PANOS TR. DARKER
Magnesia and politics on fire, 1934–1967
University Press of Thessaly, 2022, p. 730.

Panos Skotiniotis took an active part in policy her stuff Magnesia over three decades, from 1982 to 2014. Marching with the left and the wider progressive faction, he was elected MP for Magnesia, Prefect of Magnesia and Mayor of Volos. Added to his rich political career is now the feat of research, the writing of his voluminous book “Magnesia and politics in the making, 1934–1967“, recently released by Thessaly University Press.

His meticulous study, the product of a four-year exhaustive study, outlines not only the electoral/political landscape of pre-war, post-war and post-civil Magnesia, but also the historical context, economic transformations, social transformations, demographic changes and cultural trends in a turbulent era that spans the period from the eve of the dictatorship Metaxas until the eve of the military dictatorship of 1967. Late election expert Ilias Nikolacopoulos notes in his foreword that “Skotiniotis’s global and documented study, the fruit of years of research and practical experience, is a model of local history and an intellectual challenge for similar studies in other regions of the country. “.

Connected storytelling

The interaction of the local with the national permeates the entire book, “because local political history is not divorced from national reality.”

With a lively letter that does not weaken the reader’s interest, the author achieved his goal: “to build a coherent narrative soberly, without absolutes and ideological manipulations, with respect for events and persons.” The fulfillment of the 200th anniversary after the revolution of 1821, the 140th anniversary of the annexation of Volos and Thessaly to the Greek territory (1881) and the 100th anniversary of the Asia Minor catastrophe (1922) prompted him to “critical reflection, the exercise of local self-awareness , which performs the task of memory”.

His penetrating eye is not limited to finds, but seeks interpretation both for those periods when Magnesia was “champion” and for those when she “struggled”. Comparing his course with events in other Thessalian prefectures, he offers food for interesting comparisons.

The electoral path begins with the last municipal and parliamentary elections of the interwar period (1934 and 1936 respectively) and ends with the last parliamentary (1964) and municipal elections (1964-1965) before the establishment of the military dictatorship. On 730 pages of the book, in addition to figures reflecting the results of the elections of parties and candidates throughout the prefecture (with 411 tables and 12 diagrams, 103 photographs, articles from the local and Athenian press and biographies of deputies and mayors). , people who played a major role in the three main factions, right, center and left, in the fragile political environment of “Kakhetian democracy”. Only eight of the 41 elected deputies (40 men and one woman) became ministers during the period under review, with Andreas Apostolidis, John Glavanis and Georgios Kartalis the longest-serving ministers. In fact, the latter became the dominant figure throughout Greece among the centre-left before he met an untimely death in 1957 at the age of 49. The interaction of the local with the national permeates the entire book, “because local political history is not divorced from national reality,” and Magnesia several times kept pace with more progressive and modern trends in national history.

The author notes that industry was the steam engine of the “golden” pre-war period with the decisive contribution of refugees, while the Liberation found EAM in ideological dominance in Magnesia. At the end of the occupation and civil war, the local economy was destroyed, and the devastating earthquakes and floods of 1955 added to the additional blows. punitive government sentiment due to the centre-left/left majority in the urban center of Volos-Nea Ionia, as well as the weakening of some of the region’s comparative advantages, when “the unique combination of a productive economy, urban and cultural prosperity, labor radicalism and extroversion, which gave a special aura and dynamism to the first decades since the founding of the new city of Volos”.

But Magnesia resisted, and Volos in the post-war years remained the fourth urban center of the country. In fact, since 1963, economic reconstruction began, which brought to the fore a new generation of creative people who “did not have time to enrich the modern characteristics of the local society, because the dictatorship of 1967 cut off its wings.”

With his book, Panos Skotiniotis has set a very high bar for future researchers. Anyone who decides to pick up the thread from where he left it, to paint a portrait of Magnesia in the 50s of the post-colonial period, will render an invaluable service to the study of local history.

Mr. Achilleas Paparsenos was President of the Magnet Society, a worldwide association of foreign magnets, from 2013 to 2017.