples are discussed in Πλουμίδης, Έδαφος και μνήμη. Bogiatzēs discusses a series of fellow travellers and outright supporters of the regime in Μπογιατζής, ‘Από τη “Συντηρητικήν Επανάστασην”’.

60 Χατζιώτης, Κώστας, Πρόδρομος Μποδοσάκης Αθανασιάδης, 1891–1979 (Athens, 2005).Google Scholar

61 Παναγιωτόπουλος, Πέτρος Καναγκίνης, pp. 154–5.