Who “it haunts” Kapodistrias...
Member of the Committee for the celebration of 200 years since the Revolution 1821, undertook to… “deconstruct” the first governor of the country, Ioannis Kapodistrias...And responding to the intense reactions this caused, the President of the Commission, Mrs. Gianna Angelopoulou, stated that her Committee would present all views on the protagonists of the Palingenesis…
Mrs. didn't understand something. Angelopoulou. The celebration for the 200 years of the Revolution, It is NOT a History Conference! It is NOT a banquet “specialists” about everything and other things...
It is an anniversary event for the great symbolism of the Founding event of our modern history. It concerns all Greeks and the meaning they give to their common identity. In everything,what unites them and what,what makes them proud. That is, in how they make sense, themselves, not the “yesterday” of the Revolution, but the “today” theirs and the “tomorrow” of their children...
It is an anniversary event for the great symbolism of the Founding event of our modern history. It concerns all Greeks and the meaning they give to their common identity. In everything,what unites them and what,what makes them proud. That is, in how they make sense, themselves, not the “yesterday” of the Revolution, but the “today” theirs and the “tomorrow” of their children...
This is exactly how similar events in other Western countries were defined and how they functioned: for the 200 years of American Independence (1976 – under the Presidency of Gerald Ford) and for the 200 years of the French Revolution (1989 – during the Presidency of François Mitterrand).
The academic disputes between “researchers” or others “intellectuals” they have no place in such events.
Dealing with everyone who saw the light and came in to say “the long and the short of it”, is “childhood illness”.
We celebrate it 1821, what happened then and what it signifies for all of us now. We are not referring to “something else”. We don't imagine each other “revolution” more... colorful, cooler, more “modern and multicultural”, with a little “essence” from open arms to “illegal immigrants” and activists of “transgender” relations and of...32 “of different sexes”.
Maybe with a little... Me Too! To play it and “politically correct”…
This is all irrelevant! There was nothing there “politically correct” in Paligenesia. Fortunately…
(Like there is nothing “politically correct” in no real Revolution, in no popular uprising, in no real Freedom and Liberation Struggle)
Sometimes we have to overcome such immaturity and face the serious things as “adults”!
Not as rambunctious teenagers, not neophyte pedantic lecturers, not as employees “activists”, not as public relations nouveau riche.
We don't celebrate them 200 years, neither to deconstruct the protagonists of the Revolution nor to “let's write again” its history.
But to find the meaning of our national existence in the 21st Century...
If we can. And if we have...
What happened then is pretty much known. Files have been opened, events have been fully recorded by’ all sides, dozens of major historians have written, hundreds of researchers have searched, very few things truly new can come to light…
For Ioannis Kapodistrias, all the versions have been heard and with all the details.
Υπάρχουν πολλοί που επαινούν τον πρώτο Κυβερνήτη. There are also some who are more critical. In general, positive opinion has prevailed: He was the first great reformer of the country. Something that even his opponents at the time accept in retrospect.
To judge him today on his… state beliefs is ridiculous. To consider him… “dictator” so ridiculous.
The academic disputes between “researchers” or others “intellectuals” they have no place in such events.
Dealing with everyone who saw the light and came in to say “the long and the short of it”, is “childhood illness”.
We celebrate it 1821, what happened then and what it signifies for all of us now. We are not referring to “something else”. We don't imagine each other “revolution” more... colorful, cooler, more “modern and multicultural”, with a little “essence” from open arms to “illegal immigrants” and activists of “transgender” relations and of...32 “of different sexes”.
Maybe with a little... Me Too! To play it and “politically correct”…
This is all irrelevant! There was nothing there “politically correct” in Paligenesia. Fortunately…
(Like there is nothing “politically correct” in no real Revolution, in no popular uprising, in no real Freedom and Liberation Struggle)
Sometimes we have to overcome such immaturity and face the serious things as “adults”!
Not as rambunctious teenagers, not neophyte pedantic lecturers, not as employees “activists”, not as public relations nouveau riche.
We don't celebrate them 200 years, neither to deconstruct the protagonists of the Revolution nor to “let's write again” its history.
But to find the meaning of our national existence in the 21st Century...
If we can. And if we have...
What happened then is pretty much known. Files have been opened, events have been fully recorded by’ all sides, dozens of major historians have written, hundreds of researchers have searched, very few things truly new can come to light…
For Ioannis Kapodistrias, all the versions have been heard and with all the details.
Υπάρχουν πολλοί που επαινούν τον πρώτο Κυβερνήτη. There are also some who are more critical. In general, positive opinion has prevailed: He was the first great reformer of the country. Something that even his opponents at the time accept in retrospect.
To judge him today on his… state beliefs is ridiculous. To consider him… “dictator” so ridiculous.
* We are talking about the man who made the democratic Constitution of Switzerland! Which still exists.
In exemplary democratic Switzerland, they consider them “father of the nation” them and architect of their liberal state structure. And here we say...(come on don't say, better)
* Kapodistrias began his political career by proposing a Liberal Constitution in “Ionian State” of the Ionian Islands 1806 (then under Russian rule). For’ this even came into conflict with the Tsar's then overseer, who rejected his proposal.
* It is true that he refused the leadership of the Friendly Society when it was offered to him, the 1818. He did not believe that the planned Revolution could achieve its goals. But from the moment it started, he did not stop working on it for its success and for the Freedom of the Greeks.
Yes, for’ this came into conflict with the formidable Metternich, the father of European Conservatism at the time and its leader “Holy Alliance”, but also with Tsar Alexander I himself.
* And for’ this the revolted Greeks, in March 1827, when their Revolution was bleeding – even before “redemptive” Naval battle of Navarino, in October of the same year – by resolution of the 3rd National Assembly of Troizena, they again proposed Ioannis Kapodistrias as their first governor. Despite his earlier refusal to assume leadership of the Race.
* And in fact it was Theodoros Kolokotronis – an Anglophile at the time – who insisted. With the concurrence of Stratford Canning, British ambassador to the Ottoman Court and cousin of the then British Philhellenic Prime Minister George Canning (Unfortunately George Canning died a few months later)
* After all, a proposal for Kapodistrias to take over the leadership of the Struggle was previously made by Alexandros Mavrokordatos – also an Anglophile, since October 1821.
* But Dimitrios Ypsilantis had also invited Kapodistrias to lead it 1822.
* But also Petrobeis Mavromichalis himself (uncle and brother of his later murderers!) had invited Kapodistrias to assume the leadership of 1824.
What are they telling us now?;
The then revolutionary Greeks did not know who Kapodistrias was, who made successive proposals for him to lead,
the foreign Philhellenes of the time did not know that they trusted him,
the then enemies of Greek Independence did not know, like Metternich, who did not want to see him even painted,
but everyone comes today... “fufutos”, to “deconstruct” Ioannis Kapodistrias.
We are not well...
* Let's underline one more thing, which explains, perhaps, who and why set out to deconstruct Kapodistrias. And they continue to do so 200 years later. But they don't make it…
- Kapodistrias was not “man of the Russians”, as it is called.
Served at the court of Tsar Alexander the Great, but at the time when all the great powers were united against the Great Napoleon. Whose armies swept all over Europe, from Iberia to Moscow.
Kapodistrias put his stamp on the restoration of France after the Napoleonic Wars. So that they don't treat her “vengefully” its winners. For’ this and from time to time he was appreciated by all the rulers of the time: and the French and the British and the Russians. The Austrians and the Prussians had even decorated him (who did not like him very much).
also, when he was in the Tsar's service he came into conflict with him, because of the support he sought for the Greek Revolution. While along the way he occasionally came into conflict with both the British and the French. For the same reason.
-He was Greek over’ all! And some people still don't forgive him for that...
-He was Greek over’ all! And the foreign diplomats and politicians of his time knew this. Just one thing... thugs today in Greece, they haven't figured it out yet.
* Finally Kapodistrias when he came to Greece, in January 1828, he found a country that still... didn't exist! And where,what was there was completely destroyed.
Beyond his remedial work at home, Kapodistrias questioned and overturned the previous decisions of the Great Powers for the country.
– Before he officially took over as Governor, disagreed with the July 6 Agreement 1827 among the Great Powers with which Greece was given “autonomy” under the suzerainty of the Sultan – not Independence! And with borders as far as the Achelou-Maliakou line!
Then the British who had committed to take him to Greece, they kept him and carried him around for months (from Agona to Malta) to accept the Agreement. But he wouldn't accept her
– Next, this regime “improved” somewhat with the Great Power Agreement of November 18 of 1828, which however, he now gave the Peloponnese (Folly) and the Cyclades under the guarantee of the Great Powers. But even this did not satisfy Kapodistrias.
So as Governor, his main concern was to achieve complete independence from the Ottoman Empire and to expand the country's borders, In fact, he is reorganizing the Greek army, who achieves a series of impressive victories, overturning the data.
Finally with it “London Protocol” (January of 1830) ensures the independence of the country from Turkey and borders on the Achelou-Sperchiou line.
In London he also lays claim to the Ionian Islands and part of Epirus and Crete (where he had already sent “competent” since June 1828). It is said that they initially accepted his request. And he constantly promoted the positions of the Greek army.
His murder (27/9-9/10 1831) put an end to this effort as well...
And the borders were finally stabilized (with subsequent London Protocol) the 1832, on the line Amvrakikos-Pagasitikos...
At the time when Kapodistrias came, he found a broken country, with damaged infrastructure, broken economy, deeply riven by local strife and borderless. He just arrived in Greece, and a deadly epidemic of plague broke out! (You know what he will say “plague”; Corona virus by a thousand!)
Until his middle 1829 Athens and Evia were still under the control of the Turks…
Apparently Kapodistrias worked “aggregated” then. Here and today, societies in crisis – war or otherwise – impose “emergency measures”…
Even now, two centuries later, in wartime, modern democracies, operate under a strictly controlled regime. Temporarily at least.
And we talk, if the Kapodistrias who came then to rule in the... “lion's den”, showed… “sensitivity to democratic institutions”! (which essentially did not exist).
To understand, what are you Kapodistrias?, suffice it to mention just one additional item:
The 1840, Petrobeis Mavtomyhalis, the head of the family that murdered Ioannis Kapodistrias, hearing someone accuse Kapodistrias, nine years after his murder, said these words:
"You don't measure well.... Curse the Anglo-French who were the cause and I lost mine, and the Nation a man who will not mistreat him, and his blood chastises me to this day…”.
(Source: Giannis Vlachogiannis,”Historical Anthology”,p. 59)
While the Swiss Philhellenic G. Enardos wrote about it: “Who murdered Kapodistrias, he murdered his country. His death is a disaster for Greece and a European disaster".
You understand now;
In Greece even his enemies, at that time, they honored him!.
Even from the family of his killers they express regret and admiration for his person.
The foreign philhellenes of his time consider his murder, “European accident”…
And some here... “deconstruct” today!
So it will “let's celebrate” the 200 years of the Revolution;
Go well, hey;
Thanasis K.
PS- I hope no descendants of the Duchess of Placentia are found (where “something happened” with Kapodistrias, but after him “sold”), to come out and shout… Me Too!
I have a few of them.
(By the way, his really great love was the noblewoman Roxandra Strundza)
I have a few of them.
(By the way, his really great love was the noblewoman Roxandra Strundza)
