Avraam Benaroya
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Avraam Benaroya (1887-1979) was a leader of the workers' movement in Greece.
Benaroya was born in Salonika, the then commercial and political center of the Balkans. A polyglot, he learned to speak six languages fluently. He was raised in Lundt, Bulgaria by a Sephardic family of small merchants. He studied law in Belgrade but did not graduate, becoming rather a teacher in Plovdiv, where he published, in Bulgarian, The Jewish Question and Social Democracy. He returned as a socialist organizer to Salonika immediately after the Young Turk revolution of 1908.
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[edit] The Fédération Socialiste Ouvrière
Idealistic and pragmatist at the same time, in Salonica he played a leading role in the creation, in 1909, of the mainly Jewish Fédération Socialiste Ouvrière, or simply, in Ladino, Federacion. The organization took this name because, built on the federative model of the Social Democratic Party of Austria, it was conceived as a federation of separate sections, each representing the four main ethnic groups of the city: Jews, Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks. It initially published its literature in the languages of these four groups (i.e. Ladino, Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish, respectively) but in practice the two latter sections were under-represented if not nonexistent. The democratic Federacion soon became, under Benaroya's leadership, the strongest socialist party in the Ottoman Empire. It created combative trade unions, attracted important intellectuals and gained a solid base of support among Macedonian workers while cultivating strong links with Socialist International. From 1910 to 1911 Benaroya edited its influential newspaper, the Solidaridad Obradera, printed in Ladino.
[edit] The Federacion and the labour movement in Greece
Balkan military adventures started long before and finished long after World War I. In September 1912 the conflagration between the Ottomans and the Christian Balkan Powers broke out. Some months later, and after the Sultan's armies had abandoned the lands north and west of Adrianople, an even crueller blitzkrieg war erupted in which Bulgaria attacked Serbia. The Treaty of Bucharest, signed in the summer of 1913, did not bring peace to Greece. Tension persisted, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Macedonia, Thrace and Asia Minor. Atrocities against defenceless populations became common currency all over Balkans, preparing vicious wars that separated ethnic amalgams with rivers of blood, strengthened their economic, political and cultural dependence, gave to the military prime role in the state and to the state unprecedented power upon society, and finally cemented the translation of social conflicts into national terms. Antimilitarism, a staple of social democratic beliefs, and always cherished by the Federacion, now a priority for many socialists and others.
Chaos reigned in the rural countryside of the new provinces of Greece, where central authority was either unable or unwilling to protect the so-called "foreigners" from spoliation and persecution. Salonica was prominent and controllable in the eyes of the world, but Benaroya and friends passed difficult hours. The Liberal Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, opted for conciliation with its Jews; his enlightened ideals promised good prospects for capital and relative protection to labor. However, the policy of divide et impera was an almost unavoidable option for the ruling elite in view of the critical situation it faced in the New Provinces, extending from Mount Olympus to the present day northern borders of Greece, an area in which Hellenes faced strong national antagonists plus the antinationalist socialism of the Federacion. Official treatment of "enemy races" as subhuman was even prepared by decades of obscurantist rhetoric and it reflected racist doctrines long cultivated by prominent intellectuals with the support, among other institutions, of the judicial system. The Jews of Salonica almost universally voted against Venizelos' liberal party. The state policies of maintaining “national purity” and the alternative selective integration of “foreign elements” were equally indebted to the Panhellenism of the Megali Idea.
In light of the new situation socialist leaders like Benaroya had to address economic exploitation as well as broader national oppression. As wars brought about huge replacements of power and property, official and unofficial expropriation of the "foreigners" became an evident way to defuse social tensions, to increase pressure on unwanted groups, and to create a cheap labor force. Jewish tobacco workers, for example, might be both exploited and oppressed as non-Greek elements, while the Greek Orthodox poor of Salonica might refuse to pay rent to a Bulgarian proprietor, or even occupy houses of Dönmes who had found refuge in Constantinople. Jewish pedlars who were prohibited from plying their trade were forced to find dependent and badly paid employment. Slav speaking peasants might side with the new regime, in which case they could easily divide Muslim estates where they worked previously as little better than serfs, or support the opposition cause and be expelled from the country.
The violent redistribution of roles and resources contributed to the assimilation of foreigners in Greece, just as it had in the rest of the Balkanss at the time. Immigrants were marginalized by the creation of a cohesive "national body". The government of Greece manipulated cultural symbols, extended access to education, work, justice, hygiene, dwelling, infrastructure, army service, etc. for certain favored groups, and connected national and class differentiation. Social distinctions inherited from the Ottoman era were intentionally intensified. Benaroya and the Federacion voiced their dissent, but soon accepted the new territorial status quo.
[edit] Rupture between National and International Socialism
Old ethnically-Greek socialists, badly organized and at least publicly friendly to Veniselos, tried not to rock the boat. They were in disbelief that a non-hellenic and emphatically internationalist organization, as they perceived the Federacion, happened to be the strongest mass organization on Greek soil, and had the potential to become the political base of the socialist party in Greece.
Through the incessant projection of socialist critique, and the adroit handling of workers' strikes the likes of which Greece had never seen, Benaroya broke the national barrier just after the normalization which came by the end of 1913. The feelings and experiences of many Greek citizens who saw their families and their properties devastated by the war can best be expressed as internationalist and antimilitarist. The young and the old, men and women, Greeks and Muslims, Jews and Slavs, intellectuals and workingmen, rallied to the concrete demands of the Federacion and gained important concessions and reforms. Unfortunately for Benaroya, he and another Jewish socialist, were exiled for two and a half years at the island of Naxos.
Initially Greece did not participate in the war. The Court opted for support from Kaiser Wilhelm, Queen Sophia's brother, while the Prime Minister identified with the Triple Entente, and gradually they polarized the political body of the nation. Greek socialists were equally divided. In Old Greece most prominent socialists followed Veniselos, while the Federacion, adhering to its internationalist ideals, mobilized for neutrality, which also happened to be favoured by King Constantine and his militaristic entourage. Many organizations of Southern Greece actually approached the Federacion over this issue, while it lost the support of important Greek socialists in Macedonia.
From 1915 onwards Federacion was buoyed by the popular reaction to the war. Both monarchist and Veniselist policy actually assisted the emancipation and the radicalization of the left, and Benaroya, keeping equal distance from both established political groups, was quick to turn the situation to advantage. In the 1915 general elections Federacion sent two deputies representing Salonica to the Greek Parliament, while it lost by only a few votes for a third seat. It already had strong links with internationalist groups and organizations all over Greece and abroad; from them the Socialist Workers Party was to spring up in due time. An interventionist Socialist tendency however, headed by the future Prime Minister Alexander Papanastassiou (who ruled from May 26, 1932 - June 5, 1932), and siding with Veniselos in foreign affairs, also elected deputies at the time.
The national question more than any other kept the Greek left divided until the German occupation of the country, in the 1940s. Papanastassiou and other reform-minded socialists practically collided with Venizelos' liberal brand of nationalism. Benaroya and the Federacion, on the other hand, were influenced by Austromarxists such as Victor Adler, Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, who, sensitive to matters national, searched ways to utilize socialism as a cohesive force for the decrepit Habsburg Monarchy; they elaborated the principle of personal autonomy, according to which national consciousness should be depoliticized and become a personal matter. Modern states should be based on free association and allow self definition and self organization of ethnicities in cultural affairs, while a mixed parliament, proportionally representing all nations of the realm, should decide on economic and political questions. The Federacion traced the origins of its federative position in Balkan authors of the Enlightenment like Rhigas Velestinlis, and stressed that the forthcoming peace should exclude any change of borders or transfer of populations. The Socialist Workers' Party, that was created with Benaroya's initiative near the end of the European War, followed closely Federacion's theses on national self-determination, and wanted to transform the Greek state into a federation of autonomous provinces that would safeguard the rights of minorities and participate in a federative Republic of the Balkan peoples. This ideal was not as farfetched as it would be today, and its elaboration owed a lot to Benaroya's synthesis of moral with practical imperatives.
[edit] Benaroya approaches the Democratic Union
After a historic meeting with Veniselos, Benaroya's tactical abilities resulted in the birth of the Socialist Workers' Party and the General Confederation of Labour. These new political players united the bulk of mobilized workers and socialists of Greece. He analyzed Balkan realities through the dominant social democratic codification of Marxism, and arrived at practical conclusions. Uncommon powers of mental abstraction helped him define, and when necessary redefine, strategic goals and orientations of the socialist movement in Greece while his extremely effective persuasion imposed his socialism on the left until 1923.
His choices proved so successful that the rise of the Socialist Workers' Party and of the workers' movement disturbed the government. Persecution led to a general strike in 1919. Subsequently social and political polarization, as well as the prestige of the newborn Soviet Union, strengthened the radicals and before long the party was affiliated to the Leninist Third International. The Labour Centre of Salonica, another creation of Benaroya's subtle vision, uniting more than twelve thousand workers of all nationalities, a good part of them Jews, became the focus of radical socialism. The fall of the Veniselos government and the war in Anatolia fuelled even more dissent, leading to anti-war riots. In the wake of these developments Benaroya, thrown in prison again, as well as most of the leading members of the party, were marginalized by the radicals. On the other hand moderate socialists under Papanastassiou started preparing their own revolution: their primary aim was now to overthrow the throne.
In 1922 the Greek army was defeated by the Kemalists and a military revolution ensued that deposed King Constantine. It undertook many reforms, notably the distribution of big estates to peasants, but after a general strike workers were violently suppressed. A little later, in December 1923, Benaroya, who preferred social-democratic organizational models and opposed Bolshevisation, was expelled from the Communist Party and was obliged to quit the direction of its Salonica daily Avanti. Afterwards he focused his action on the Jewish community of Salonica, and participated in a splinter group that with help from Papanastassiou, now Prime Minister, tried unsuccessfully to split the Communist Party. At that time he agreed with the new Prime Minister both on the need of reforms and not revolution, and on the priority of abolishing the monarchy. An equally urgent imperative, though, was combatting the racism and anti-semitism that were often cultivated by the state authorities themselves.
Papanastassiou immediately passed the temporary Legislative Decree "On the Defence of the Republican Regime", that imposed penalties on press attacks against the Republic and the minorities. It provided for at least three months' imprisonment for anyone who "systematically distinguishes, through the press, for political objectives and disdainfully, the inhabitants of the country between natives and newcomers, Christian Orthodox or followers of other religions, speakers of Greek or of other languages, and the like, or ascribes to them scornfully any qualities or habits". Even praising such practices was punished with imprisonment.
Resisting discrimination was an essential part of the socialist programs of both Papanastassiou and Benaroya. Mainstream political forces however, Conservatives and Liberals alike, were angered by this decree. The reactionary judiciary prevented its implementation, and it was soon abolished by the military dictator Theodoros Pangalos.
A pertinent analysis of interwar liberal political thought was made by Charles Roig. According to Roig, this thought assimilated the experience of the Great War by developing two complementary terminologies: one of them focused on the irrational and pathological face of the war, while the other rationalized it and presented it as a normal state of things. It created new political grammars called wartime right, droit d' exception, or exceptional right, necessarily based on a "superior right", on so called "principles", "fundamental laws" and the like, by definition different from right but so imperative that they justified the abandonment of common legality. This process was completed in Europe before 1939, by which time "political-legal symbolism, as well as the current language of liberal democracies, had totally integrated verbal calculations of illegality, a transformation in which the notion of positive right contributed decisively. Fascism and Nazism constituted another process of transformation of political symbolism, while a third interrelated process was Bolshevism".
The same phenomenon appeared in Greece during the wars of 1912-1922, was intensified in the Entreguerre and reached its apex in the 1940s, when the borders between liberal and fascist discourse were practically abolished. In fact Greek politicians acted according to these "verbal calculations of illegality" even before they turned them into positive law, and perhaps even before they had organized them in a distinct discourse. Benaroya and the democratic socialists, on the other hand, were marginalized exactly because they would not follow any of these dominant transformations of political symbolism that led to authoritarianism.
After Papanastassiou's fall, in the summer of 1924, the continuity between the oppression of "foreigners" and the persecution of socialists became evident, and it crystallized in the development of republican varieties of fascism. The permanent eclipse of the rule of law in Epirus, or rather the state's refusal to replace Ottoman oppression of these provinces with any form of Rechtsstaat, signified the convergence of the so called Liberals with totalitarianism. Simple fascist recipes, however, did not fare well and proved unable to crush the left. Soon a part of the ruling elite turned to the Nazi model, systematically cultivating antisemitism as a means to divide the subalterns. Claims of Jewish origin for Bolshevism and internationalism were among the preferred propaganda spread at this time. As democracy waned and repression of the minorities and of the left became entrenched, democratic socialism, of the kind envisaged by Benaroya, became more and more an impossibility.
Benaroya remained politically active after 1924 but as he stayed outside the principal political formations of the left, the communists and Papanastassiou's socialists, his capacity of action was increasingly restricted. In Salonica he had a difficult life, especially after the Liberals' antisemitic turn, by the end of the 1920s, and the repeated coups d' État of 1935 that destroyed the Republic as well as the hopes of the democratic left. In the 1940s he lost a son in the war against Mussolini, survived the German concentration camps, and led a small socialist party after his return to Greece. Disgusted by the dominant obscurantism, he emigrated to Israel in 1953. He was installed in Holon where he died in 1979, aged ninety two, in utter poverty but indomitable in spirit.
