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Anastasia Balezdrova

Over the past two years, many commentators and politicians in Greece have tried to explain today's difficult situation of the country with its history. In the great majority of cases, this has led to a strong surge of social unrest: Nobody can forget the improvised gallows and slogans for extreme actions against politicians during the protests of the discontented last year.

However, history can be a great teacher. A professor at Columbia University and a prominent expert on Greek history, Mark Mazower proved it in his lecture on "The vision of Spinelli" Greece and the European crisis," which he delivered before a large number of listeners, who had crowded in two halls and others, who were watching it on the screens in the lobby of the Megaro Mousikis in Athens.

He criticized the Greek politicians who "refuse to accept the blame for the mistakes made in the past" and "take no action against the rise of Golden Dawn, which is very dangerous."

GRReporter presents the main points of his presentation, which provides specific answers to the question: "How have we ended up here?".

"I do not think that the roots of today's crisis in Greece are deep or that convincing explanations for it have been provided so far. Some say the reasons are cultural and that "Greeks are lazy and corrupt. They have always been and will continue to be like that." The media in Northern Europe advocated this theory, but unfortunately, the crisis has shown how little Europeans know each other and how easily they turn to stereotypes.

Of course, the data indicate that the problem of corruption in Greece is serious and is associated with the state mechanism. But it has existed in periods of economic boom and in periods of recession. So, we cannot attribute the current economic situation just to corruption.

Another explanation, which we hear, is that the causes of the Greek crisis are historical and the economic problems have been ongoing since the establishment of the Greek state. This is also true, since we assume that Greece has actually gone through several debt crises. But its role in the world economy and its historical experience can only partly explain the problems it has to solve today.

What we must explore are the political decisions that have taken us to the current crisis."

Mark Mazower returned to the distant 1974 and the change of the political regime after the fall of the military dictatorship in the country. "Many commentators describe it as triumphant and successful. I think too it was successful since a democratic government has been established in Greece after decades of extreme political instability. I do not usually associate this period with the development and flourishing of the private sector."

According to the historian, it is a complex task to specify the exact number of state employees. "There are many legends about the creation of the Greek public sector as well, which various experts often demonize. The data show that government officials numbered 120 thousand in 1974. By 1981 their number had reached 121 thousand when Constantine Karamanlis was in power. The sharp rise began after 1981, when Andreas Papandreou’s PASOK won the elections. Within one year, the number of public workers had already risen  to over 200 thousand and has not decreased ever since. In a second phase of intensive development in the late 1990s and early 2000, when Greece began making efforts to enter the euro zone, the number of public workers increased four times. All this was contrary to the very slow rise in the number of private-sector employees."

Mark Mazower explained that Greece did not apply any of the Western models of development of the private sector, which bring positive economic results. "In Greece, an attempt was made to create a welfare state through the establishment of health centres, decentralization of power, etc. At the same time, the practice of giving bribes has been terminated and the public sector has become a "battlefield" for the two major parties, which alternate in governing the country."

According to Mark Mazower, the Greek public sector is not the only one in Europe, which creates problems for the state. "Things are similar in the rest of Europe to a greater or lesser degree. For me, the problem lies in synchronization. After the fall of the junta in 1974, there was a will to integrate the left into the social life of the country. At the same time, the efforts were aimed at creating a public sector, so that the state guarantees social solidarity. However, at the same time again, this welfare impulse was growing weaker in other countries like the UK and the USA. And it's not because it was the will of their governments, but because the globalization of the economy and markets necessitated it. I.e. Andreas Papandreou was trying to create something that was dying in other countries. And here comes the logical question: How did the Greeks decide that they would be able to deviate from the path that other countries were following?"