Chapter 7 - The post-war era (1950–1974)

Summary

Post-war Europe enjoyed a prolonged economic boom that brought with it unprecedented social mobility and rising living standards. It was a veritable ‘golden age’, as society began to enjoy living conditions that previously had been available only to the privileged few (Hobsbawm 1994: 256–68). Greece was a participant in this revolution, albeit belatedly. When the Civil War ended in August 1949, the path lay open for the most extraordinary social and cultural transformation in Greek society. By the 1970s, the traditional village communities in which Greeks had lived since the earliest times had all but disappeared. Most now lived in cities and towns, and it was increasingly common for families to own an automobile, appliances (especially refrigerators), cassette recorders and television sets. Consumer practices and youth cultures were being imported from Western Europe and even more from the United States. Young women had discarded headscarves and other traditional social restrictions. Greece had in other words become a modern country.

By another vital measure, however, Greece was stuck in the 1930s. Almost uniquely among countries that had fought the Second World War, the country’s reactionary right-wing politicians continued to wield considerable power and influence. They abhorred many aspects of modernity, particularly such cultural manifestations as miniskirts and rock ‘n’ roll. And yet all the while, as in authoritarian Portugal and Spain, Greek society was changing. In April 1967 a coup d’état made Greece the only European nation in the Western camp to dissolve its liberal democratic institutions. It took another economic crisis (1973) and a reckless irredentist venture (Cyprus 1974) to annihilate the power of the Greek far Right.

People moving

The story of Greece’s great social transformation began amidst the wreckage and debris of war. In 1947, the urban planner Konstantinos Doxiades released a thorough survey of the damage inflicted by the Axis occupation in Greece to estimate the cost of reparations. His study showed that as many as half a million Greeks had been killed, a figure equivalent to 7 per cent of the population. Many thousands more had also been disabled and displaced. The destruction of countless villages left an acute housing shortage.