Eleftherios Venizelos, the greatest politician of Greece since the time of Pericles

Emile Ludwig, who's made the biographies
of,
Goethe,
Napoleon,
Bismarck,
wrote about Venizelos:
«Eleftherios Venizelos is the greatest politician of Greece since the time of Pericles.
one of Europe's most prominent politicians
the equivalent of Bismarck and Metternich»
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the history of the Venizelos family goes back a long time.
after the Orlofika, his ancestors fled badly from Mistra to Crete to escape the fury of the Turks
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On August 11, 1864, a baby is born in the village of Mournies, Chania, to the Venizelos family, who, following the Cretan tradition, is christened Lefteris,
like almost all the children of the time, looking for the child who would bring Freedom
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the young Venizelos in 1881 enrolled at the Law School of the University of Athens, and graduated in 1887, as a doctor...
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in 1889 at the age of 25 he was elected as a member of the Parliament of Crete.
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in 1897 at the age of 33, during the Cretan revolution and the great massacres,
enters at the head of two thousand rebels and raises the Greek flag at Akrotiri, where he is buried today.
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this revolution was the last of a series of revolutions that forced the great powers of the time to declare Crete independent in 1897,
under the name «Cretan State» and appoint as High Commissioner
the second son of King George I of Greece
Prince George
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the Cretans thought that it was enough to have the son of the Greek king as commissioner to join Greece
but they soon discovered that George was a pawn...
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Thus Venizelos organizes the revolution in Theriso where more than 8,000 armed Cretans gather and declare their union with Greece through a popular assembly.
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in 1910 when the movement at Goudi's had erupted (and after the refusal of Gounaris to take charge)
the revolutionaries address Venizelos.
Venizelos, who accepts, was then 46 years old, already a great star of politics and twice a revolutionary and hero of Crete
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arrives in Athens and is summarily appointed Prime Minister....
King George gives him everything to save the throne
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Venizelos wants a revision of the constitution and he will do it after the elections he sweeps...
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he gets involved in everything and does wonderfully well
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organizes the army, which after the 1897 disaster had been completely discredited.
at the same time he manages with his great talent, secret diplomacy, to join the alliance of Serbs and Bulgarians and to be present in the first Balkan war.
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his successes continued when, on his own initiative and against the nonsense of the successor Constantine
demands and finally manages to make Thessaloniki Greek
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cap enters and wins the second Balkan and with masterful moves manages without dropping a single bullet to unite Crete with Greece
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as soon as World War I breaks out, he openly supports ANTADN
against King Constantine
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after a long time Constantine stripped him of his position as prime minister but in turn the French stripped him of his position as well.
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finally Venizelos became prime minister of the entire Greek state in 1917 and barely had time to put the country into the war on the side of the ANTAD allies.
and achieve the greatest victory of the organized Greek State
at the Battle of Scra
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the first world championship ends with a victory for ANTADT and in the following congresses
Venizelos reaches the height of glory when in these circumstances he is with Lenin
the biggest personalities of these conferences.
(I cannot describe to you the authority Venizelos has here, wrote the British diplomat Sir Harold George Nicolson...
He and Lenin are the only truly great figures of Europe)
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finally manages to sign the treaty of chevrons that roughly
gave Greece the whole of Thrace, excluding Bulgaria from the sea...
also
the Greeks could put their own commissioner and army in Smyrna and in 5 years they could hold a referendum on union
(almost certain union)
while
and the Italians were obliged to cede the Dodecanese
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Greece of 2 continents and 5 seas is now a fact.
the Treaty of Sevres is to this day the most important treaty for Greece
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with this treaty the age-old dream of all Greeks who had been nurtured in this way since the revolution and even further back
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Venizelos, after escaping an assassination attempt, returns to Greece, calls elections
and
not even a member of parliament...!!!!!
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as long as he was back in Europe fighting for national interests, the opposition with populism, lies, demagoguery and poison
he was sowing the whole country
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Of course, the Venizelists helped a lot in this, by getting justice from what they had suffered during the national division from the royalists...
A lot of blood was spilled then and this also contributed to the defeat of Venizelos who stayed for many months permanently in Paris for the peace councils,
he had no idea what was going on back there
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Venizelos after the defeat leaves Greece for Paris, disappointed, but even then he does not give up...
but one by one the allies are leaving the country who now had nothing to hold them
(they had the perfect excuse)
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after the Asia Minor catastrophe the movement of the
Plastiras,
Kneel,
Foka,
they appoint him in charge of conducting the negotiations that eventually resulted in the Treaty of Lausanne
the best we could get at the time
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Venizelos returns to the helm of the country in 1928, taking 228 out of 250 seats in the House of Representatives, dissolving almost all other parties
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the major reforms in the country are moving forward rapidly...
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his first concern is the rehabilitation of refugees, which is a huge project that is now entering a series of...
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is making great strides,
in the economy,
in public works,
in education,
in agriculture,
foreign policy,
in culture,
in public administration,
(it takes a whole post to write them in detail)
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but after Black Tuesday and the Wall Street crash that brought down the New York Stock Exchange
bankruptcy comes to Greece in 1932
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after that Venizelos will not be the same...
will be involved in military movements will fail and will be exiled and finally die in Paris on March 18, 1936.
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his body will be transferred and buried on 29 March in Akrotiri, Crete.
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Eleftherios Venizelos, for better or worse, is in my opinion the greatest Greek politician in the entire Greek history
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PS. as Freddy Germanos wrote
Constantine had a vision of a metre and Venizelos had a vision of a century

Author of the article:

Yannis Golias