The Front and the Uprooting: Books on 1922 and the Asia Minor Catastrophe

On the occasion of the completion this month of one hundred years since Asia Minor Disaster APE-MPE undertakes an indicative, selective tour of historical and literary books (among them four comics editions) that have as their subject the events of 1922, but also the surrounding atmosphere, both before and after the traumatic September.

Let’s start with the historical ones. The relatively short but extremely dense book by Angelos Syrigos and Evanthes Hatzivasiliou “Asia Minor Catastrophe: 50 questions and answers”, published by Pataki publications, is a kind of useful manual for those who want to form a reasonable picture of what happened in the opposite shore of the Aegean for a hundred years. The authors place the Asia Minor Catastrophe in the context of the National Schism, which erupted in 1915 and culminated in 1922, citing the goals, but also the strong dilemmas of the protagonists. The conflict between Greece and Turkey had international dimensions and both historians, who avoid any canonization, investigate the wrong choices of the Greek side, as well as the shortcomings or inadequacies of the Greek army. They also investigate what exactly was the role of the great powers of the time, how they decided to serve only their own interests, as well as what were both the immediate and long-term consequences.

Iakovos Michaelidis’s book “Asia Minor Catastrophe”, published by Papadopoulos publications, is also succinct in nature and answers central questions about 1922. As the scholar observes, the Asia Minor Catastrophe is the greatest tragedy modern Hellenism has known. And it was not only, or not so much, the definitive end of the Great Idea as it was the creation of millions of refugees who were forced to leave their homelands, seeking refuge in Greece. The collapse of the Greek army additionally made clear the problem of National Division, which flared up after the dramatic events. In this sense, what were the responsibilities of Venizelos, who, although a charismatic leader, did not manage to avoid the division of Greece into two relentlessly hostile parts, but also the responsibilities of Constantine’s friends who proved to be particularly weak in the diplomatic field?

Literature has a uniquely its own her way of wondering about the issues of History. Dido Sotiriou passed away eighteen years ago, at the age of 94, but her novels “The Dead Are Waiting” (1959) and “Bloody Soils” (1962), read today by older and younger generations, are among the most iconic for 1922 and the blow of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. In the meantime, Lena Divani, a historian, researcher, but also a prose writer with many commercial successes, managed to write a satisfying and original biography about Sotiriou, which is published under the title “I dreamed of Dido” by Pataki publications. Avoiding anachronisms and attempts to adapt Sotiriou’s spirit to current political and historical issues, but also giving her invented spoken word a liveliness that wants to resurrect the vivacity of her personality, Divani talks in her book about everything: about Asia Minor Catastrophe, about Eleftherios Venizelos and his opposition to King Constantine, about the Metaxas dictatorship that followed.

The work of Ilias Maglini “The only trip of their lives”, published by Metaichmio, deals with the fate of his grandfather during the Asia Minor Campaign. The little information that the author had about his grandfather’s presence in Asia Minor will be supplemented in the “Only trip of their lives” by an excursion to the places of war: from Afyon Karahisar to Eskisehir and Bursa, ending in Istanbul . The lack of biographical evidence for the grandfather is made up for by third-party evidence: letters, diaries, historical studies, military and government records, press reports, chronicles and novels, photographs, public memorials, medical manuals and medical opinions – all about 1922 and the harsh his era. At this point we should add the reception on behalf of Maglini of the young Hemingway (what he wrote about the impoverished Greek army in Adrianople), Thanasis Valtinos (second “Synaxari Andreas Kordopatis” and “Diary 1936-2011”) and Georgios Vizyinos (about the only trip in their lives made by the farm children of the Asia Minor Expedition). Biography (about the grandfather and the father), autobiography (with the author’s involvement in the narrative through multiple references to his own deeds), family novel, intertextual play with Greek and foreign literature, historiographic outline, reportage and investigative journalism.

We close with a reference to the art of comics. The reason is for the illustrated novel “Aivali” (2014) by Soloup (born Antonis Nikolopoulos), which this year was re-released in an anniversary edition (Kedros), and for the illustrated novel trilogy by Thanasis Petros about the trauma of the National Divide and Asia Minor. The books of the trilogy are “The Hostages of Girlitch. An incredible Greek story of division and war” (2020), “1922. The end of a dream” (2021) and “1923. Enemy Homeland’ (2022). All three are released by Ikaros. For his design, Soloup has used photographs, sketches and postcards, as well as passages from “Aivali my homeland” by Fotis Kontoglou, from “The number 31328” by Ilias Venezis, from “The chronicle of ten days” (1981 ) of Venezis’s sister Agapis Venezis-Molyviatis, about the Asia Minor experience of the two brothers, and from the novel “The Children of War” (2005) by Ahmet Yorulmaz about the movement of the Turko-Cretans to Ayvali. The narrative combines history, memory and imagination, illustrating an Ayvali where the oppositions of Greeks and Turks are subordinated to a political game which is shared between the two sides.

Petrou conveys in his illustrated blocks the complex problems in which Greece was involved during World War I, depicts the military conflicts in deep greens, yellows and browns, recounts the course of the Asia Minor Campaign, and illustrates the events after the retreat from the river Sangarios: poor living conditions, loss of all hope and perspective, petty political quarrels, despair and violence in every direction, successive disappointments after the regrouping of the Turks, fear of today and tomorrow while interested in “1923” not in national drag of the refugee, but for its social collapse. Exiled, impoverished, unclean, homeless and dramatically unsheltered, the refugees will experience in Piraeus the heaviest decline of their lives.

RES-EMP

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