Volume 36, Number 15 · October 12, 1989
Who Killed George Polk?
By C.M. Woodhouse
The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair
by Edmund Keeley
Princeton University Press, 395 pp., $24.95
One of the surprises of the last Communist uprising in Greece (1946–1949) was the absence of urban terrorism. In previous attempts to seize power, it had been a dogma of the KKE (the Communist party of Greece) that victory would be won in the cities, particularly the two largest, Athens and Salonika. Guerrilla warfare in the provinces and the mountains was secondary. The nearest the Communists ever came to success was in the revolt of December 1944 in Athens, soon after the end of the German occupation, when they were defeated only by a costly intervention of British forces. But when a new rebellion was launched in 1946, the priorities seemed to be reversed. Fighting was confined to the open countryside, where the KKE achieved considerable success under the leadership of Markos Vafiadis. The cities were threatened from a distance—sometimes a very short distance—but internally they were undisturbed by violence.
Review, 6764 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |