What's the Greek military like?

[Os Cangaceiros]

It's one discussion I haven't really seen posted in this forum before.

Specifically, I'd be interested to know what the attitudes of Greek military personnel towards what's happening in their country. Is it generally an extremely conservative institution?

[RedSide]

Well, I don't think a lot of lefties want to become army officers :P . A lot of the army officers I met during my military service (1.5 year ago) were right and far right. I believe that even if you are not conservative, you can easily become one since army is a conservative institution by default in my mind.
It's interesting that Pagkalos called the military counter-productive and military personnel started protesting in Athens.:laugh: There was a forceful entry of retired military men at the ministry of defense about 2-3 weeks ago, but they are all far right people telling us that we have to save greece from turks, israelis, germans, sionists, communists etc etc.:D

[aristos]

Well, I don't think a lot of lefties want to become army officers :P

That's a very bad strategy. Where will you find the communist officers to resist the capitalist orders once the going gets tough?
Failing to plan means planing to fail. ;)

[vyborg]

Policemen and military personnel are going to pay the crisis as well. Proletarian organization can do a lot of propaganda amonh the rank and file of the repressive apparatus of the state.

[Rusty Shackleford]

No, Communists shouldn't try to become officers in the military. Communists shoot their officers in time of revolution.


Anyways. I am curious, is there any type of organizing going on within the military?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Is there conscription in Greece? If not where do most of the enlisted personal come from in terms of class background? Have their been attempts by the left to appeal to the enlisted personal?

How do Greek people feel about the army? Is it a "respected institution" like the Egyptian army (until recently). Is it despised after the rule of the colonels?

[aristos]

No, Communists shouldn't try to become officers in the military. Communists shoot their officers in time of revolution.


You sure enough soldiers will suddenly become communist? Within professional (read mercenary) forces none the less?

Communists should attack capitalists both from the outside as well as from within simultaneously.

[Rusty Shackleford]

You sure enough soldiers will suddenly become communist? Within professional (read mercenary) forces none the less?

Communists should attack capitalists both from the outside as well as from within simultaneously.
In almost all countries, the enlisted (non officer) ranks of the military are primarily made up of poor and working people. In russia, it was mostly of peasants.

Lenin called them "peasants with guns" and though its obvious that they had guns, The Bolsheviks recognized their revolutionary potential. Communists began organizing within the ranks and for years of work, they won a revolution.


people dont instantly become communist. And i wouldn't expect anyone to trust their officer if their officer said "attack the state." It takes work and an understanding of where the revolutionary potential lies within a military. Today, its not 'peasants with guns' its 'workers with guns.'

Heres an example of revolutionary organizing within the military March Forward! (http://www2.answercoalition.org/site/PageServer?pagename=VSMTF_10pointprogram) There are also many anti-war organizations that are made up of veterans and active duty people. IVAW, VFP and so on.

[RedSide]

Military service is compulsory in greece. It's duration is 9months atm. Used to be three years duing junta :rolleyes:

During my service I had to change camps seven times(:crying:) and had the chance to talk with a large number of officers. Most of them have a working class background and they join the army as officers because salaries are decent and they can't be fired. Med-high level young officers are quite open minded tbh. Most of them are still conservative but not nationalist monkeys. Low level officers and prof soldiers are your typical greek "patriot".

Greeks believe that military service is a waste of time, and the years of junta's rule is an extra reason to despise the institution.

[aristos]

In almost all countries, the enlisted (non officer) ranks of the military are primarily made up of poor and working people. In russia, it was mostly of peasants.

Lenin called them "peasants with guns" and though its obvious that they had guns, The Bolsheviks recognized their revolutionary potential. Communists began organizing within the ranks and for years of work, they won a revolution.


people dont instantly become communist. And i wouldn't expect anyone to trust their officer if their officer said "attack the state." It takes work and an understanding of where the revolutionary potential lies within a military. Today, its not 'peasants with guns' its 'workers with guns.'

Heres an example of revolutionary organizing within the military March Forward! (http://www2.answercoalition.org/site/PageServer?pagename=VSMTF_10pointprogram) There are also many anti-war organizations that are made up of veterans and active duty people. IVAW, VFP and so on.

The difference as I said is between professional and conscript armies - the Russian situation does not apply to professional armies.

Also, if an officer were to openly say "attack the state" we wouldn't have much need for such an officer anyway since he'd be an idiot regardless of occupation.
But ponder this: if the entire general staff and other high ranking officers within a state were comprised of clandestine communists, don't you think it would have some impact on the situation?

[bricolage]

When there were the riots in the UK this summer the papers were awash with 'send in the army!' talk. How much of this has there been in Greece and how near to happening has it been? Sorry if I've got this wrong but I was under the impression it had only been police involved so far.

[Delenda Carthago]

When there were the riots in the UK this summer the papers were awash with 'send in the army!' talk. How much of this has there been in Greece and how near to happening has it been? Sorry if I've got this wrong but I was under the impression it had only been police involved so far.
As far as the people go, far far away. As for the bourgeois, not sure.

[ВАЛТЕР]

All we need in times of revolution from the army is defection, as well as a bunch of them to seize tanks, heavy weapons, and truckloads of small arms so that the revolutionaries have serious weapons to fight with. In order to be successful we need to turn the military in favor of us, and in an army made up of conscripts, that will be easy to do seeing an army made up of conscripts is a mirror image of the people.

[Fawkes]

But ponder this: if the entire general staff and other high ranking officers within a state were comprised of clandestine communists, don't you think it would have some impact on the situation?

No, not really. That's like saying we should try to get clandestine communists into upper managerial and ownership positions at various companies.

Not only are high ranking officers primarily from bourgeois backgrounds, as soon as they obtain that position, their class interests change, regardless of their origins. They cease to be "workers with guns" (if they ever were workers in the first place) and they become individuals with a vested, class interest in maintaining/furthering the status quo.

Even if that wasn't the case, high ranking officers obtain those positions by -- to quote the link Rusty gave -- "advanc[ing] their careers on the backs of enlisted personnel, going so far as to send their troops into harm’s way for the good of their résumés", just like the general managers and owners of companies we all work for advance their careers on the backs of workers.

[A Marxist Historian]

Military service is compulsory in greece. It's duration is 9months atm. Used to be three years duing junta :rolleyes:

During my service I had to change camps seven times(:crying:) and had the chance to talk with a large number of officers. Most of them have a working class background and they join the army as officers because salaries are decent and they can't be fired. Med-high level young officers are quite open minded tbh. Most of them are still conservative but not nationalist monkeys. Low level officers and prof soldiers are your typical greek "patriot".

Greeks believe that military service is a waste of time, and the years of junta's rule is an extra reason to despise the institution.

So then it is a conscript army, with even the officers not necessarily being ultra-reactionaries. And, moreover, because of the junta years, nobody in Greece including the soldiers is going to care for the idea of a military dictatorship.

This is very important. This means that indeed, if parliament had been dispersed and shut down on October 20, this would *not at all* necessarily have led to a military or fascist dictatorship as the KKE's defenders claim.

It also means that the field for organizing the rank and file soldiers to oppose their officers is wide open. A serious revolutionary party in Greece which was big enough for this to be practical would be putting a lot of their efforts into exactly this, organizing soldier's committees etc. in alliance with the workers.

-M.H.-

[RedSide]

I just said that the greek army isn't what it used to be. This doesn't mean that if the voting is disrupted the government and the army will just stand there watching! What are you trying to prove, that the chance the army will interfere is 99% instead of 100%? :rolleyes:

The need to nurture you revolutionary dreams is understandable, but there is practically no one in Greece that wishes for a fourth round right now. In case you dont know what the previous three are, you can always use google.

[A Marxist Historian]

I just said that the greek army isn't what it used to be. This doesn't mean that if the voting is disrupted the government and the army will just stand there watching! What are you trying to prove, that the chance the army will interfere is 99% instead of 100%? :rolleyes:

The need to nurture you revolutionary dreams is understandable, but there is practically no one in Greece that wishes for a fourth round right now. In case you dont know what the previous three are, you can always use google.

Yes, I know all about the previous rounds. Especially the one in the late spring, which was just like this except without people getting brutalized and killed.

OK, maybe I'm an overly impressionable outsider, but the impression I have is that it is *right now* that the killer cuts have gotten totally intolerable and half the population of Greece, not just the working class but the middle classes too, has been out on the streets protesting, and has just simply had it with Papandreou.

But maybe I'm wrong and you are right. Maybe the working class of Greece has given up resisting the Greek capitalist assault in total despair, and these huge mass marches were just a pathetic last gasp, and none of the slogans from the unions, the marches, and from the KKE itself about overthrowing the government should be taken seriously.

In which case the thing to do for Greek revolutionaries and workers is to flee the country, as the reactionaries are going to win.

I don't like that notion.

-M.H.-

[Delenda Carthago]

No, Communists shouldn't try to become officers in the military. Communists shoot their officers in time of revolution.


Anyways. I am curious, is there any type of organizing going on within the military?
Yes. Its the "Network Spartacus". Mostly runed by NAR(the biggest party in ANTARSYA coalition), they are doing a pretty good job.
http://diktiospartakos.blogspot.com/

[A Marxist Historian]

The difference as I said is between professional and conscript armies - the Russian situation does not apply to professional armies.

Also, if an officer were to openly say "attack the state" we wouldn't have much need for such an officer anyway since he'd be an idiot regardless of occupation.
But ponder this: if the entire general staff and other high ranking officers within a state were comprised of clandestine communists, don't you think it would have some impact on the situation?

It has been stated here that the Greek army is a conscript army, not volunteer like say the American.

As for the general staff being clandestine communists, this has happened in history exactly once as far as I know.

In Afghanistan, a Soviet neighbor, where a lot of officers were trained military schools in the Soviet Union, as Afghanistan was under strong Soviet influence, got a lot of aid, etc.

So you had the Afghan revolution of 1979, which had popular support in Kabul at least initially, but was basically a coup by communist officers.

As we all know, things did not go well afterwards.

-M.H.-

[bricolage]

So on Newsnight (a British news program) tonight a greek politician (I don't know who he was though) was asked 'do you think there will be a military coup' and his answer was I hope not as opposed to just no. To me this seemed like it's something that is actually being viewed as a possibility. If this government collapses over the referendum (or something else) how likely is it the military will try and step in?

EDIT: Also just read on someones facebook that 'the Greek government replaced the Greek National Defence General Staff, the chief of the Greek Army General Staff, the chief of the Greek Air Force and the chief of the Greek Air Force today...'. Seems worrying.

[Sir Comradical]

It's one discussion I haven't really seen posted in this forum before.

Specifically, I'd be interested to know what the attitudes of Greek military personnel towards what's happening in their country. Is it generally an extremely conservative institution?

The higher ups may be conservative (they did overthrow the govt in 67) but you should remember that Greece has conscripts. I don't know what their volunteer-conscript ratio is but in a revolutionary situation, conscripts are less likely to follow orders and shoot protestors for example. Conscript soldiers are much more likely to sympathise with the working class. On the other hand the police force or the volunteer soldiers who choose the army as their career are more likely to do anything their superiors tell them to do.

[Sir Comradical]

Yes. Its the "Network Spartacus". Mostly runed by NAR(the biggest party in ANTARSYA coalition), they are doing a pretty good job.
http://diktiospartakos.blogspot.com/

Were you in the army?

[Ocean Seal]

That's a very bad strategy. Where will you find the communist officers to resist the capitalist orders once the going gets tough?
Failing to plan means planing to fail. ;)
It doesn't work that way. Its not about individuals, its about the nature of these institutions. You can't just "resist orders". If you resist them, someone else will take them, and you'll find yourself in front of a firing squad. Instead don't join the military and encourage rank and file soldiers to break rank. With enough agitation and a failing state, this should be what's necessary to break the hold of the military.

[Kornilios Sunshine]

It's shit. First of all, in the original military service, they do nothing but washing WCs or playing tennis with beach rackets :P On the other hand, when someones go for his military service in OYK or LOK, the Greek special forces,surely would be trained in very difficult conditions for a war but at the same time,he adopts racist concepts because he is made to speak aloud slogans like "You are born Greek,you never become one,your blood will run,,pig Albanian".