Speaking in Agia Lavra, during the events of the Municipality of Kalavryta for the Anniversary of the beginning of the National Rebellion on March 25, 1821, the former President of the Republic and Honorary Professor of the Law School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Mr. Prokopios Pavlopoulos, pointed out, among others, the following:
"We commemorate today here, at the emblematic National Historical Landmark and Sacred Cradle of the 1821 Uprising, the anniversary of the "explosion" of the Revolution of the Greek Nation against the barbaric and bloodthirsty Ottoman yoke, on March 25, 1821. Revolution, which led to the creation of Younger Greek State, the first Nation-State in Europe at the time.
At the same time we proclaim, urbi et orbi, that the relationship of the Greek Nation with Freedom was, is and will forever remain experiential. This experiential - "existential", in essence, since it is inextricably linked to the defense of their value and the development of their personality, over time - the relationship of the Greeks with Freedom has its roots in the beginnings of the appearance and creation of the free and " disobey" Ancient Greek Spirit, during the 6th century BC. Since then, and continuously, we, the Greeks, have historically walked the "roads of Freedom" of the Ancient Greek Spirit.
And these "roads of Freedom", which were opened and led by the Ancient Greek Spirit on the way to the culmination of its creation - which formed its priceless "legacy" for the future of European Civilization - also led to the final composition of the quintessence of Freedom, roughly as we employ it today. That is, of a Freedom, which is in our time the basic, institutional and political support of the Representative Democracy, as a means of state organization that provides it with the most reliable guarantees for the unfettered exercise of the Fundamental Rights of Man.
This quintessence of Freedom - and, consequently, of Representative Democracy, as a guarantee of Freedom - was defended, before and especially after the National Uprising of 1821, by the fighting Greeks. And on it they founded the first Greek Constitutions, even when the New Greek State had not been established, which happened in 1830, with the London Protocol.
Moreover, the Greek Nation, which was created more than 3,000 years ago, "resting" especially on the solid basis of the Greek Language, rebelled against the barbaric and bloodthirsty Ottoman yoke in 1821. Hence the Revolution of 1821 bears all the characteristics of "Rebellion" which, as it was emphasized, also led to the creation of the first Nation-State in Europe at the time.
- The Greek Language was not only the means of communication of a People or a Nation in general. But the shaping instrument of Education, which is at the core of Greek Culture, from its birth to its modern evolution, due to the fact that, according to the following considerations, the Greek Language contributed decisively to the creation of the Greek Nation. All this has as its starting point the scientifically well-documented fact, that the power of the Greek Language, as a means of communication of people living in an organized society, is such over time, that we can reliably accept that it is not so much the totality of the individual Peoples in Antiquity , who were historically connected to each other as Greeks, who created the Greek Language. Much more was the Greek Language, as it emerged from the composition of its individual dialects, that which connected, firmly and deeply, the Greeks to each other and led to the later unity of the Greeks. Unity which since then led to the "birth" of the Greek Nation. A Nation whose language, spoken essentially without interruption over time, allows it to maintain, without interruption, a stable "equilibrium". Given that, through it, the "centripetal" unifying forces for the "national core" consistently remain far more numerous and far more powerful than the potentially "centrifugal" ones.
- The greatest of historians Thucydides is, without a doubt, the most suitable to prove this great truth, if we consider the greatness and "authority" of his work. In particular, Thucydides, in the introduction to his "Histories", records the fact that the Greeks united for the first time during the preparation and conduct of the Trojan War. As well as that the Homeric Epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are probably the main first example of the linguistic and cultural unity of the then Greek World, written in a particular Greek Language, the product of the synthesis of various, related dialects on an Ionic basis. Moreover, these bases provide us, even today, with sufficient explanations for the stable continuity of the Greek Language. Our great Nobel laureate Poet Odysseus Elytis came to the same, basically, conclusion nowadays, with the following verses from his poem "Axion Esti" (Section "The Passions"):
"They gave me Greek,
the poor house on the sandy beaches of Homer.
My tongue is the only concern on the sandy beaches of Homer".
It is useful to cite the passage from the "Histories" (I,1.3.1-1.3.4), where in a "concise" way, but not clear, Thucydides proves that the Greek Language was the one that laid the foundations for the creation of the Greek Nation.
"Therefore, as each of the Greeks in the cities, those of each other who were slandered, and who, after being called to the Trojans because of sickness and indifference, made a gathering of others. but even this army is already sailing with colored clothes on its way out."
According to the translation of Eleftherios Venizelos, with his own title "The Name of Greece":
"In any case, the various Greek tribes, on which the name of the Greeks, due to the commonality of the language, spread successively from one region to another, until it was subsequently extended over the whole of them, did not make any joint effort before the Trojans, due to weakness and lack of mutual communication. After all, they only attempted the campaign against Troy together then, when they had already gained considerable experience at sea."
- In this passage, Thucydides confirms and extrapolates, in the past tense, what his predecessor, "Father of History", Herodotus had established in his own "Histories" (Th, 8. 144,2) about the contribution of Greek Language in the formation of the Greek Nation. Specifically, in their answer, the Athenians consider such a suspicion "shame" and "disgrace" for many reasons, but mainly because:"As for the Greek, we are alike and of the same language, and we share the foundations of the gods and sacrifices to the gods in the same way, of traitors are born to Athenians, otherwise they will die". ("Furthermore, we are not Greeks, with common blood and language, common altars, common sacrifices and similar manners and customs, which means that if we betrayed all these it would be a shame and disgrace for the Athenians"). It is characteristic here that the Athenians, according to Herodotus, did not resort to the argument that the Spartans' suspicions were unfounded due to Athens' permanent opposition to the Persians. But they preferred, intensifying the indications that there already existed - and long ago - a Nation of Greeks, to highlight their almost "sacred" adherence to the "homogeneity" and, par excellence, to the "homoglosson".
- The historical path of the Greek Nation, after it was formed 3,000 years ago - on the basis of its fundamental relationship with the Greek Language, according to Thucydides - shows, with irrefutable evidence, that the relationship of the Greeks with Freedom is , literally, experiential. \u0009Especially, beginning par excellence with the Median Wars - from Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis - the Greeks never tolerated living under a regime of conquest and slavery. And even when Greece was conquered, as during the period of the Ottoman yoke from 1453 to 1821, the Greeks always fought to shake off the foreign occupation and never reconciled, even in suffering, with the conquering oppression or brutality. In general, therefore, worldwide recognition, the Greeks were, are and will remain a Nation and People of Freedom. Therefore, in this light, the relationship of the Greeks with Freedom is, according to the aforementioned, an experiential one. In the sense that only free Greeks - and, therefore, within a regime of corresponding democratic governance and corresponding participation "in the commons", through the subsequent exercise of the appropriate political rights - can defend their value and freely develop their personality . Much more so, when in modern times they have the "bitter" experience of, even if "parenthetically", dictatorial periods, which even cost parts of our National Body. This explains the fact that the most "familiar" form of organization and implementation of the institutions of Representative Democracy for the Greeks is the Parliamentary Democracy, as far as its core is concerned.
- It has, of course, been argued - by a small, it is true, group of scholars, who do not have a comprehensive picture of both the historical course of the Greeks and the quintessence of the 1821 Uprising - that the Greeks, after the Revolution against the Ottoman yoke and the establishment of the Younger Greek State, in 1830 with the London Protocol, gave more importance to Equality than Freedom, wanting to ensure primarily the rights that guarantee "access" to Equality and Equality. And in this direction they invoke the "testimony" of certain constitutional and legislative texts of that time, which they approach both selectively and fragmentarily. The truth is completely different:Both before and during the National Uprising of 1821, as well as from the establishment of the New Greek State and beyond, the primary goal of the Greeks was then the conquest of Freedom initially. And, subsequently, its consolidation, both in terms of their state organization and in terms of the exercise of Fundamental Human Rights. But Freedom "co-exists", almost by nature, with Equality, in the sense that real Freedom can only be realized in conditions of certainly proportional - and not leveling - Equality. That is, in conditions of equal treatment of essentially similar situations but also unequal treatment of essentially dissimilar situations. And vice versa:Inequality is, almost by definition, an "enemy" of Freedom, since it easily results in the predominance of the strong over the weak, and as a result in the predominance of power over the Right. From the above it follows that the Greeks, throughout time, never prioritized Equality as a condition that precedes, in terms of Man, over Freedom. To be precise, they have always proposed Freedom as an "existential" principle, which presupposes the application of the principle of Equality in practice in order to enable the full exercise of the Fundamental Rights of Man.
- A citation of certain texts before the National Uprising of 1821 and after it is enough to demonstrate, as far as even this historical path of the Greeks is concerned, the aforementioned relationship between Freedom and Equality. Specifically:
- In the soul of the struggling Greeks, until the beginning of the National Rebellion, the "Thurios" of Rigas Feraios always "nested", which asked:
"What does it profit you to live and be in slavery?"
As well as - and above all - the ending:
"Better an hour free life
after forty years of slavery and prison".
- First of all, the "Warning to the European Courts of the Messinian Senate - or Synod- after the liberation of Kalamata, on March 23, 1821, does not constitute a simple announcement of the beginning of the National Uprising of 1821. The use of the term "Warning" does not it was anything but accidental. Because from this text it follows that the main objective of writing and communicating it "extra muros" was, primarily, to make it clear to Europe that the Revolution of 1821 meant the decision of the Greeks to conquer their Freedom by any means , even with their lives, without any "retreat".
- Another characteristic example in this regard is provided by the Prologue - exactly the same - of the "Provisional States" of Epidaurus, 1822 and Astros, 1823:
"The Greek nation, under the horrible Ottoman dynasty, unable to bear the heaviest and unexampled yoke of tyranny, and they removed it with great sacrifice, preaches today through its legal representatives, in a national gathering, before God and people, In his politics, there was also independence.
- Finally - and this is the most convincing argument for the commitment of the Greeks to Freedom after the National Uprising of 1821 - the "classification" of the first definitive Constitution, the "Political Constitution of Greece", i.e. the Constitution of Troizena of 1827, throughout our constitutional history is mainly due to its provisions which enshrine on the one hand the "institutional counterweights", which weaken state arbitrariness against the citizens. And, on the other hand, the Fundamental Rights of Man. In particular, the Rights, which are not limited to the application of the principle of Equality in practice, but extend, and in fact mainly, to the essential defense of the sphere of Citizen Freedom against state arbitrariness.
Two hundred and more years after the National Uprising of 1821, the Nation of Greeks, inside and outside our borders, must, for reasons concerning its historical path and perspective, rethink the incomparable National project of the Fighters of 1821 "Freedom or Death » in terms of, at the same time, past and future. Regarding the past, the historical decision of the Agonists of 1821 "Freedom or Death", referring to the "now over all the battle" of the Paiana of the Battle of Salamis according to Aeschylus, highlights the "experiential" relationship of the Greek Nation with Freedom . And as for the future, it indicates our National Debt, when the circumstances require the defense of our Freedom, in all its manifestations. Especially those manifestations that concern the defense of our National Issues and our National Rights. Defense, which we must carry out without a trace of retreat or retreat. Furthermore, our National Debt includes, without a doubt, our obligation to defend the liberation of that part of Martyr's Cyprus, which is still under Turkish occupation. Reminding, in every way, to the International Community and to the European Union - par excellence under the current critical circumstances of the criminal and contrary to every concept of Humanity and International Law Russian invasion of Ukraine - that this situation in Martyric Cyprus is a disgrace to International and European Legitimacy. And we, the Greeks, make it clear, urbi et orbi and without twists, that as long as Cyprus is experiencing the nightmare of Turkish barbarism the Struggle of the National Rebellion of 1821 continues!"
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