Summary:
This senior thesis deals with the multiple significants’ of the trials that took place during the military dictatorship (junta) of 1967- 1974. More specifically, it focuses on resistance organization ‘Democratic Defence’ and the minutes of the organization’s trial, which were published in the Press. In addition, it attempts an investigation of the particular process of establishing a resistance organization by civilians originating from an bourgeois environment with no such prior experience in the past.
Initially, assisted by existing literature, the first chapter attempts to capture, the process of the 1960s democratization and the gradual shift from the divisive ‘National frontiers/ non National Frontiers’ that had been imposed since the end of the Civil War to that of the divisional line ‘Right wing/ non right wing’. The second chapter describes the forms of resistance developed over these seven years against the military regime, in Greece. The third chapter attempts a first delineation of ‘Democratic Defence’s’ course and its political discourse through its pamphlets, as well as, the texts published by the organization through its illegal publication.
In the fourth chapter, the interest is shifted to the trial’s proceedings and, most importantly, to the proceedings of two specific trials, whose minutes were published in the Press, in an attempt to highlight the importance of these trials, both for the regime and for the persecuted. The fifth chapter is devoted to the presence, as crown witnesses, of citizens who had been active within the organization in order to manifest their anti-dictatorial feelings. Their depositions’ allow us, on the one hand, to see how citizens who didn’t come from a mass party and who weren’t involved in any irregularity, tried to constitute a resistance organization; on the other hand, it allows us to highlight the devout desire of the dictatorial regime to establish legitimacy, by trying to give a dimension of ‘political opposition’ to these trials.
In the sixth chapter, by focusing on the great trial of the organization’s 35 members, and in particular on the defendants accusations and the testimonies of the defense witnesses, among whom were deputies and ministers of the pre-dictatorship civilian staff, it is attempted to show the complete failure of the dictatorship regime to legitimize itself through these very trials. Finally, in the seventh chapter, the interest transitions to the organization’s and the anti-dictatorial’s struggle memorial narratives through later interviews of members of the ‘Democratic Defence’.
