PORTRAIT OF A FANATIC
By C. M. WOODHOUSE
TO be a Communist in Greece you have to be a downright fanatic for the truth (if Marxism is your idea of truth), the whole truth and nothing but the truth. There is no half-way house. That is the difference between Greek Communism and the Slav Communism which it neighbours. A Slav, with his eye on Macedonia and especially on Salonika, can become a Communist by way of being a patriot, a nationalist and an irredentist ; a Greek can become one only by way of being a Communist. This follows from two simple premises. If the purposes of Balkan Communism are fulfilled, then a new State will be carved out of Macedonia ; and it will not be a Greek State, but a Slav State, an equal member of the Southern Slav federation. The Slays stand to gain as Slays by Communism ; the Greeks stand to lose as Greeks. The impulse of Greek Communism can therefore be nothing less than the pure logic of ideological conviction. Its members (as distinct from its futile fellow-travellers) can only be doctrinaire fanatics. There can be no compromise with patriotism, no half-measures, no comforting ambitions on the side.
There is therefore nothing surprising about the fanaticism of this particular fanatic, apart from the natural surprise that a Greek can be a Communist at all. He is one of a small but uniform sect dedicated to a supra-rational ideal. All the rest of the K.K.E., the Communist Party of Greece, whether in the gaols of Athens, the islands of the Aegean or the mountains of Macedonia, must have the same undeviating enthusiasm, or succumb. He is not unique, or-even exceptional. When I first made his acquaintance five years ago, he bore no obvious stigmata to distinguish him from his com- rades. Yet there must be something to set him apart, for he is now the commander of a rebel army and the head of a self- constituted Government. His name is said to be Markos Vaphiadhis.
His position and personality in 1943 gave little inkling of an exceptional future ; yet retrospectively they must be seen to have had a certain significance. In E.L.A.S., the guerrilla army of the K.K.E. and its satellites of E.A.M, he held a post which was called " Divisional Capetanios." Every unit of E.L.A.S., from platoons upwards, was commanded by a committee of three nominally equal members—the military commander, the political director and the " capetanios." Theoretically, the first two titles speak for themselves, though the military commander was often a nin- compoop and almost always an ineffectual figurehead. The third was invariably a man of the people, chosen for his personality and his prestige with the rank and file. In 1943 Markos came nowhere near the highest eminence in this class. The significance of his position is therefore simply that he held the third of the three appointments rather than either of the first two ; for his position today appears to be exactly the opposite, a combination of military commander and political director. This is remarkable, because his talents have always lain exclusively in the role for which he was originally cast. He was a natural " capetanios," with no visible ability as a soldier or a politician.
Markos is a demagogue, not a statesman or a commander. Every word he utters is addressed to a public meeting. That remained true even when his audience was limited to myself. The first such occasion, which differed only in superficial detail from every other occasion, was a dispute between E.L.A.S. and one of its rivals among the guerrilla movements of Greek Macedonia during the enemy occupation. The complaint was that the rival movement was col- laborating with the Germans. Markos had picked the quarrel care- fully, as the K.K.E. usually did ; for the complaint was true to the extent that their rivals had been forced into a position where they must either collaborate with the Germans or succumb. to the violence of E.L.A.S. Markos argued the case with dialectical skill and imaginative fervour. Having almost everything in his favour, he made the utmost of it.
Apart from the strength of his case, Markos's own appearance and manner were agreeable by Anglo-Saxon standards, and he knew it ; at first sight he might have been an Anglo-Saxon. He was blond, and innocent of " dictator's paunch." He has lately accentu- ated his western appearance by growing an unexpectedly disciplined red moustache. But the illusion could not survive beyond the first instant of silence and repose. Greek fire was never far below the urbane surface. His profile was gaunt and aquiline, handsome in an ascetic way, and alive with youthful enthusiasm. His hair leapt back and forth over his head and down his face, so that it over- lapped his neck, his ears and his chin in turn in the excitement of debate. His eyes were blue, deep and fiery. His thin lips looked always as if they might, but for rigorous self-control, have foamed with the fury of his righteous indignation. His hands moved to- gether and apart in regulated sympathy with his eloquence, but never out of control. This especially appealed to an Anglo-Saxon audience. His reason was in control of his passion ; he felt deeply, but without giving way to emotion. At least, he appeared to do all this ; there could be very little doubt in fact, after a prolonged acquaintance, that the whole show was an elaborate act. He knew the kind of emotion a Greek ought to feel when he is in the right ; he guessed the kind of dispassion an Englishman expects of a man arguing an irrefutable case ; by a truly remarkable feat of histrionics he gave me both.
This happened whenever we met ; perhaps that was a little too often for the success of his act. But the same technique, which became too obvious for intimate occasions, was infallible before crowds, where he could display his splendid appearance with the self-conscious poise of a Novello and rant with the unchallenged fervour of a revivalist. For occasions which lay between those two extremes, such as the multilateral conferences of which guerrilla war- fare in Greece was chiefly composed, he had another astute technique. Whenever rival groups of guerrillas were assembled round a table, it was the function of whichever British or Americaii officer brought them together to conciliate, to mediate a compromise, to play the honest broker. Every leader of E.A.M./E.L.A.S. had his own way of frustrating that role.; but Markos's way, which was much the most effective, was to usurp it himself. With a naïvely frank smile, all the more effective because his countenance had so little of the Greek in it, and a gracious considerateness which it would have been ungracious to call assumed, he would propose exactly that via media between rival views which it was our own intention to propose ourselves. When it was rejected (as it would not have been if it had come from a neutral Englishman, but was bound to be when it came from an interested Greek), then there remained no alternative but civil war, which was precisely what the policy of the K.K.E. required from the start.
My description may seem to raise Markos to a more sophisticated class than I put him in. But his native cunning must not be con- fused with statesmanship, and there has been no evidence whatever of military skill. His abilities were and remain those of a simple " capetanios." The last year has shown these abilities to be ex- ceptional in their class to a degree which did not seem probable four or five years ago ; but it has not raised them out of that class. He belongs with Garibaldi rather than Cavour, and with de Wet rather than Botha ; yet his reputation as a leader would suffer badly by comparison with either Garibaldi or de Wet, and as a political force he is far below even Tito. He has perhaps more in common with crafty ruffians like Kolokotronis, who played such a large and often discreditable part in Greece's War of Independence 120 years ago. He is a man of the people, with a natural gift for acting and an intuitive insight into human psychology. Overlaid on these are the tricks of Communist training and a doctrinaire but none the less sincere fanaticism. He is not a great man ; intel- lectually and administratively he is a vacuum, uncorrupted either by thought or gold ; but he is a remarkable phenomenon of the times.
It is simply ridiculous to suppose that he is in absolute control of the rebel movement, even if he is nominally its military and political head. Even apart from -the presumable influence of Moscow, he must be very much less his own master than Tito has ever been. It would be insane to trust Markos with the control of a major military operation against regular troops. It is not to be supposed for a moment that the shrewd old grey eminences d Greek Communism take their political orders from him. He is, on the other hand, a splendidly magnetic figurehead. He has imagina- tion and a natural sense of the dramatic. His ideas do not always work, but they are never dull. His letter to The Times in September, 1947, and his attempt to capture Konitsa as his capital at the end of the year, were cases in point. There were forerunners of these during the German occupation, but they passed compara- tively unnoticed. He used to undertake prodigious journeys through enemy-occupied areas in order to forestall me between one E.L.A.S. H.Q. and another, travelling day and night without rest, and ostentatiously welcoming me on my arrival wherever I sought to go alone. His flamboyant " liberation " of Salonika at the end of October, 1944, was a masterpiece of showmanship, nearly wrecked though it was by the perverse determination of a handful of British to fight the Germans instead of letting them go. In all this, how- ever, there was nothing more than the spontaneous inspiration of a vigorous Greek of the people.
Here, perhaps, is Markos's essential characteristic. Unlike most Greek Communists, he has not ceased to be at heart a typical Greek. The incompatibility of being a Greek with being a Communist is almost insuperable. Quite apart from the logical contradiction, there are endless distinctions of detail. Communists are secretive, disciplined, unemotional, cold in heart and head, almost super- human ; Greeks are indiscreet, self-willed, passionate, warm-hearted and hot-headed, almost too human. The peculiar talent of Markos is to have reconciled these incompatibles in an instinctively controlled synthesis. This talent would deserve the name of genius if there were any assurance that the reconciliation were permanent. But it cannot be permanent, and the K.K.E. has already shown that it knows it cannot be. For the appointment of Markos, a natural " capetanios," to the position of military commander and political director theoretically combines in one person the three functions which in E.L.A.S. were divided between equal and separate indi- viduals ; that combination it itself contrary to Communist doctrine. It is inconceivable that Markos exercises all three functions. There can only have been one reason for his promotion ; it was in order that his personal prestige might cover up the irreconcilable contradictions inherent in the policy of the K.K.E. He is something more complex and artificial than a figurehead. He is, in a way, a ventriloquist's dummy, with the unique peculiarity of having three different voices, one of them his own, all of them saying different things. This is a remarkable achievement ; but it is a curiosity which is unlikely to last or to be repeated.
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