Paramilitarism, Social Transformation, and the Nation in Greece during the Civil War and Its Aftermath (1940s–50s)

Abstract

This article explores the association between paramilitarism and nation-building in civil war Greece. Existing studies saw paramilitaries from a purely military perspective and focused on their combat activities. The article shifts the attention to their social and political activities and discusses the transformation of social actors, structures, norms, and practices at the local level as spurred on by political mobilization and paramilitary violence. More specifically, the author focuses on three processes: political mobilization, the militarization of local authority, and the fragmentation of local political economies. He explores the legacies of these changes on the dynamics of state and institution building between the years of occupation during World War II, the Civil War, and the reconstruction years. This approach problematizes divisions between legal (state-sanctioned) and illegal (private) violence in the making of the postwar state and sheds new light onto continuities across the divide of World War II and the Cold War.