Getting Acquainted with the Coup

The coup that seized Greece was so swift and efficient that most Greeks hardly knew what had happened. Last week, as the initial shock of the military take-over wore off, Greeks started to learn something about their new rulers and to adjust to life under a rigid regime.

The coup was carefully planned and carried out by a number of relatively junior officers who were almost unknown outside the barracks of Greece.

They were led by Artillery Colonel George Papadopoulos, 48, who took over the most important Cabinet post, Minister to the Premier. The plot had been in the works for two years and involved 300 of the Greek army's 8,000-man officer corps. The date for the take-over was decided, said Colonel Papadopoulos, by intelligence reports that the Communists intended to launch a coup of their own last weekend. Not many Greeks believed that story.

The men who assisted Papadopoulos in the coup and share power with him in the new government are Brigadier General Stylianos Pattakos, 54, who as Minister of the Interior is in charge of security and moral uplift, and Colonel Nicholas Makarezos, fiftyish, who will run--or try to run--Greece's economic affairs. The triumvirate nudged into the background Lieut. General Gregorios E. Spandidakis, 57, the former army chief of staff who was recruited after the coup had already started in order to ensure top-level army cooperation. Likewise, Premier Constantine Kollias emerged as nothing more than a civilian front man for the military rulers.

The Don't List. The officers who seized power in the name of King Constantine shared one uniting passion: an almost puritanical desire to reform and cleanse Greek politics and society. One of the first orders was not the execution of saboteurs or the establishment of a five-year plan; it was a Cromwellian decree that girls must stop wearing miniskirts, that boys must get short haircuts and that all young people should regularly attend church. Colonel Papadopoulos compared the take-over to a surgeon's treatment of a patient. "If the patient is not strapped to the table," he said, "the surgeon cannot perform a successful operation."

Greece last week lay firmly strapped to the table. Though life seemed to return to normal with the reopening of schools and businesses, men with guns--and the guts to use them--ruled the country. Civil rights were suspended. A list of don'ts ordered Greeks not to retain shotguns, not to use radio transmitters and not to criticize the new regime. Also on the don't list were soccer (might draw excitable crowds) and fireworks (might make a sentry trigger-happy). The press was under total censorship. Telephones and telegrams to places abroad were monitored by censors.

A common scene in Athens was the long lines of relatives queueing up at Piraeus soccer stadium, the local race track and other detention centers to bring clothing and food to the 25 politicians and 5,000 alleged Communists who remained in army custody. Nervous about its image abroad, the government let foreign newsmen briefly visit the two star prisoners: Former Premier George Papandreou, 79, and his 48-year-old son Andreas, the antimonarchical leftists whose victory in next month's now-cancelled elections seemed so certain that the army had felt compelled to move first.

Both George, imprisoned in an Athens military hospital, and Andreas, locked away in a country hotel near Marathon, seemed in good health and bore no traces of abusive treatment. The old man would probably be released soon, like most of the other politicians. Son Andreas, however, faced a more problematical future. He was accused of high treason and, though it seemed unlikely that the military would risk provoking his followers and outraging foreign opinion by executing him, he might be subjected to a long prison term or exile. As for the Communists, they were being shifted to old detention centers on the Aegean isles of Yioura and Ayios Evstratios, there to be carefully screened and questioned.

King's Dilemma. Curiously, the fiery, fiercely independent Greeks raised not a bit of resistance to the coup, and there did not even seem to be much resentment against the takeover. Students, who only a few weeks ago had marched in the streets, now sat around talking idly. There were no signs that anyone was taking to the hills. Of course, soldiers were still much in evidence, and the air force buzzed cities and towns to show its solidarity with the army.

Young King Constantine faced a dilemma. He had not been privy to the plot and had at first vigorously opposed the takeover. But he was caught between an overzealous military, which claimed that it was acting in his name, and demagogic leftist politicians who threatened his throne. Asked about the junta's relations with the King, Interior Minister Pattakos said: "We love him. We are with him, and he is with us." After a few days of delay, the King followed his subjects' example and went along with the new government in hopes of directing it to a more moderate course. "Greece has gone through very hard trials recently," he said in his first meeting with the new Cabinet. "It is my fervent wish that the country revert to parliamentary government as soon as possible." When he appeared at midnight Mass in Athens to mark the Orthodox Easter, the crowds applauded him.

The King may have to be patient.

Papadopoulos declared that the new regime would take at least a year to "purify" Greece before even thinking about elections. At week's end, the junta abolished Greece's Communist-front political party, the United Democratic Left, and declared that it would revise the Constitution to set up a stronger executive branch with more powers independent of Parliament.

Despite the efficiency of their takeover, the army men were pressed to find enough capable civilians to help them run the government; some of their first appointees turned out to be too old and ailing to hold down the jobs. Also, the new regime's program remained nothing more than a jumble of such catch phrases as "No more party bickering" and "No country progressed by changing Premiers every day." The question was whether the military could bring about reform without becoming so repressive that Greece would be plunged into a lasting, full-scale dictatorship.

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