Fifty years on, the Athens Polytechnic uprising continues to be a point of reference, a source of inspiration, activism, resistance, and a reminder that the most prized asset for a country and its people is democracy.
The uprising still inspires because it was not just another student mobilisation, like the hundreds that Greece experienced during the five decades that followed. It was a revolt that had essentially started several months earlier.
From February 1973, when the first mobilisations began, until November of the same year, it was clear that Greeks, especially the youth, could no longer endure the junta that had governed Greece since April 21, 1967. This became evident on November 15, 1973, a day after the decision to occupy the Polytechnic, where it was clear that the issue was not merely a demand for elections in student associations. The issue was democracy and the freedom of the Greeks. That’s why the uprising, even today, 50 years later, continues to inspire, like every other uprising of the past century.
The countdown to the fall of the junta had begun. According to a Metron Analysis survey published last Sunday in Vima (Greek newspaper), about half of the respondents in Greece believe that the Polytechnic uprising played a crucial role in the fall of the junta, and one in three believes that it had a significant contribution. The same survey showed that almost all generations interviewed share this view.
Despite the prevailing belief that the fall of the dictatorship is largely attributed to the Polytechnic uprising, the actual events do not confirm this. While the uprising played a role in strengthening the anti-junta sentiment, it did not directly lead to the end of the dictatorship. The dictatorship ended 249 days after November 17, 1973, on July 24, 1974, that is four days after the beginning of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus on July 20, 1974.
On November 25, 1973, a week after the Polytechnic uprising, Dimitris Ioannidis took control of the junta with a new coup, removing Papadopoulos from power. The plan to remove Papadopoulos had started months before by Ioannidis himself. He exploited the events at the Polytechnic to overthrow Papadopoulos and take control himself.
It cannot be ruled out that Ioannidis and his associates incited some actions to suppress the uprising to exploit the events and proceed with a coup that he had been planning for a long time. The fact that within a week after the Polytechnic events, Ioannidis took over the junta’s leadership shows that everything had unfolded according to a plan. A plan that continued for seven more months and ended with the destruction of Cyprus in the summer of 1974.
The Polytechnic uprising was a historic event because it was the first mass reaction of the Greeks against the junta that had ruled the country since April 1967. The Polytechnic uprising profoundly shook the Greek dictators. However, it did not bring them down. They fell 249 days later, after ensuring the destruction of Cyprus and handing over a significant part of its territory to Turkey.
Therefore, five decades later, we should gradually move away from an emotional approach to these events and see them realistically as they happened, as a whole, and not in a vacuum.
