Greek Themes

GREEK THEMES ACROSS A VARIETY OF CEU PRESS PUBLICATIONS

This compilation features books of the Central European University Press, published since its establishment in 1993, that have some relevance to Greece, its history and culture. After the latest release, titles in the backlist are arranged by content: contemporary topics are on top, older themes below. For more substantial information about the content and availability, please click on the covers of the book, or on the links inserted into the citations.

“At the level of managing the Ottoman past, organic intellectuals of the Greek Orthodox community adopted all possible positions on a spectrum of political goals, from the most ethnocentric to the identification with the attempt to salvage the empire.”—Byzantium after the Nation.
“The Patriarchate’s relationship to Byzantium was quite different to that being constructed by the emergent Greek national irredentism.”
“The patriarchy of Joachim III was a peculiar combination of a Pan-Orthodox and, thus, pro-Slav policy, who enjoyed the simultaneous political support of the Ottoman state.”
“The new geopolitical conditions—peace signed between Russia and the Ottoman Empire in 1894, Greece’s defeat in the 1897 war, and the concomitant collapse of the irredentist visions of the Great Idea—allowed the deployment of the Patriarchate’s new ecumenical ideology.”
“Clashes between the advocates and the opponents of the Romantic paradigm were the order of the day among the members of the Greek Literary Society in Constantinople.”

“Professor Milyukov stressed that until the 1870s, no one in Serbia or Greece had seriously doubted that Macedonia was largely populated by Bulgarians.”—Philanthropy, Conflict Management, and International Law.
“The Lausanne-based criminologist R. A. Reiss advanced the position that the Slavs in the Macedonian areas of Greece were neither Bulgarians nor Serbs, but rather ‘Macedonian.’ His position served Athens’s interests in regards to the Macedonian question at that point in time: elevating Macedonia’s slavophonic population to an independent ethnic group was a way to foil Bulgarian and Serb attempts to assert territorial claims to the Macedonian areas acquired by Greece in the Balkan Wars of 1912–13.”
“An article published in 2004 by the Thessaloniki historian Iakovos D. Michailidis should be noted. His most important evidence of the Carnegie Commission’s lack of objectivity was the fact that Milyukov’s information on the ethnographic composition of Macedonia came from statistics compiled by the Bulgarian school superintendent of Macedonia.”

Books with a Greek focus:

In the series of CEU Press Studies in the History of Medicine, three volumes are dedicated to the evolution of the institutions and the conditions of public health in Greece.

“Malaria remained the country’s primary sanitary concern from the early days of statehood until after the Second World War.”
Did nationhood and its freedoms and pressures increase or reduce the suffering of the Greeks from malaria? This is the central question of the monograph on malaria in modern Greece.
“Nation-building reforms throughout southeastern Europe created conditions that enhanced the chances of mos­quitoes.”
“Following the humanitarian crisis of the refugees of 1922, Greece had come to consume approximately one-fifth of the global quinine production.”
“Once an experience shared by between one in three and one in four Greeks annually, malaria is now considered a concern of the past.”

“The Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War in 1897, revealed the issue of children’s health and paved the way for the first laws on school hygiene. The participation in World War I, the Asia Minor Disaster and most importantly the influx of refugees were the turning point in the history of children’s medical care.”—from a book on child health and welfare in Greece.
“For Venizelos’s liberal government, the children’s care was the basis of its health policy. The establishment of modern institutions specially designated for children, as well as the collaboration of Greek agencies with international organizations were the main directions liberal policy took in the 1920s and 1930s.”
“Stressing his interest for the health of the people, Metaxas tried to gain a strong foothold among the working-class, which he needed. In addition, the creation of a robust youth was linked to the cultural superiority of Greece and its long standing history.”

“I still remember the terrible scandal at our university which the exposition of the Darwinian theory generated. The professor of medicine, who was at risk by introducing the law of evolution to the Greek students, was not only in danger of being excommunicated by the Holy Synod, but to his surprise he found the doors of most of his customers closed to him”.
A thorough and in-depth analysis of how mainstream Western scientific ideas found their way into the planning of the modern Greek society through the intermediation of literature. This book strongly contributes to various academic fields, expanding from literary studies and history of science to social history and cultural studies.
In the late 19th to early 20th centuries Darwinism strongly influenced celebrated Greek literary writers and other influential intellectuals, which fueled debate in various areas such as ‘man’s place in nature’, eugenics, the nature-nurture controversy, religion, as well as class, race and gender. The monograph devotes considerable space to Xenopoulos (1867-1951), notable novelist, journalist and playwright.

Other titles from the backlist, contemporary topics on top, older themes below:

“In 2013, the biggest transaction in Europe was the privatization of Piraeus Bank at a price of €7.1 billion, completed by the sale of its further stakes of €2.4 and €1.3 billion during the following two years.”—from the book on the state’s role in capitalist economies.
“Initially, plans for privatization in Greece were to produce revenues of €1 billion per annum, but under pressure from international creditors the target was raised to €50 billion. The implementation of the plans, however, has—just as in many other countries—been postponed due to the falling prices on stock markets.”
“In the last few years, the evergreen debate about ‘nationalization or privatization’ seems to have been replaced by a push to steer a middle course: improve governance in public companies and create conditions for their market-based activities. This keeps the old debate alive about whether or not ownership is more important than regulation.”

The fact finding project on school segregation of Roma pupils explored the manifestations of this form of violation of human rights in a number of countries. Besides the numerous instances in east and central Europe, a Greek case is also cited from 2005 which in the end was filed with the European Court of Human Rights based in Strasbourg. Such practice is said to persist in certain public schools in Greece according to a UN independent expert on minority issues in 2008, and a later report confirms the same from 2010. Analysis of documents and interviews with activists help understand the conditions, successes and failures of the fight for educational desegregation, being waged on political, civic and legal arenas across Europe.

Gorbachev: If I started listing the potential territorial problems that would arise in that situation, I would not have enough fingers on my hands to count them, in fact, all the fingers in this room would not be enough. When the prime minister of Greece Mitsotakis was here, I jokingly asked him whether Greece has any claims on Central Asia, since Alexander the Great reached it in his day. July, 1991
Face to face conversations of superpower leaders at the end of the Cold War.
Bush: What is next?
Gorbachev: Cyprus. I spoke with Vassilliou, the President of Cyprus. He hopes you and I will find a way to solve that Cyprus problem. This was my first meeting with him. He seems a serious man.
Bush: He’s a very good man. We hoped for progress, but then the Turks pulled back.
Gorbachev: He said that now that we are working together, we should remember that the Cyprus situation was created by force and should be solved not by force, but by negotiations. In other situations we have not put up with force. October 1991

“The resistance and protest of women workers in the Greek tobacco industry between 1945 and approximately 1970 was characterized by a clear gendered cleavage between the female work­force and the male management.”—Women, Work, and Activism.
“Women aggressively participated in the strikes. The female workers at Matsaggos, along with those in the textile factories of Volos, put forward common demands: equal wages (to men) for equal work; better working conditions; three months off with full pay for women who give birth; the creation of a childcare center; free healthcare, and paid sick leave.”
“The outbreak of the Civil War in Greece just a few months later and its final outcome ushered in a completely dif­ferent labor relations environment.”
“The women workers participated en masse in the general assemblies of the Matsaggos Male and Female Workers’ Union. Their dynamic presence alongside male workers seems to have been a matter of concern for both the company’s management and the local government of Volos.”

"By the time I met him, Glezos had been behind bars several years—and tortured for seven years—by German and Italians Fascists and five by Greek Fascists. In freedom, he was a jolly host, sporting a trademark handlebar mustache. No, he said to a question, he did not think the country was ruled by Fascists in 1963, but, ‘We feel that fascism is knocking at the door in Greece.’ He was proven right eight years later when right-wing military officers seized power.” The memoirs of the reporter of the New York Times recalls meeting the young Andreas Papandreu: “They tried to kill me off and instead they created me,” and “General Markos” Vafiadis, among others. The newsman’s record over several decades ends with the grisly note: “Amid violent street protests in which dozens of buildings were burned, Parliament adopted very harsh new austerity measures.”

“In Moscow, Panait Istrati met Nikos Kazantzakis. Together they left for Odessa where, out of a strong revolutionary fervor, they embarked for Greece in order to spread the Bolshevik gospel.”—from the volume on intellectuals and the totalitarian temptation.
“By faithfully applying the 21 conditions of the Comintern, KKE followed policies promoting its Bolshevization. Particularly devastating was the imposition of a political line of social-fascism.”
“The German invasion constituted a first-rate political opportunity for the KKE. At that time, a small circle of leading Comintern figures in Moscow implemented the national front strategy.”
“The new conditions of the Civil War alienated all those new intellectuals who had been attracted by the nationalist discourse of the party during the occupation.”
“We should not overestimate the role of intellectuals in the configuration of the party’s identity. They mainly specialized in propaganda rather than in decision-making or in drawing up policy.”

“Italy immediately declared its readiness to support the Albanian request. Yugoslavia and Greece argued that Albania, due to the absence of a recognized government and internationally defined boundaries, could not be accepted into the League of Nations. The stalemate ended when the British and French broke their silence on the matter and openly supported the anti-Albanian stand of the Yugoslav and Greek delegates.”—from the book on big powers’ interfering into middle Europe.
For Britain, in 1938, “Greece occupied a special position on account of its political and strategic importance. The passing of Greece into the German camp would be intolerable in terms of its ‘disastrous’ effect on Turkey, Egypt, and other countries in the Eastern Mediterranean; it was decided that no effort should be spared to assist Athens. The emphasis on Greece confirmed that Britain had neither strength nor political will for determined action in Danubian Europe.”

The last volume of the grand CEU Press undertaking entitled Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe 1770–1945 presents forty-six texts under the heading of “anti-modernism”. The series is a challenging collection of essential primary sources, accompanied by introductory essays and contextual analyses in the best senses of the term: their high level of scholarship demands the intelligent engagement of the reader throughout. This concluding volume presents and analyzes Hellenic Civilization by Ion Dragoumis from 1914, and a speech by Ioannis Metaxas on the occasion of the inauguration of public works in 1937.

Along with other metropolis in Europe, the birth of modern Athens is explored. The first modern Olympic Games was a milestone on the path of “becoming European”. “For a brief two weeks, it appeared that the most important aspirations of the modern Greek nation—to join the ranks of the civilized nations of Europe, to be accepted as the legitimate heir to ancient Greece, and to forge its own distinct cultural identity—were finally realized.”
All that changed after 1922. As a result of the military defeat in Asia Minor and the dramatic population influx, the earlier preoccupation with planning was replaced by the acute demand for housing. “Ruthless planning violations and extensive illegal construction were tolerated by the government, which remained weak and divided.” Foreign experts’ fascination with Greek vernacular architecture —Le Corbusier’s notably — encouraged Greek architects to seek inspiration closer to home, which helped the consolidation.

“One of the primary concerns of the newly born Modern Greek state after its liberation from the Ottomans was the improvement of the health of the nation, which had been decimated and exhausted by the struggle for inde­pendence.”
A chapter in the volume on the development of national public health systems focuses on the case of Greece.
“Despite placing solid foundations for the transformation of Greece in a Western-oriented state during Otto’s reign, from 1863, after Otto was forced to leave the country, health services deteriorated.”
“Spending on health was gradually reduced until 1908. This setback put Greece’s modernizing project on hold at a time when its neighbors, such as Bulgaria, were spending much more on public health.”

"As a long-term friend of the Greeks and as their paid agent, Ismail Kemal also promised to facilitate their occupation of Janina if he could remain head of Albania.” Biased contemporary remarks in the memoirs of the eccentric Transylvanian Baron prove that besides collecting material for his scholarly work in Paleontology, Geology and Albanian Ethnography, he intensely followed the power games during the demise of the Ottoman Empire. “Essad Pasha eventually won the sultan’s favor by blending in with the Albanian patriots who were endeavoring to bring about a rapprochement with Greece and then betraying them to the sultan.”

“The Greek intellectuals could only vacillate between two poles: to attack the ‘Turkish yoke,’ or to evaluate the Ottoman imperium and the Greeks’ roles within it as their own positive experiences.”—Imagined Empires
“Many Greeks thought that to ally themselves with the Bulgarians would prove far more dangerous than to cooperate with the Turks.”
“In Salonica an episode of violence by the Muslim and Jewish crowd towards a convoy of Greek prisoners of war (among whom were Red Cross nurses) passing through the city, was widely reported by the local and international press.”
“Paisii Hilendarski claimed that the Patriarch of Constantinople usually appointed to the Bulgarian provinces high clergy of Greek origins who not only tried to impose Greek culture on the Bulgarian people but exploited them financially as well.”
“Strategies to dehumanize Greeks as enemies were further fostered by the communist regime of Enver Hoxha, as evidenced by the multitude of bunkers facing Greece.”

“Dušan, by proclaiming himself Emperor of the Serbs, the Bulgarians, as well as the Greeks, underlined by his very title the existing ethnic diversity of the Balkans.”—The Rise of Comparative History
The clergy, which had been independent and nationalized before Turkish occupation, was then forced under the supervision of the Greek patriarchate of Constantinople.“
“The phanariotes were the most skillful exploiters of the Balkan peoples in Turkish times. Their influence was great: it expanded throughout the whole of the Peninsula up to Romania, where even today they constitute a number of rich families. We must mention the Greek and Armenian tradesmen. More skilful and flexible than the Slavs, they were often able to avoid the violence of the Turkish oppressors and managed to attain great respect even in Ottoman circles.”

“The Etaireia undertaking galvanized tensions between the Greek and native elements of Moldavian and Wallachian elites and announced the coming of the age of nationalism to the Balkans.”—Russia on the Danube.
“Both the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Holy Synod sought, above all, to contain the southern Slavic nationalisms that threatened to undermine the unity of the Greek Orthodox church, which is why their policy should be described as Pan-Orthodox rather than Pan-Slavic.”
“It is important not to take the anti-Phanariot sentiment manifest in the addresses of Wallachian and Moldavian boyars to Catherine the Great as a full-fledged Hellenophobia. The people who expressed grievances against the Phanariot princes did so in the Greek language and were, in many respects, the bearers of Greek culture.”
“In 1826, Wellington and Nesselrode signed the St. Petersburg protocol in which Britain and Russia agreed to act collectively or individually to secure an autonomous status of Greece within the Ottoman Empire.”

“The 1821 Greek revolution should be viewed differently from seemingly similar rebellions against Ottoman authority in the Balkans, because of its potential to inspire and galvanize later movements among the Greek-speaking merchant bourgeoisie and clergy of the Balkans, the Black Sea littoral, and Asia Minor.”
By exploring the development of ethnic diversity and national tensions, the contributors to this volume challenge the readers to engage in a new way of thinking about the region and Balkan studies.
“Ironically, the revolt also ended the ascendancy of the Phanariot elite that had until then acted not only as an agent of hellenization for their Orthodox retinues of humble Bulgarian, Albanian, Vlach, and Romanian origins, but also mediated their integration into Ottoman governance, creating a significant class of Orthodox Christians who had a stake in the legitimacy of Ottoman imperial rule.”
“In Greece, we have the irony of authorities encouraging a minority Slavic language in one part of their territory, namely Thrace, while attempting to stamp out the Macedonian dialects among the Christians of Greek Macedonia.”

“In 893, Greek-language clergy became redundant and were expelled from Bulgaria. The Cyrillic-based Slavonic replaced Greek in the function of the liturgical and the state’s official language.”—Words in Space and Time.
“Under the influence of western Philhellenes, Greece’s Greeks chose to refer to themselves with the ancient ethnonym ‘Hellenes.’ The Rum Millet’s Greeks saw this name as ‘heathen,’ and stuck to their ‘Christian’ self-ethnonym, Romioi (‘Romans’). Many of these Romans actively sided with the Ottomans and opposed the founding of the Greek nation-state.”
“The University of Athens was founded in 1837 with Katharevousa (or vernacularized New Testament Greek) as the language of instruction, which was superseded by Demotic (vernacular Greek) only in 1976.”
“The 1946–1949 Greek Civil War between pro-Soviet communists and pro-Western democrats was the first Cold War style proxy war fought between the West and the Soviet Union. The Greek communists lost, among whom there were many Slavophone Macedonians, as well.”

Greek and Ottoman often coexisted as identity markers and many Greek Orthodox merged enthusiasm for the Greek national state with active participation in Ottoman institutions and public life”.
The nation-building processes within the Ottoman Empire are examined in parallel with related trajectories in other empires in Europe.
“Over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania and Bulgaria all made use of the weakness of the Ottoman Empire and followed the Greek example”.
Next to the demise of historical superpowers the imperial past of the city of Venice is also addressed.
“Venetians were disdainful of their sujets levantins (all the Greeks were deemed false and corrupt, all the Illyrians barbarian)”.

“In recent decades, Greek historians started to use more and more European and especially Ottoman sources. What is important is the shift in attitude. Ottoman rule is no longer considered only as a brutal, foreign rule that had brought suffering and darkness to its Christian subjects, who had always envisaged their national liberation.”— from Battling over the Balkans
“In 1762 Hieromonk Paisiǐ introduced the term ‘Greek slavery’ and thus introduced the stereotype of ‘the double slavery of Bulgarians’—spiritual and political, as the reason for their being backward.”
“The Bulgarian or Macedonian komitadjii evoke special dread in the Greek national context, the Greek andartes do so for Bulgarians and Macedonians.”
“Although Greek historiography since 2000 often disputes the character and dimensions of a Slavic Macedonian minority, sustained attention is being given to their wartime role.”

Specimens from texts, relics in majority, that paved the road to national identities in eastern and south-eastern Europe, are presented in English in five seminal volumes. The Greek component of this impressive project is particularly rich, featuring texts from the following personalities: Moisiodax 1780, Katartzis 1783, Philippidis 1791, Velestinlis 1797, Patriarch Anthimos 1798, Korais 1803, Ypsilantis 1822, Solomos 1825, Vyzantios 1836, Renieris 1842, Kolettis 1844, Politis 1871, Paparrigopoulos 1886, Psicharis 1888, Papadiamantis 1893, Parren 1897, Skliros 1907, Boussios 1912, Venizelos 1915, Papanastasiou 1922, Theotokas 1929, Benaroya 1931, Seferis 1943.

An ambitious endeavor resulted in three volumes on travel writing from and to eastern Europe. It is filled with extracts from Greek travelers: Noukios 1546, Cazzaiti 1742, Pringos 1760, Petrou 1770, Korais 1788, Vratsanos 1861, Vikelas 1885, Kazantzakis 1937, Ouranis 1939, Kranaki 1950, Psathas 1951, and Nollas 1998. Also a Romanian boyar’s record of Greek islands (Hurmuzaki 1764), a study on a Polish epic poem about a journey to Greece (Słowacki 1837), and a Romanian writer on Greek women (d’Istria 1863). See some citations below.

The migraine comes out of the sea, “rioting and roaring”, and meets Christ, who addresses the demon: “Where are you going, o headache and migraine and pain in the skull and in the eyes”. Christ prevents the evil spirit from settling in the man’s head; he chases the migraine into the head of a bull. Scholars trace back this Greek folk charm, which has its Slavic and Romanian counterparts, to an antique prototype involving Artemis of Ephesos. Essays analyze and compare popular healing texts and other forms of verbal magic in all corners of Europe from the Atlantic to the Ural.

“To the Arpadian kings of Hungary, the terms ‘East and West,’ ‘Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy,’ ‘Byzantium and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’ used by modern historiography for a compartmentalization of historical reality, would have simply made no sense.”
A collection of studies on the Christ Pantokrator monastery in Istanbul, and its founder, Empress Eirene, born Piroska.
“The Greek Nunnery in Veszpremvolgy near Veszprem, the Hungarian queens’ residential and burial town, is considered to have functioned as an educational center for royal princesses. No foreigner to Greek culture, Princess Piroska carried an impressive cultural baggage upon her arrival in Constantinople—not least with regard to monastic spirituality and dynastic holiness.”

“Would Christianity fade away if Illus were victorious?” Were hopes harbored in pagan circles in Constantinople for the success of the revolt of the provincial general in the years 483-484 unfounded?
The study in the collection of essays on pagan-Christian relations in the Roman Empire from the fourth to the eighth century hopes to unfold the religious background of this episode of Byzantine history.
The author found that the participation of Empress Verina in some episodes of that rebellion is key to the argument that a Christian agenda, rather than a pagan one, was behind the insurrection of Illus.
One proof of Verina’s link to the Christian faith is that she and her husband Leo had contributed to the construction of the Hagia Soros for the relics of the Holy Virgin.

Further titles with relevance to Greek history and culture from the backlist:

  • A biographical reference book contains entries on the following Greek personalities: Callirhoe Parren (1859–1940), Maria Svolou (1892?–1976), and Avra Theodoropoulou (1880–1963).
  • A book of comparative intellectual history discusses how socialist ideology emerged as an option of political modernity in three countires: Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia.
  • The analysis of Serbian identity by a Greek scholar abounds in references to Greece, and to Greek Orthodoxy in particular.
  • Most tragically, Greeks also belonged to peoples forcefully resettled at Stalin’s order. Tens of thousands were expelled from the Crimea, the Black Sea coastline and the Caucasus before the war and also as late as 1949 – documented at detail in a related monograph.
  • The collection (and analysis) of documents on the demise of the Soviet Bloc tangentially refers to Greece, too (see excerpt below).
  • Finally Thessaloniki: It is one of the scenes of the life story of an extraordinary woman in the 16th century; and also where a Polish doctor made groundbreaking discoveries in the science of blood groups while trapped in the city during World War I.