The uprising of the Polytechnic School of Athens, Greece in 1973

Learnings for the revolutionary movement in our country

The uprising of the Polytechnic School of Athens in 1973 was the most important highlight in the class struggle after the revolutionary civil war that followed the Nazi occupation in our country. For this reason, the learnings of the uprising are crucial to the revolutionary movement and the communists in Greece. In order to understand these learnings, it is necessary to describe the situation before the uprising.

1)     Towards the Coup of 1967

The peoples movement in Greece experienced a great retreat in the 1950s. The defeat of the Democratic Army of Greece (DAG) in the revolutionary civil war, after the intervention of British and American imperialists, had created negative correlations. The core of the DAG and the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) found refuge in the socialist countries, while in Greece, imprisonments, exiles and executions continued. Prime example is the case of Nikos Beloyannis. The post-civil war monarcho-fascist state of the right-wing was completely dependent on US imperialism. The Americans overthrowed and installed governments at will and turned the country into an imperialist base. Despite the conditions of unlawfulness (communists and left-wing people were not even allowed to work normally), the peoples movement was never assimilated. A good example to understand the situation is that in the first post-civil war elections, the left-wing came out second, scaring the system. That is because the people remained allied with the CPG.

At the same time, the developments in the USSR brought a serious and irreparable damage to the Communist movement. The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the attack against Stalin, the new positions on peaceful coexistence with the imperialists, peaceful road to socialism and the role of the Communist Party stripped the Communist movement in Europe off its strength. Especially in the eastern European countries, the interventions of Khrushchev’s revisionists were immediate as they installed leaderships of their liking. In the CPG, however, most Party members fought hard throughout the 1940s and rallied around the Party leadership. That is why the Soviet revisionists, when they saw that their line did not pass, replaced the CPG leadership with a coup and exiled its leader, N. Zachariadis, to Siberia. The CPG members never accepted this intervention and massively manifested their disagreement. When the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong called on Marxist-Leninists all over the world to be separated from the revisionist parties, in Greece, revolutionary organizations were immediately formed. One of them was the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Greece (MLOG), founded in 1964. Nevertheless, the correlations formed by the revisionist turn were unfavorable to the revolutionary movement. The great mass of left-wingers and communists were trapped in the revisionist CPG . This had created a contradictory situation within the peoples movement.

On one hand, the dispositions of the masses began to change and especially in the 1960s the class struggle was back in a period of aggravation. The negative effects of the defeat in the civil war were fading away, the workers were re-organized in trade unions, and the students began to claim their rights. The anti-war movement, closely tied to the anti-imperialist movement, especially against American imperialism, was rising again. The vision of Independence and Socialism remained alive in the consciousness of the masses. At first with the mobilization of the construction workers, who took the lead in the workers' movement and had significant wins. Then, mass students and anti-war mobilizations followed. The fascist right reacted violently to this rise of the movement. They murdered the left-wing Member of Parliament Grigoris Lambrakis, and after a few years the student Sotiris Petroulas at a protest. Mass demonstrations were often, and governments fell one after the other. The events of July 1965 revealed the all-round crisis on the political scene.

On the other hand, the line of the revisionists proved to be disastrous for the developing peoples movement. First of all, the revisionists dismantled the CPG’s illegal apparatus as evidence of abandoning the revolutionary line. Then they built the United Democratic Left (UDL), a front with a reformist line. And then, they handed the UDL seats in the parliament to a bourgeois party, leaving their parliamentary autonomy. This line denigrated the peoples movement, massively installing illusions into the people for peaceful democratic change, and left the masses completely unprepared for the events that were going to follow. Thus, even though the masses flashed into the movement, the political correlations for the revolutionary ideas remained negative.

At the same time, significant international developments took place in our region. The intensification of intra-imperialist contradictions made our country very important. Especially in the Middle East, around the Palestinian issue, contradictions were accumulated both between the US and the USSR, but also between the US and European imperialists. Especially in Greece, the US were disturbed by the penetration of the European imperialists. The English had made their own pole in the army with the king promoting them. Securing Greece was important for the Six Days War, which everyone knew was about to break out. At the same time, the rise of the movement created a constant political instability, and the possibility of an uprising by the people was not far away.

For these reasons, in order to throw out their "allies" antagonists and suppress the popular movement, the US imperialists installed the junta's fascist military regime. Although throughout the 1960s the people were on the streets and set up barricades against repression, even though all the people were willing to fight against the upcoming coup, they managed to install it without firing a bullet. The revisionists had sidelined the people and tried to explain to them that the democratic course had been secured, in order for them to maintain the myth of the peaceful passage. The revisionists feared the rise of the movement, which would overcome them. That's why they resigned from organizing the struggle to prevent the coup. On the morning of the coup (April 21^st 1967), the headline of the newspaper of the CPG read "Why a coup will not happen". The police caught CPG members at the printing presses when they tried to shuffle newspapers in shame.

2)      The anti-imperialist and anti-fascist uprising of November 1973

The US installed a dark fascist military regime in our country. First of all, it banned all political discussion and any gathering of more than 3 people. It abolished all political parties and sent thousands of militants to exile. It broke up trade unions, banned student elections and appointed it’s own Junta commanders to them. It forbade any music and art assumed to include any revolutionary seeds. It turned our country into a NATO base. It gave state aid and assigned public works to big bourgeoisie and shipowners, so that the few known families of plutocrats who even today rule the place, would be created. It overdebted the country to the US. It cut off wages and pensions, and as a result, when prices began to rise in 1972, the people were in miserable conditions.

Under conditions of illegality, and with correlations in the movement being unfavorable, the organization of the people was difficult. The arrests of militants and of every "suspect" citizen were spreading terror to the people. The hit was hard on MLOG. Many of its leaders were arrested and taken to exile, while the illegal printing house of the organization was dissolved. Several leaders became refugees. In these critical moments, the fact that a number of parties and organizations were able to hold was a big deal, regardless of our disagreements with many of them.

As long as the Junta was more and more established and the people did not have a way to express their anger, there was disappointment in the militants, faith in people’s power was shocked, or even estimates that "the Junta would last forty years like in Spain". Yet the great events were just ahead. This is the best proof that faith in people’s power is a necessary element for a militant to hold in a difficult period.

The Junta wanted to exploit all these years of immobility and terrorism. They wanted to achieve a "smooth transition" from the military regime to a harshly controlled bourgeois democracy, where elections would exist, but if it was not enough, then the tanks would return to the streets. A regime in which legality would exist but only as a break from repression and only for the opinions that did not threaten the country's NATO obedience. This political transition, inspired by the prime minister Markezinis, predicted a gradual amnesty for political prisoners during 1973 and elections. The purpose was that the elections organized by the Junta, to which some bourgeois parties wanted to participate, to legalize the regime as a political factor and to be acquitted in the eyes of the people.

But reality was different: first, in February '73 with the fierce, illegal occupation of the Law School in Athens by the students. The reformists managed to end the occupation the same night. After a while, two public trials turned into open anti-Junta protests. As time went by, the people manifested their will to wipe out the entire regime of US domination. In the international scene, the planet was shocked by a global revolutionary wave that traveled all over the Earth from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) in China and the war in Vietnam, to the anti-war movement in the US and the European youth uprisings, with typical example the uprising of May 1968. The global turmoil was approaching Greece.

We  include here a text by MLOG, the organization which we come from, written in October 1973, entitled: "For the storms to come", which brought forth and revealed the truth behind the "liberalization" of the Junta:

"Today, the main issue is the transformation of the militant attitudes of workers and youth into action, in mass struggles that reach open conflicts. For anyone who does not crave the opposition in the context of fascist legitimacy, as is the case of the bourgeois opposition and the revisionist leaders that slide behind it, what is happening in our country and which is of immense importance is not the return to parliament and the elections... But the development of the mass struggles of the working class and the youth, opening a path to develop a broad anti-fascist, anti-imperialist movement. (…) The massive militant student struggles that developed last year and continue this year into a rising course of conflict with fascism and US imperialism are shocking all over Greece."

At the same time as the various organizations with revolutionary reference saw liberalization and the elections as a maneuver of the Junta to consolidate its presence, the reformist Left and the revisionists saw an opportunity for "reforms". As a result, they adopted only economic and narrow trade union demands that limited the struggle and, above all, opposed its anti-imperialist content. The struggle of the two lines, the reformist and the revolutionary anti-imperialist, lasted in all the phases of the struggle.

In this turmoil on November 14th, on the occasion of a suppression incident, the students were fortified in the Polytechnic School in Athens and occupied the school, an occupation that the police could not break. It is known as a shameful moment for the revisionists that they denounced the occupation as a provocation before being forced to participate in it. Moreover, these forces opposed the anti-imperialist orientation of the uprising and tried unsuccessfully to block the demand "OUT WITH THE US", even attempted to erase it from the walls.

As CPG has openly admitted: "The slogan POWER TO THE PEOPLE was leftist and OUT WITH NATO was probably untimely (…) It has to be said that the occupation was a surprise for the Party leadership and the Youth Organization. Their thinking was mainly to take measures for immediate disengagement".

Despite the efforts of the revisionists to disorientate the movement, the anger of the people was so big, that immediately transformed the student protest into a peoples uprising. When the people heard the students from the radio calling them massively onto the street, they realized that this is the opportunity to confront the dictatorship. When the masses gathered by the thousands in front of the Polytechnic School, the revisionists vainly tried to pass their line for peaceful change and elections. "BREAD-EDUCATION-FREEDOM", "OUT WITH THE US", "DEATH TO FASCISM", "POWER TO THE PEOPLE" were the slogans that dominated. The uprising clearly set the goal of overthrowing the Junta and with it the persecution of US imperialism from the country.

Under these circumstances, the actions of the few organized revolutionary forces, including ours, was of great importance in order to overcome the line of revisionists and to manifest the moods of the people. The militants of the revolutionary left, the Marxists-Leninists among them, could not lead the events, but they played a crucial and pioneering role in all phases of the struggle. In every movement, forms of struggling and slogans are a reflection of the political lines of each political force. Each demand is the result of correct or wrong analysis of each force. It’s healthy for a movement to have different lines of struggle, because the masses are the judges and choose what promotes their struggle. That's why the real revolutionary views are not afraid of the critics of the masses and the common action. The events of the Polytechnic prove that in a movement it is necessary for the revolutionary forces to maintain their constitution in order to express the desires of the masses and overcome the dominance of reformism.

Next to the students, pupils and toilers stood up. The police made many attempts to re-occupy the Polytechnic, but the organized people of Athens defended it. On the third day of the occupation, a general strike was declared for the whole country. The only thing left in the Junta’s disposal was to bring the army down to the streets, which they did, leaving Athens in blood. Because the people were unarmed and could not defend themselves, the uprising was suppressed, with dozens of dead in the streets.

PEOPLES POWER

construction workers

 3) The learnings of November’s uprising

Without being able to give a detailed view of the events of those three days, we have to address some basic issues.

Firstly, that the uprising did not have a narrow student character but the working class was actively involved in it. Already from the second day, the workers and students assembled in the occupied School and hundreds of thousands of people participated in the demonstrations and strikes announced via the radio station of the students. After the failed effort of the police to break the occupation, the people of Athens fought back and even and sieged police stations. That is why the Junta was forced to use the army. Without the students’ unity with the workers' movement, it would not have been possible to hold the occupation and turn it into a massive peoples uprising.

Second, the uprising had an anti-imperialist and anti-fascist character, not only demanding the overthrow of the Junta and the slogan BREAD-EDUCATION-FREEDOM. Instead, it evinced the culprit, placing the vision of INDEPENDENCE and POWER TO THE PEOPLE, of SOCIALISM, in the manner that the masses could comprehend it at the time. The truth is written in blood at the Gate of the Polytechnic School and cannot be erased: “OUT WITH THE US, OUT WITH NATO”. That is why we insist that the demands of November are still not fulfilled. They lead and illuminate the youth movement today on the correct path.

Third, the character of the uprising and the correct orientation forced the dictatorship to be exposed to the masses, which eventually isolated it politically. The deepest demands of the uprising remain unfulfilled today, but the direct result of the uprising was that it dissolved the Junta's plans for liberalization and elections. It forced them to put an end to every attempt of disguise and change of form. Initially, the suppression measures returned, as did the wild security tortures. But in the long run the dictatorship lost the political battle. After their betrayal in Cyprus in 1974 they collapsed in a day without even being able to defend themselves.

Fourth, the prevailing political correlation in the movement defines the limits of a rebellious event. The people may have been organized on the road and had the will to revolt, but this was not enough for victory, for ousting the imperialists and their local subordinates out of the country and for the establishment of a socialist society. In order to reach its ultimate goal, a mass Communist Party was first and foremost needed as the leader of the uprising, as well as the armed preparation of the people. Without Communist pioneering and complete revolutionary consciousness, the masses could not spontaneously overcome the correlation of power.

4) The results of the uprising

Although the Polytechnic uprising did not achieve its ultimate goal, the results were very positive for the peoples and revolutionary movement. First of all, the regime collapsed 8 months later, and so the movement gained democratic rights again and was able to reconstitute its political organizations. Secondly, the system was forced to make a series of economic and political concessions in the coming years that improved the living standards of workers and enshrined a number of social rights that we still have today. Without the uprising of 1973, these rights would not exist. It also isolated the US dominance from the conscience of the people, and even today the hatred for the US imperialists continues to be massive. It fueled the students and peoples movement for decades, became a reference point for youth struggles and played a decisive role for the massive anti-war and anti-imperialist movement throughout the years, as well as the movements of internationalist solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, Turkey and Kurdistan. Equally important, it was that it reunited people on the lines of the Left, and especially the revolutionary Left in our country. It revealed the nature of revisionism, gave political space to Marxist-Leninist views. Our organization, CPG (m-l), was formed in the echo of November, in 1976.

That is why, the bourgeois governments initially banned the celebrations of the anniversaries of the uprising and when they saw that the prohibition could not pass, they decided to assimilate it by making it a "national celebration of democracy". Indeed, the peoples movement mourned three more dead at the anniversaries the following years. But as much as they try to turn the Polytechnic into a celebration of bourgeois "democracy", and to erase its message, they can not make it. Even today, 45 years later, every year on the 17th of November, people and youth are demonstrating massively to the US Embassy, ​​remembering the unfulfilled and up-to-date demands of the Polytechnic. The uprising is alive because it inspires the struggles of today's generation against exploitation, capitalism, and imperialism. Awaiting the victories of small and big struggles of the people, the reconstruction of the movement, struggle for Independence and Socialism, to make our people masters in their country.