In their co-written work, Construire la Grèce, 1770-1843 (1) - 'Building Greece' - Geneva-based historians Dimitri Skopelitis and Dimitri Zufferey analyse the many influences that have shaped the construction of modern Greece, the first European state to have emerged from the Ottoman Empire.
Following the creation of an independent Greece in 1830, the country’s administration has been significantly shaped by European models, while its cultural, religious and historical heritage, along with its geographical situation, have given the country an exceptional political and economic destiny.
In this interview with Mediapart's Joseph Confavreux, Dimitri Skopelitis offers a historical insight into the nature of the current turmoil in Greece, tottering on the brink of bankruptcy and its future within the European Union still uncertain, and the complex relationship between the population and the State.
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Mediapart: Is Greece’s place in Europe, and which today has become such a difficult one, something of an exception, if not an anomaly?
Dimitri Skopelitis: Indeed, until 2007 and the adhesion of Bulgaria and Romania, Greece was the only country in the Balkan peninsula to be a member of the European Union. Even if its adhesion to the European Economic Community in 1981 is often presented as being the result of its privileged relations with Europe, and notably France during the presidency of Valérie Giscard d’Estaing, its adhesion is also due to other reasons.
One should not forget that, during the Cold War, it was the only Balkan state that was not part of the Soviet Bloc. It is a member of NATO since 1952. Also, the country had just emerged [in 1974] from dictatorship. It was therefore a question of consolidating a still-fragile democracy. Portugal and Spain, which were in a similar situation, also joined the EEC, in 1986.
Mediapart: A number of editorials in European newspapers have painted the Greeks with an image of being, at best, irresponsible easy spenders, at worst as lazy cheats, quite the opposite of an idealization of Greece as the cradle of democracy.
D.S.: In Europe there has not always been a single, unique image of Greece. For example, after the period of philhellenism [at the turn of the 19th century], during the [1821-1830] War of Independence , there was [a movement of] what the Greeks call ‘mis-hellens’, those who dislike Greece. Some, like [German historian] Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, in the 19th century, strongly contested the link between Greece and the Ancient period. Later on, there was a widespread hostility towards Greece due to banditry.
Mediapart: What are the consequences of the manner in which modern Greece was built in terms of the relationship between its citizens and the state?
D.S.: While it is true that a proportion of the Greek elite at the time adopted Western political ideas and principles, the construction of the Greek state was nevertheless an implantation of a Western model within the Orient. The differences in political culture, or the absence of culture, in a people who had lived for centuries in a very oriental manner, very local, based on privileged relationships and for whom the State was nothing other than a vague entity that represented ‘the other’, did not come into the calculations. The very particular relationship between Greeks and their State is, in large part, linked to this double heritage.
Mediapart: Is it because the nation, the people and its territory are insufficiently united or homogenous, or still too recent, that Greece finds itself on the frontline of a crisis that is European and worldwide?
D.S.: No, none of these elements are a problem in the current crisis. Greece has encountered huge management problems at a level of the State and in [the practice of] privileged relations, which are the fruits of its evolution, of its history and the mentality of the political class and the people. These are problems that should have been resolved, and which have come into the spotlight with the crisis.
But the country’s current debt has more to do with the conditions of its entry into the European economic construction and the larger European marketplace, for which it lacks, and always has, the fundamentals.
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1: Published in 2011 by Antipodes (Lausanne), priced 39 euros.
Mediapart: International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde recently called on the Greek people to pay their taxes. Many retorted that the fiscal burden of 41% of GDP situates Greece in the European norm, and that it is the double effect of interest charges on the national debt and the contraction of GDP under austerity measures that have sunk the nation’s accounts. Nevertheless, is there not in Greece a very particular attitude towards taxes that comes from a specific and distant relationship with the State?
D.S.: Yes, the attitude towards taxes, and more widely with the public service, has always been a particular one because of the relationship with the State, as I outlined earlier. Under the Ottoman Empire, the ‘haratz’, a special tax imposed only on individuals within the Christian community, was always seen as a symbol of the oppression of a distant, central State. Everything was managed at a local level.
Thus, even when Greece gained independence, some regions and some local chiefs refused to recognise the central State with tax payments. That even led to the assassination of the first Governor [Head of State] of Greece, Ioannis Kapodistrias, who was killed for having imprisoned the chieftain of the Mani Peninsula who refused to pay taxes.
Mediapart: Why has the Greek Orthodox Church largely been protected from the austerity measures that have so violently been imposed on the Greek people?
D.S.: For many reasons, and which are due to reasons that understandably escape outside observers. The Greek Church has a central place and there is no separation between Church and State, something that has been put in place in France since more than a century. Why? I would say that this comes from a symbolic level.
Throughout the centuries, the [Greek] language and identity has been maintained by the Orthodox religion. The Ottoman administration did not recognise ethnic minorities, only religious ones. The Greeks were thus placed under the authority and responsibility of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Indeed, when independence was declared, [Patriarch Gregory V ] was hung [by the Ottamans] from the Patriarchate for not having kept his community at peace.
Orthodoxy is therefore perceived by a section of Greeks as being an essential element of their national identity. There has never yet been a government that has dared to tax the Church, for fear of losing a part of its electoral base.
- This is an abridged version of the interview first published in French here.
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English version: Graham Tearse