The Cold War. Just what was exactly the Cold War? Could it have been avoided?…
Iranian troopps entered Tabriz on December 14, 1946, and drove out the remnants of the puppet regime whose local Communist leader, Pishevari, fled to the Soviet union. The Iranian government thus recovered control over all its territories. It had, however, in the negotiations, agreed to make oil concessions to the Soviets, but the Iranian parliament reneged on the agreement- further embittering the Soviets. More than ever they were convinced of the duplicity of the capitalist world, just as the Western world was convinced of the subversive, conspirational nature of the Soviet regime.
—The guerrilla army itself was a complicated beast. Beginning as more of a collection of independent bands, only slowly did the process of ‘armyfication’ occur. Still, ELAS was never the Communist army that its opponents (and often its allies) liked to paint it. Individual groups tended to be led by charismatic kapetans, usually lacking any overt political allegiances, but generally sympathetic to the KKE. Figures like Aris Velouchiotis emerged as resistance heroes, and often resented the tendency of the EAM to foist ageing army officers and inappropriate tactics on their groups. Some would come to play a key role in the Civil War, continuing the fight when many of their political masters would not. The rank-and-file of their army were for the most part peasant smallholders and rural labourers. The minority were committed Communists, and most persisted with a rugged localism that had marked pre-war attitudes. Their politics were ‘radical democracy’; looking for freedom from the Athenian ruling-class.—click image for source…
While the Cold War was being fought in southeast Asia throughout 1946, a civil war was waging in Greece. General Markos, a Communist guerilla, led the rebel forces against the royal government, a protege of Great Britain, and Communist guerillas operating in the northern mountains controlled dozens of villages. British intelligence reports charged Yuogoslavia, Albani, and Bulgaria, all Communist regimes, with aiding and abetting the rebellion. For Americans, not very sure where or what the Balkans were, the answer to the question of who was behind the Greek civil war was a simple one: it was Russia, of course, and Yugoslavia and the other Balkan Communist states were merely satellites manipulated by Moscow.
—On 2 December, 1944, the left-wing ministers resigned from the government of national unity & EAM called a general strike in Syntagma Square, in the center of Athens, for 4 December. Thousands of pro-EAM demonstrators converged on Syntagma Square, and, at the height of the demonstration, panic-stricken Police & British troops opened fire, leaving some fifteen dead and many more wounded
—click image fro source…
American paid no attention to the fact that Tito was showing clear signs of independence. Even when Yugoslavia’s clear break with Moscow became public and bitter, many Americans simply refused to believe it- just as men like Dean Rusk, a scholar and veteran foreign service officer, continued to believe, as late as 1966, that China was a political province of the Soviet Union, a junior partner in what Rusk always called the “Sino-Soviet State.” These Americans simply refused to recognize the truth even when it was as massive as China. When Stalin, early in the Chinese struggle, supported Chiang Kai-shek against Mao, American observers would not admit it. From the start they subscribed to the myth of monolithic Communism. ( to be continued)…
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