"The armed forces increased their readiness and acted with composure, so that the handling of the situation would not become one more element of criticism and polemic for the so-called 'resistance' groups..."

He also said that the resistance groups and persons were not willing to return to normalcy in compliance with Papadopoulos's designs and were primarily interested in vote gathering. It "is only certain that the extreme left will profit from the situation," he said.

Markezinis, the prime minister of the Papadopoulos regime, a politician of the past, accused "the corrupt politicians" of the decade before Papadopoulos of inciting the riots against the regime. He asserted his confidence in the program of return to normalcy by Papadopoulos and concluded:

"The enemy of the nation and of democracy will perish. Once again, we will be the victors: The state, the nation, the society."

To believe in Zagorianakos and Markezinis, one would have to believe that the Papadopoulos regime handled a threat to the very existence of Greek society in the smoothest way possible.

But whom were they trying to subdue? What did the movement represent, what did the participants and their leadership desire, and what did they accomplish?

The toppling of the Papadopoulos regime by dissident junta members is, of course, an important consequence of the crisis. The young Greek students and workers, along with the city dwellers who revolted against the dictatorship, are the real force behind events. Elements in the armed forces felt they had to correct the situation which placed them as the opponents of the Greek people.

They conspired together and pulled off a successful coup which eliminated Papadopoulos. Phaidon Gyzilis, the commander of the first Greek army and his colleagues, high-ranking military and top-level bureaucrats, make strange bedfellows with the powerful remnants of the Papadopoulos junta. Brigadier general Dimitrios Ioanides, the head of military police, is the most powerful left-over from the previous regime. Ioanides, who has established a reputation for toughness and viciousness, is a man who believes that democracy is either a luxury or a disaster for the Greek people. His faction believes that the student-led revolt was a demonstration of immaturity and that it contained the seeds of anarchy.

In reality, the revolt was the only resort of the oppressed students of Greece, and as such was not only an expression of political maturity, but it was also the legitimate expression of popular dissatisfaction with the dictatorial regime.

The control of all aspects of academic life by military officers, the extensive use of spies and stoolpigeons, and the repressive legislation had but one effect: it forced the student movement underground. During the first three years of the junta a "Regas Pheraios" group--named for a hero of the 1821 Greek war of independence--was broken up by the military police and intelligence services. The members were tortured extensively and the group was severely crippled. In 1972, the dictatorship allowed elections for student council leaders for the first time since 1967. But as a result of ballot stuffing and repressive registration rules, even officials admitted that the "elected leaders" represented only 10 to 15 per cent of the students.

In the spring of the same year students demanding academic freedom captured the University of Athens in the first violent expression of opposition to the junta. The demonstrations were crushed by the police and special legislation was passed which entitled the regime to draft dissident students into the army. Approximately 100 students were drafted at the time. The regime then turned its attention to an abortive navy coup and efforts to legitimize its pretense to the Greek people.

The students were on vacation when the junta carried through its referendum installing Papadopoulos as the president of the Greek "Republic" amidst cries and protests of fraud and deception at the ballot box.

In July of 1973, however, rumors of a future alliance of workers and students for demonstrations around the end of October started trickling through to observers in the United States. However, Papadopoulos kept the initiative, and the focus of attention on his regime with a new prime minister, Spyros Markezinis, amnesty to all political prisoners, and the promise of elections for 1974.

The economy, however, caught in a spiraling 15 per cent inflation--the worst in Europe at the time--was starting to have an effect on the Greek people. A memorial service for George Papandreou, former prime minister, brought on riots which for the first time attacked the police and repulsed the riot units with stones and sheer mass.

Just ten days later, on the 14th of November, the student organization struck its decisive blow against the Papadopoulos regime. During the afternoon all faculties of the Universities of Greece held meetings in their respective schools. At midnight, a group started occupying the Polytechnic Institute of Athens. The other meetings in Athens sent representatives to the Institute shortly afterwards. In a first general meeting, the students collectively examined the academic and political problems and agreed on a platform of demands and a list of slogans and messages.