Pelasgia
Established Nation
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NEWSPAPER "NEA PROPONTIS", EST. 1959 | OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE PELASGIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH IN EXILE
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| PELASGIA | HIMYAR | WORLD | WEATHER | SPORTS | OPINION | SPECIALIs Pelasgia really socialist? A short political history of Red Pelasgia
Fehrbellin, 27 February 2022 | Fr. Athanasios Psychogios
The Pelasgian People's Republic recently had its recognition revoked by the government of the Continental Empire of Justosia, which claims that Propontis and San Jose are the ideological culprits behind an attempt on the Justosian Empress's life. Yet, for many commentators this appears peculiar to say the least. Despite the plethora of red stars and terminology like "People's" on every kind of officialdom by the Propontine regime, its nature could not further from what many perceive to be socialistic elsewhere in the world. Pelasgia's own espoused ideology of "National Bolshevism", official since 1981, is anything but consistent with the radical revolutionary and quasi-anarchic vision proposed by the state's ideological forefathers--Nikolaos Psaros and Vartholomaios Prototokis--in the years leading up the Pelasgian Civil War. Marxism-Siderism, itself a highly "heretical" form of Marxism which rejects both pure materialism and internationalism, has been termed by many to be the continuation of Pelasgian Imperialdom under a red veneer. Yet, to understand these inherent contradictions, one must first dive into a short political history of Pelasgia, ignoring the gold-medal-winning mental gymnastics of any Propontine ideologue trying to reconcile the various strains of official thought in the so-called People's Republic.
1. The Ideological Forefathers and the Socialist Workers' Party (1918-1957)
Red Pelasgia traces its official ideological and political origins in the Socialist Workers' Party of Pelasgia (SEKP). Founded in 1918 by Dr. Nikolaos Psaros and Vartholomaios Prototokis, a medical doctor and a union organiser, respectively, SEKP was a quintessential big tent leftist party, including such diverse movements as social democrats, democratic socialists, agrarianists, anarchists, Marxists, communists, and even liberation theologians. SEKP's sole core principles was democratic governance and non-sectarianism, meaning that all decisions within the party were taken democratically, and that no minority (religious or ethnic) was to be denied admission, but all party policies also had to be formulated to benefit all subjects of the Pelasgian Empire, not only a subset of them. SEKP ideology largely promoted democratic reform, localism, regionalism, labour law reform, agrarianism and land redistribution, soft secularism, and legal equality for all Pelasgians, as well as women's and minority rights.
SEKP faced much opposition by the authorities of the Pelasgian Empire, including prohibitions, internal exile, censorship, arrests, and even extrajudicial killings. The intellectual and real work of Psaros and Prototokis allowed to party to solidly establish its base within the growing urban working class, and to even attract many disaffected rural voters. Most importantly, it established links with several factions within the Pelasgian Orthodox Church, thereby earning some level of traditionalist legitimation within the deeply pious Pelasgian society. Gradually, as Pelasgia accepted parliamentarism and labour activism became somewhat legal, SEKP became one of the largest forces of Pelasgian politics. However, it would moderate its positions and find itself opposed from within by a hardline faction led by Ioannis Dokeiatis, who still advocated revolutionary action and radical politics. Following his expulsion in 1954, Sideris founded the Internationalist Communist Party of Pelasgia (DKKP), a SEKP splinter committed revolutionary communism and democratic centralism.
2. Civil War and the DKKP Coup d'état (1957-1969)
The Pelasgian Civil War came as a surprise to SEKP and most Pelasgian politicians, who scarcely expected such an outbreak of violence in one of Europe's largest countries. The death of Emperor Attalus the Great and the dispute regarding his succession that ensued pitched an absolutist and a constitutionalist faction against one another, eventually leading the latter to become full-on republican. While SEKP had a major role in the republican government, it was largely unable to effect its policies due to the inherent weakness of government in the liberal model it proposed, which entrenched business and other elites used to their advantage. By the end of 1957, the republicans (or Bluecoats) had largely driven the imperials (or Goldcoats) out of Propontis; however, with republican factions squabbling among themselves, the DKKP took advantage of the situation and seized power, using its wide support among the navy, conscript forces, and workers' unions, eliminating the Senate and Boule and proclaiming the Pelasgian People's Republic.
After eliminating imperial holdouts in Pelasgia's more distant regions and while fighting long-term anti-insurgent campaign against imperial loyalist secret societies known as the Pelagonian White Guards, the DKKP regime successfully asserted itself as Pelasgia's new rulers. Initially, the hardliners of the DKKP, who reabsorbed SEKP and took its name mainly as a legitimating mechanism, enforced strict communist policies: state atheism, agrarian and workers' communes, central planning, social liberalisation (divorce and abortion legalisation, minority language encouragement and autonomy) and other such measures. However, the state started to gradually become more and more centralised, until, by the time of Dokeiatis' death in 1969, Pelasgia was under a virtual reign of terror, with thousands of priests, former elite members, urban professionals, and other skilled individuals, artists, learned men or dissidents being sent to reeducation and labour camps en masse. Often, these camps would be on the same arid islands that the Imperials had once used. Ideologically, Pelasgia espoused true, orthodox Marxism, and sought to promote world revolution and the destruction of traditional culture and political structures.
3. Marxism-Siderism and Political Reform (1969-1981)
Ioannis Dokeiatis died of natural causes in 1969, leading to a power struggle within SEKP. The hardliner faction, led by Dokeiatis' chief ideologist, Nikos Zorbas, faced off against the pragmatic faction, led by Markos Sideris, the head of the Pelasgian People's Krypteia (LKP), Pelasgia's catch-all secret police, spy and foreign intelligence agency. Sideris would come out on top, purging the hardliners and condemning Dokeiatis himself largely to damnatio memoriae in official historiography, where Dokeiatis is portrayed as a merely secondary leader in favour of SEKP's founders, Psaros and Prototokis (whose own ideology was selectively presented to resemble Marxism-Siderism as much as possible). Once firmly in power Sideris sought to compromise with the Orthodox Church, restoring those elements of the Church who had collaborated with the communist rebels to the party's good graces and allowing the Church to appoint new Patriarchs via the Holy Synod on condition of non-confrontation with the official state. Many once banned traditions were allowed to return, while the Party's control on the economy was eased. More importantly, Pelasgian nationalism and patriotism was more strongly emphasized in public ideology, while the People's Republic passed from an internationalist state seeing itself as a mere arm of a future global government to a more traditional nation-state, seeing itself as the Pelasgians' own socialist state. "Socialism in one country" became the motto of the Foreign Ministry.
Marxism-Siderism coincided with the consolidation of militarism and security state rule, through the creation of a new generation of "galonades" (sing. "galonas"), or "men with shoulder insignia"--the term traditionally applied in Pelasgia to current or former members of security services and the military who participate in governing the state and its civilian institutions. Pelasgia largely abandoned the military-civilian distinction and the subordination of the army to the state, both of which had been major changes to the old imperial system. Pelasgia was once more subject to a class of guardian-rulers, largely due to Sideris' distrust of hardliner politicians and his trust of his own class of security officers. The state reclaimed many elements of Pelasgia's imperial history, including the double-headed eagle, and largely conducted itself as a communized Pelasgian Empire, rather than a truly new communist state. By the time of Sideris' death in 1981, the People's Republic had largely ended its phase of revolutionary politics, and Pelasgia was once again operating as a nation-state with a foreign policy focused on its own national interests, rather than a purveyor of international revolution. Minority rights were rolled back and the state was centralised, with a programme to uniformise education and culture based on the Propontine mainstream being enforced throughout the country; moreover, the institutions founded under Sideris are largely the same institutions that govern Pelasgia today.
For lack of a better term, Markos Sideris is the Father of Red Pelasgia--which is why he is often depicted as the "Father of the Socialist Fatherland" on statues and other regime memorabilia, and his portrait is still displayed (above and between those of Nikolas Psaros and Vartholomaios Prototokis) in every public building.
4. The National Bolshevists and the New Economic Policy (1981-present)
Markos Sideris died of heart failure on New Year's Day of 1981. His death was followed by widespread public mourning, which, unlike that for Ioannis Dokeaitis, was largely genuine, and even shared by the Orthodox Church. Many expatriates returned to Pelasgia, and they were allowed to resume their lives, provided that the renounced any anti-regime ideologies and claims to seized land and disestablished titles or privileges. Sideris' succession was much less brutal than that of his predecessor: the Socialist Workers' Party met in congress and elected the new Chairman of the Council of State (Pelasgia's collective head of state) through debate. Three main candidates were present, including Sideris' own protégé in the Krypteia (Dimitrios Lambropoulos), the widely celebrated Minister of Education and Research (Georgios Grigoriadis), and the Minister of Defence (Marshal Ioannis Drakos). Lambropoulos' death in a traffic accident (which is widely considered to have been genuine and not the product of an assassination plot), and Grigoriadis' own withdrawal due to poor health, allowed Drakos to win by default, after he easily outmaneuvered less likely challengers.
Much to the relief of all Pelasgians, Drakos was a devoted student of Sideris, and he had no wish to return to the purity spirals and purges of the hardliners' days. Indeed, he swiftly moved to place many remaining hardliners in mandatory retirement--at a generous premium, but in areas distant from the capital. Drakos considered that the only way for Pelasgia to progress was to extend Marxism-Siderism to its natural conclusion. Thus, the ideology of National Bolshevism was born. National Bolshevism combined assumed and open Pelasgian Nationalism with an economic model of state control of the commanding heights of Pelasgia's economy, with some limited room for private initiative. Under the New Economic Policy enacted in 1981, Pelasgia opened several industrial areas, designated as Special Administrative Zones, to foreign and domestic capitalistic investment and imitative. Pelasgia also re-enacted the advantageous shipping policies that had allowed it to possess Europe's largest merchant marine throughout history. Propontis justified its doing business with foreign capitalist powers (most notably @Rheinbund and @Radilo) as a means of strengthening the nation and fortifying the gains of the socialist revolution and the socialist system.
Pelasgia since the New Economic Policy's days has largely shed any semblance of revolutionary politics, apart from occasional lip service. Propontis is focused on pragmatic gains for Pelasgian national interests, be they military, economic or diplomatic, at home and abroad. That being said, the Pelasgian state remains profoundly authoritarian (if not totalitarian), and it openly interferes in its citizens lives in a plethora of ways. Moreover, the state remains very much present in the economy, formally owning all the land, as well as most banks, strategic and heavy industries, resource extraction companies, and practically all media. National Bolshevism is a novel ideology, but its practical effect is clear: the continuation of the Pelasgian Empire under a new name.
Exiled Patriarch Dionysios II said it the best in 2011 when he opined that "The Propontine authorities have proclaimed the abolition of the Empire, but they have, in fact, continued Pelasgian Imperialism in a manner that the Laskarid Dynasty itself never could have. They have assimilated minorities and centralized all state power in Propontis; they have neutralised the nobility and bourgeoisie and subjected the economy to state control; they have subdued the Church and made it a tool of secular power; they have modernised and industrialised Pelasgia, making it a global harbour and factory, without worry for strikes or popular protests and representation. In short, they have completed the work of Attalus the Great, while merely replacing the Crown of the Double Headed Eagle with a Red Star, and the dynastic arms in its escutcheon with their Party's symbol: Prometheus giving fire to humanity."
Yet, one must not presume that Pelasgia today is a legitimate successor of the Throne of Propontis. On the contrary, the Red State is an enemy of true Christianity and the violator of every ancient right and liberty Pelasgians hold dear. Only the restoration of Pelasgian Imperialdom can free our native land from the grips of the predatory vulture that reigns over Europe's oldest empire--a usurper worse than any Putschist-Emperor Propontis ever knew.
Other articles
- (History) The Pelagonian White Guards: Who are the legendary anti-red insurgents of Pelasgia?
- (International) Justosian recognition row reveals that free world's cooperation with Red Pelasgia has led to economic dependence on tyrannical regimes and an inability to oppose them.
- (Faith) Pelasgian Orthodox Church in Exile continues court battle against Red-backed Orthodox Church in Propontis over ownership of Archbishopric buildings in two Rheinbund cities.
- (Politics) The Krypteia crosses the pond: How Propontis' agents have inflitrated émigré networks and the role of newer Pelasgian expatriates.
1. The Ideological Forefathers and the Socialist Workers' Party (1918-1957)
Red Pelasgia traces its official ideological and political origins in the Socialist Workers' Party of Pelasgia (SEKP). Founded in 1918 by Dr. Nikolaos Psaros and Vartholomaios Prototokis, a medical doctor and a union organiser, respectively, SEKP was a quintessential big tent leftist party, including such diverse movements as social democrats, democratic socialists, agrarianists, anarchists, Marxists, communists, and even liberation theologians. SEKP's sole core principles was democratic governance and non-sectarianism, meaning that all decisions within the party were taken democratically, and that no minority (religious or ethnic) was to be denied admission, but all party policies also had to be formulated to benefit all subjects of the Pelasgian Empire, not only a subset of them. SEKP ideology largely promoted democratic reform, localism, regionalism, labour law reform, agrarianism and land redistribution, soft secularism, and legal equality for all Pelasgians, as well as women's and minority rights.
SEKP faced much opposition by the authorities of the Pelasgian Empire, including prohibitions, internal exile, censorship, arrests, and even extrajudicial killings. The intellectual and real work of Psaros and Prototokis allowed to party to solidly establish its base within the growing urban working class, and to even attract many disaffected rural voters. Most importantly, it established links with several factions within the Pelasgian Orthodox Church, thereby earning some level of traditionalist legitimation within the deeply pious Pelasgian society. Gradually, as Pelasgia accepted parliamentarism and labour activism became somewhat legal, SEKP became one of the largest forces of Pelasgian politics. However, it would moderate its positions and find itself opposed from within by a hardline faction led by Ioannis Dokeiatis, who still advocated revolutionary action and radical politics. Following his expulsion in 1954, Sideris founded the Internationalist Communist Party of Pelasgia (DKKP), a SEKP splinter committed revolutionary communism and democratic centralism.
2. Civil War and the DKKP Coup d'état (1957-1969)
The Pelasgian Civil War came as a surprise to SEKP and most Pelasgian politicians, who scarcely expected such an outbreak of violence in one of Europe's largest countries. The death of Emperor Attalus the Great and the dispute regarding his succession that ensued pitched an absolutist and a constitutionalist faction against one another, eventually leading the latter to become full-on republican. While SEKP had a major role in the republican government, it was largely unable to effect its policies due to the inherent weakness of government in the liberal model it proposed, which entrenched business and other elites used to their advantage. By the end of 1957, the republicans (or Bluecoats) had largely driven the imperials (or Goldcoats) out of Propontis; however, with republican factions squabbling among themselves, the DKKP took advantage of the situation and seized power, using its wide support among the navy, conscript forces, and workers' unions, eliminating the Senate and Boule and proclaiming the Pelasgian People's Republic.
After eliminating imperial holdouts in Pelasgia's more distant regions and while fighting long-term anti-insurgent campaign against imperial loyalist secret societies known as the Pelagonian White Guards, the DKKP regime successfully asserted itself as Pelasgia's new rulers. Initially, the hardliners of the DKKP, who reabsorbed SEKP and took its name mainly as a legitimating mechanism, enforced strict communist policies: state atheism, agrarian and workers' communes, central planning, social liberalisation (divorce and abortion legalisation, minority language encouragement and autonomy) and other such measures. However, the state started to gradually become more and more centralised, until, by the time of Dokeiatis' death in 1969, Pelasgia was under a virtual reign of terror, with thousands of priests, former elite members, urban professionals, and other skilled individuals, artists, learned men or dissidents being sent to reeducation and labour camps en masse. Often, these camps would be on the same arid islands that the Imperials had once used. Ideologically, Pelasgia espoused true, orthodox Marxism, and sought to promote world revolution and the destruction of traditional culture and political structures.
3. Marxism-Siderism and Political Reform (1969-1981)
Ioannis Dokeiatis died of natural causes in 1969, leading to a power struggle within SEKP. The hardliner faction, led by Dokeiatis' chief ideologist, Nikos Zorbas, faced off against the pragmatic faction, led by Markos Sideris, the head of the Pelasgian People's Krypteia (LKP), Pelasgia's catch-all secret police, spy and foreign intelligence agency. Sideris would come out on top, purging the hardliners and condemning Dokeiatis himself largely to damnatio memoriae in official historiography, where Dokeiatis is portrayed as a merely secondary leader in favour of SEKP's founders, Psaros and Prototokis (whose own ideology was selectively presented to resemble Marxism-Siderism as much as possible). Once firmly in power Sideris sought to compromise with the Orthodox Church, restoring those elements of the Church who had collaborated with the communist rebels to the party's good graces and allowing the Church to appoint new Patriarchs via the Holy Synod on condition of non-confrontation with the official state. Many once banned traditions were allowed to return, while the Party's control on the economy was eased. More importantly, Pelasgian nationalism and patriotism was more strongly emphasized in public ideology, while the People's Republic passed from an internationalist state seeing itself as a mere arm of a future global government to a more traditional nation-state, seeing itself as the Pelasgians' own socialist state. "Socialism in one country" became the motto of the Foreign Ministry.
Marxism-Siderism coincided with the consolidation of militarism and security state rule, through the creation of a new generation of "galonades" (sing. "galonas"), or "men with shoulder insignia"--the term traditionally applied in Pelasgia to current or former members of security services and the military who participate in governing the state and its civilian institutions. Pelasgia largely abandoned the military-civilian distinction and the subordination of the army to the state, both of which had been major changes to the old imperial system. Pelasgia was once more subject to a class of guardian-rulers, largely due to Sideris' distrust of hardliner politicians and his trust of his own class of security officers. The state reclaimed many elements of Pelasgia's imperial history, including the double-headed eagle, and largely conducted itself as a communized Pelasgian Empire, rather than a truly new communist state. By the time of Sideris' death in 1981, the People's Republic had largely ended its phase of revolutionary politics, and Pelasgia was once again operating as a nation-state with a foreign policy focused on its own national interests, rather than a purveyor of international revolution. Minority rights were rolled back and the state was centralised, with a programme to uniformise education and culture based on the Propontine mainstream being enforced throughout the country; moreover, the institutions founded under Sideris are largely the same institutions that govern Pelasgia today.
For lack of a better term, Markos Sideris is the Father of Red Pelasgia--which is why he is often depicted as the "Father of the Socialist Fatherland" on statues and other regime memorabilia, and his portrait is still displayed (above and between those of Nikolas Psaros and Vartholomaios Prototokis) in every public building.
4. The National Bolshevists and the New Economic Policy (1981-present)
Markos Sideris died of heart failure on New Year's Day of 1981. His death was followed by widespread public mourning, which, unlike that for Ioannis Dokeaitis, was largely genuine, and even shared by the Orthodox Church. Many expatriates returned to Pelasgia, and they were allowed to resume their lives, provided that the renounced any anti-regime ideologies and claims to seized land and disestablished titles or privileges. Sideris' succession was much less brutal than that of his predecessor: the Socialist Workers' Party met in congress and elected the new Chairman of the Council of State (Pelasgia's collective head of state) through debate. Three main candidates were present, including Sideris' own protégé in the Krypteia (Dimitrios Lambropoulos), the widely celebrated Minister of Education and Research (Georgios Grigoriadis), and the Minister of Defence (Marshal Ioannis Drakos). Lambropoulos' death in a traffic accident (which is widely considered to have been genuine and not the product of an assassination plot), and Grigoriadis' own withdrawal due to poor health, allowed Drakos to win by default, after he easily outmaneuvered less likely challengers.
Much to the relief of all Pelasgians, Drakos was a devoted student of Sideris, and he had no wish to return to the purity spirals and purges of the hardliners' days. Indeed, he swiftly moved to place many remaining hardliners in mandatory retirement--at a generous premium, but in areas distant from the capital. Drakos considered that the only way for Pelasgia to progress was to extend Marxism-Siderism to its natural conclusion. Thus, the ideology of National Bolshevism was born. National Bolshevism combined assumed and open Pelasgian Nationalism with an economic model of state control of the commanding heights of Pelasgia's economy, with some limited room for private initiative. Under the New Economic Policy enacted in 1981, Pelasgia opened several industrial areas, designated as Special Administrative Zones, to foreign and domestic capitalistic investment and imitative. Pelasgia also re-enacted the advantageous shipping policies that had allowed it to possess Europe's largest merchant marine throughout history. Propontis justified its doing business with foreign capitalist powers (most notably @Rheinbund and @Radilo) as a means of strengthening the nation and fortifying the gains of the socialist revolution and the socialist system.
Pelasgia since the New Economic Policy's days has largely shed any semblance of revolutionary politics, apart from occasional lip service. Propontis is focused on pragmatic gains for Pelasgian national interests, be they military, economic or diplomatic, at home and abroad. That being said, the Pelasgian state remains profoundly authoritarian (if not totalitarian), and it openly interferes in its citizens lives in a plethora of ways. Moreover, the state remains very much present in the economy, formally owning all the land, as well as most banks, strategic and heavy industries, resource extraction companies, and practically all media. National Bolshevism is a novel ideology, but its practical effect is clear: the continuation of the Pelasgian Empire under a new name.
Exiled Patriarch Dionysios II said it the best in 2011 when he opined that "The Propontine authorities have proclaimed the abolition of the Empire, but they have, in fact, continued Pelasgian Imperialism in a manner that the Laskarid Dynasty itself never could have. They have assimilated minorities and centralized all state power in Propontis; they have neutralised the nobility and bourgeoisie and subjected the economy to state control; they have subdued the Church and made it a tool of secular power; they have modernised and industrialised Pelasgia, making it a global harbour and factory, without worry for strikes or popular protests and representation. In short, they have completed the work of Attalus the Great, while merely replacing the Crown of the Double Headed Eagle with a Red Star, and the dynastic arms in its escutcheon with their Party's symbol: Prometheus giving fire to humanity."
Yet, one must not presume that Pelasgia today is a legitimate successor of the Throne of Propontis. On the contrary, the Red State is an enemy of true Christianity and the violator of every ancient right and liberty Pelasgians hold dear. Only the restoration of Pelasgian Imperialdom can free our native land from the grips of the predatory vulture that reigns over Europe's oldest empire--a usurper worse than any Putschist-Emperor Propontis ever knew.
Other articles
- (History) The Pelagonian White Guards: Who are the legendary anti-red insurgents of Pelasgia?
- (International) Justosian recognition row reveals that free world's cooperation with Red Pelasgia has led to economic dependence on tyrannical regimes and an inability to oppose them.
- (Faith) Pelasgian Orthodox Church in Exile continues court battle against Red-backed Orthodox Church in Propontis over ownership of Archbishopric buildings in two Rheinbund cities.
- (Politics) The Krypteia crosses the pond: How Propontis' agents have inflitrated émigré networks and the role of newer Pelasgian expatriates.
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