The fundamental errors that occurred during the establishment of the New Greek State.

By Ioannis Neonakis

The New Greek state was established two centuries ago a few years after the Revolution of 1821 against the Ottomans. The state was established under the guidance and total control of the Great Powers of that time therefore, fundamental errors occurred whose consequences are even felt nowadays.

First of all, it was set up as a nation-state and all the more ethnically ”clean” thus utterly betraying the ecumenical, supranational, Romeiki tradition of our People.

Moreover, our symbols and names and especially that of our state’s name Romania, were relinquished leading to our historic rights and points of reference being given away. It was quite obvious that the then Great Powers being in complete control of the game at the time would never allow the establishment of a state in the region under the name, heritage and legacy of Romania. On the one hand, it would undermine in the long run the flimsy foundations of their own statehood and on the other, it would pave the way for the creation of a clearly rival and very powerful state entity on the global stage, all the more eagerly coming out from a centuries-long period of oppression and suspension.

However, as a result, several millions of Romee in the Aimos peninsula (the Balcans), in Asia Minor, in the larger Black Sea area and the Middle East were completely cut off (even from a legal point of view) from the new state, thus losing their orientation, their sense of belonging, their identity and gradually being assimilated into the individual nationalist movements of their region. In order to grasp the magnitude of the error, let us remember that even today, two centuries later, there are (or at least they existed before the war) about two millions Arab-speaking Orthodox Romee in Lebanon and Syria. That is, people belonging to the same culture and traditions as us, people of our kind. Let us however, have a look at the current state symbols of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania or Georgia. Are they not referring to our common Romeiki tradition?

Moreover, we would say that on a level of values, the institutions of the newly created state were based on a western disposition and framework, on a western mentality fully betraying our individual characteristics, our idiosyngrasy. For instance, mores, the unwritten customary law, the written legal framework, bureaucracy, the legal and state organization of Romania were fully given away. And by saying legal and state organization of Romania I mean the whole structure of the state, the authorities, the commons, the state organizations, the distribution of competences, the Romeiko law, the state tradition, the state experience, the perception, the state references and objectives.

Furthermore, the Church from being a pillar in the centre of a functional and symbiotic framework between the church and the state, the so-called framework of synallelia, the Church was downgraded to the level of just an insignificant social association in the newly established state and the worst it was fully controlled by the state. Moreover, it was a real tragedy the way the Church of the New Greek State was also lead to being completely cut off from the Mother Church of Constantinople.

Finally, there has been an unprecedented turn in our interest and orientation exclusively towards the antiquity and ”the glory of classical Greece”, a historical flyover of 2000 years. It was indeed a great achievement for the historically immature man of the West after the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to be able to understand the beauty of the Greek thought and reasoning. For us, however, a People with a cultural and historic experience and evolution of additional two millennia, this complete turn to the classical antiquity was a disastrous historical infantile regression.

The applied experience originating from the course of the state in time was lost together with the solutions provided after social ferment. Lost was the ecumenical point of reference, lost was the course of our people in history as a testimony of the People of God with an end of times perspective, lost was the understanding of the age old memory going back on time and of the end aiming at salvation, lost was the hesychast point of view and a share in the immaterial world as well as the chance of being united with God, the chance of theanthropy. The whole was lost in favor of something utterly partial. Instead of the Holy Mass to strengthen the point of reference, a mere human reasoning and perspective was applied. Instead of Agia Sophia the Parthenon.

And since then we have been constantly shrinking for the past two centuries mainly in our essence. We have lost ourselves and are living in a constant internal imbalance. We lost our vigour, our life purpose and were led to nihilism. We are leading a life without zest and prospects, merely making a stressed out surviving trying to hold on without coherence, without a perspective vision, without a common course, without enjoying the light we were accustomed to.

And yet again I am not complaining. I accept this course of our People as a gloomy interval of the past, as the mystery of darkness, as an additional experience thinning even more our single soul and rendering us wiser and more complete and ready for the gifts of the end of time perspective.

And this is because the darkness has not and will never utterly hold its sway over us. There will always be a little oil lamp burning in front of the icons. There will always be the yeast that ferments the dough. As a People we have tasted the light and this cannot be forgotten. And even if we, people of the present day, manage to forget it, the past and the future generations never will.