There are many disturbances in the ranks of the "Greece 2021" Committee.
On Monday, an excerpt from an article by professor Aristidis Hatzis about Georgios Karaiskakis, which had caused reactions, was withdrawn from the Commission's official website. Earlier, the historian Maria Efthymiou submitted her resignation, while the Commission was forced to apologize for the posting of Aristides Hatzis' text.
The article by Mr. Hatzis, who is an expert in the Philosophy of Law &Theory of Institutions and a member of the Commission, referred to the blunt language of the hero of the Revolution and his personal life.
The article provoked critical comments, with the Director of the Museum of the City of Athens, Stefanos Kavallierakis, describing it as a "kneogram" in which Karaiskakis is presented as "the stallion of 1821".
For his part, however, Nikos Sarandakos was in favor of the publication. "The hypocritical Greeks were shocked, the frothy comments started and the article was taken down. Wrong! National is the real thing," commented the author and translator characteristically.
The response of Aristides Hatzis through his Facebook page was this:
He speaks of "bad faith and stupidity" and clarifies that his text was published on his personal Facebook page "only".
"In the last 2-3 years I also did something else that I have now stopped. As I am locked in my office and work intensively for many hours every day, immersed in the sources and archives of the Revolution, I discover various little gems. Texts, small stories, unknown incidents. Some of them I wanted to share with you here, and your warm welcome encouraged me to continue. One of them was the text on the love life of Karaiskakis, which I uploaded on the feast of ...Saint Valentine (14/ 2).It was, obviously, a humorous text as well as a human one, about a hero who, as you will see in my book, the Revolution is his Bildungsroman. I consider him the most fascinating personality of his time, especially as that personality develops. Even more interesting than those of my other protagonists, Mavrokordatus, Kolokotronis, Kapodistrias, Byron, Kyriakoulis, Dimitrios Ypsilantis. Why Karaiskakis changes as no one else, he is literally transformed, the Revolution brings out of him something that even he himself did not know existed. If you have read the Karagatsis trilogy and remember Michalos Rousi, you will understand me.
These texts were written for Facebook only. When they are republished elsewhere they do me an injustice first of all as their reader has no idea when, how and for where they were written. But they are also unfair to certain "serious fools" who, as bad faith as they are, take it in cash. And they "judge" them as strictly as if I had submitted them for publication in a scientific journal. Moreover, these people, since they have no humor (which does not surprise me at all), fail to detect it even when it hits them over the head with a club:with the references to Greek cinema (Pipis), with the parody of political correctness ( sexist memoirists), with the prose I choose ("first place pista"), so that we can laugh more as we are shocked by the cute athyrostomy of Karaiskakis that Gazis, Kasomoulis, Ainian, Vlachogiannis and many younger ones were not afraid to record. You tell me, they didn't see the humor and the satire, didn't understand it or didn't want to see it? I do not know. After all, as is well known, the idiot always looks at the finger.
I don't write notes like this anymore because (that's why) I'm at the end of writing and I've intensified research and writing. I will come back sometime, when I have time and appetite. In the meantime, please do not republish these texts outside of Facebook. They were written for Facebook, let them stay here".
The Greece 2021 Committee was established to coordinate the celebrations of the 200 years of the new Greek state with the aim, as stated by Gianna-Angelopoulou Daskalaki, to create a unifying climate.
The Committee includes renowned international academics such as Mark Mazauer, Richard Klog, Eleni Glykatzi Arveler, Paschalis Kitromelidis.
Before the article about Karaiskakis, "noise" was again created from an earlier text by Aristides Hatzis, in which Kapodistrias was presented as a dictator.
The text in question had caused reactions on social media but had not been withdrawn. Now, social media users have entered into a new "debate" about Karaiskakis' language and whether the professor's controversial post should be taken down.
The truth is, however, that Karaiskakis was indeed a blasphemer, with Christoforos Perraivos writing about it that he was "obscene to the extreme" and "a bitter abuser of the unruly, many of his friends". The letter that Karaiskakis sent to Mahmut Pasha is known, and he wrote:"You write me a bouyurdi, telling me to prostrate myself. And I, my Pasha, asked my budjon himself, and he answered me not to prostrate myself, and if you come down "Upon me, straight away to fight".
Of course, this should not alienate us, as most Greeks who took part in the Revolution were people of popular origin, while the record does not detract from Karaiskakis' leadership skills, which are documented by multiple historical sources.
Regarding his historical successes, in September 1821, together with other chieftains, he occupied Arta, while in January 1823 he scored his first major victory against the Turks in the battle of Sovolakos.
In 1824, he was accused by Mavrokordatos of entering into secret agreements with the Turks in exchange for the Agrafi chariot and was declared guilty of high treason, deprived of his positions. After many efforts and letters that he sent to the government in Nafplio, he was restored and took command of the Amfissa camp.
The action of Karaiskakis in Central Greece in 1825, when he prevented the occupation of Distomos Amfissa by the Turks, is considered particularly important.
In 1825 he attacked Kioutachi, which was besieging Messolonghi. After the fall of Messolongius, he was appointed commander-in-chief of Sterea and settled in Eleusis. This was followed by the battles in Domvraina, Distomo and also in Arachova against Kehayabei where the Turks suffered an utter defeat, losing 2,000 men. After he managed to eliminate the danger of Omer Pasha of Evia, in April 1827 he moved for the liberation of Athens from Kioutachi.
Troops from the Peloponnese and several Philhellenes rushed to his aid. At this point the government made the fatal mistake of accepting General George's plan of attack for a frontal attack and not that of Karaiskakis who insisted on blocking the Turks so that they would be forced to surrender.
The attack was finally set for April 23, 1827.
The previous day, Karaiskakis was in his tent sick when he was informed that some battles were taking place in the area of Faliro. Fearing the unplanned development, he went to the scene with the intention of stopping it. There he received a bullet and was taken to George's ship where he died the next day in 1827. There is still controversy about his death.
Before he died he dictated his will, leaving his weapons to his fellow fighters and his inheritance, his two daughters in the custody of the state and turning to the present chieftains (according to Makrygiannis) he said "I am dying but be united to defend the homeland". He was buried with honors in Salamis, where even today in the church of Agios Georgios (which is the only one in all of Greece) there is a mural of the heroic chief among the Saints.
One day after the death of Georgios Karaiskakis in Faliro, the disastrous defeat of the Greek forces by Kioutachis in the area of Analatos, today's Neo Kosmos, follows.
A brief biographical account of the beginning of the leader of the Revolution of 1821, as saved by Michalis Myridakis in his book "The Struggles of the Race – The National Resistance 1941 – 1944", volume A (republished by istorikaxronika.com) :
"From where you are today, captain, Karaiskakis also started long ago, at the age of 16, and from a child despised and despised, after a little while he became the well-known warlord, the great hero and renowned general who was feared by Turkey.
Georgios Karaiskakis was the illegitimate child of a beautiful girl from Skoulikaria, Diamantos Dimiski, and a charioteer, Nik. Plakias, and of this inhabitant of Skoulikaria, that she was born in a cell of the Monastery of Panagia of Skoulikaria, which was rich in those years, that in this Monastery Diamanto had been imprisoned by her two thief brothers, Kostas and Georgios, in order to she avoided the troubles caused to her by the Turks, who had permanent garrisons in Skoulikaria, and that for this reason she, following the decision of her mother and her brothers, lived in the Monastery and wore a robe, without being a nun, that Diamanto when she lived in the Monastery she became romantically involved with her charioteer fellow villager Nick. Plakias by whom she became illegally pregnant and that her pregnancy had been kept a secret even by the abbot of the Kallinikos Monastery, a relative of Diamantos, who after 40 days after the birth of the child, the abbot of the Monastery with all secrecy and with she sent the name Zoe and the newborn to his friend the abbot of the Monastery of Agios Georgios in Mavrommati Karditsa, who had previously notified him in a letter.
He, in order to protect her, took her, without race of course, to work in the service of the Monastery and to raise her child. When 8 years had passed, like another Judea she returned to the region of her birth. He settled, like Zoe again, in the village of Dounitsa of Valtos, a neighboring village of Skoulikaria. There she worked and had her child Georgios with her, in the mansion of Dim. Iscous, who had cared for him as a wounded man in the Monastery of Ai Giorgi in Karditsa.
Because the child worked as a beggar in Iskus and had very black skin, the children of Dunica called him Kara of Iskus. Here it should be noted that due to the fact that the thieves had learned the secret, the two brothers of Diamantos killed the spy N. Plakias, in the settlement of Gianniotis when he was leading a Turkish attack against them.
As for the paternity of Karaiskakis from N. Plakias, we must say here that even today the members of the Plakias family who exist in Skoulikaria have a great similarity in the form and characteristics of G. Karaiskakis. Then the patronymic Kara of Iskos became Karaiskos and as he said, much later Karaiskos, for unknown reasons, became "Karaiskakis".
In Dounitsa, the mother of Karaiskakis, always referred to as Zoe and never revealed, remained working for 4 years. In the meantime, in Skoulikaria, her two thief brothers had been killed, her old mother had also died, and then Diamanto Dimiskis, as Diamanto Dimiskis now, makes the decision to return to Skoulikaria with her 12-year-old child. Deserted and alone, scorned and scorned, live there days of martyrdom. To protect her from grief, her rich and close relatives, the Bakolaios, took her to work in their mansion, and there she died shortly after. Her 12-year-old child, as soon as they settled in Skoulikaria, as an illegitimate child, was despised and vilified by all the children of the village and they did not even allow him to play with them. The little child was confined to the house where he lived and cried day and night. At that time, the Turks of the shell of Ai Lia asked to find a child to do their bidding for them.
Diamanto Dimiski, then in order to escape from the contempt shown to her son by the children of his age, decided and gave him as a godfather to the Karakoli of Ai Lia. In the Karakoli, the unprotected Karaiskakis stayed for 4 years as a slave and did the bidding of the Turks. When he turned 16, a Turk from Karakoli took him to help him load water. On the way, this Turk tried to abuse him.
The small and insignificant servant at the time, with his intelligence, agility and courage, without wasting time grabs the Turk's pistol and kills him with it. After this act of his, he immediately left for Agrafa, which were then the lairs of the famous Katsantonis. In Agrafa he found Katsantonis who as soon as he saw him said to him:
"What do you want here, Byzantine?".
"I came to fight with you too":was the response of the small and defenseless child.
"Did you kill a Turk?".
"I killed," says the little boy, and he told Katsantonis what had happened to him.
"That Turk would be a ghost," replied Katsantonis.
The thieves who were nearby, laughed their hearts out, as Karaiskakis himself later recounted. Finally Katsantonis tells him:
"Hey man, stay with us and even if the Turk you killed was dead, with us you will learn to kill the living as well".
From this time Karaiskakis' activity begins. That's why, captain, we told you that this is where Karaiskakis started his action".