RED & WHITE TERROR
After the Varkiza Agreement the two sides, driven by ideological fervour and mutual enmity, stop at nothing to eradicate the other
Fresh from the embarrassment of the Varkiza Agreement, and the disbanding of ELAS, many communists who still believed in the goal of a communist Greece retreated to the EAM and ELAS strongholds in the Greek mountains. Without a centralising force, there was little sense of organisation in communist resistance post-Dekemvriana. After those bloody events, and with a new prime minister in London, the British also scaled back their involvement in Greece, continuing to hold Athens in support of the government but refusing to intervene elsewhere. This led to the wider conflict being waged by the Athens government upon the remaining guerrilla communist groups.
The remaining communists, their guerrilla bands and former ELAS members, with the support of neighbouring communist nations Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, reformed the ELAS, which had been disbanded in accordance with the Varkiza Agreement. Meanwhile, the Greek government reformed its army, paving the way for the two forces that would largely define and fight throughout the upcoming hostilities. Additionally, the right-wing victory in the 1946 Greek elections, which the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) boycotted, provided the government with a level of national and international legitimacy and approval.
The government that came into power, and institutions of authority such as the Greek Orthodox Church (which was slowly recovering after the Second World War) were following the anti-communist direction set for them by the British, with the staunchly anti-communist Nikolaos Plastiras becoming Greek’s new prime minister. This led to many government and civil servant positions being filled with anti-communists who were also former Nazi collaborators – Greece eventually had more collaborators in positions of power than anywhere else in post-war Europe. The pervasion of collaborators and anti-communists throughout the government and civil service institutionalised the anti-communist policies that preceded the ‘White Terror’.
The White Terror was a policy of political oppression and violence endorsed and carried out by the Athens government, supported by right-wing extremists, to suppress leftists and destroy the leftist threat to their power. During this period, anyone with ties to EAM, ELAS or DSE during the Dekemvriana was targeted for removal to one of the Greek Islands’ prisons on either Gyaros, Makronisos or Ai Stratis. Many of those affiliated with the resistance were also murdered, such as former EAM member Giorgos Kostakis, who was killed in his house alongside his three-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son in May 1946.
Once removed to the island prisons, political inmates underwent a
