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03 Δεκεμβρίου 2012

[The following piece was written by a Greek Marxist-Leninist historian, Giannis Kordatoq, and is part of the thirteenth chapter in his History of the Greek Workers Movement (Athens 1931). The book covers the period from 1880 up to 1920 and despite some distortions, snide remarks and patronisation he cannot deny the great influence of the Greek anarchist movement.

In the period covered the Greek worker was spread across the Balkans and the Middle East, and like the Spanish worker of later years, spread their knowledge and the activity of socialism, which in those days was generally anarchism. In almost all cases the Socialist groups consisted of a tiny minority of Marxists (at odds with each other), usually intellectuals, and a large number of anarchist workers.

Egypt, in particular the cosmopolitan cities of Alexandria and Cairo, was home to various immigrant communities of workers for a large period of time. Chief among these were the Jews and the Greeks and indeed large Greek communities existed in Egypt until they were expelled by Nasser in the late 1950’s. The piece that follows deals with the workers movement mainly among the immigrant communities. Any snide remarks are not my own and are to be expected even from a reasonably honest Marxist-Leninist. I have added to some of the notes to give a greater outline of the later activities of some of the anarchists.]

A lively workers movement appeared at around that period (1910) in Egypt, mainly in the big cities of Cairo and Alexandria where many Greek workers were employed.

As we have seen the Greek workers of Alexandria, most of whom were from Corfu, founded the workers club with the name of Brotherhood of the Workers in 1872.

Later the International Cigarette Workers Club was founded in Cairo. This was at the high point of the Egyptian tobacco industry.¹

In 1907 the workers paper with the title The Worker was distributed, it was brought out weekly then monthly by the old socialist from Athens, N. Doumas, a shoe-maker, who stayed at Haret-el-Nous Nousara. Doumas did not have a Marxist education (sic.) and was mostly a supporter of anarchism. However until his death he stood up for and by his convictions. In 1912 an anarchist pamphlet Down with the Mask was distributed, written by Stavros Kouchtsoglou² a tobacco worker. Like the doctor Sarafides, Asteriades³ and Joseph Chionis, he was also a helper on the paper The Worker with Doumas.

In this period the print workers organised themselves into an International Syndicate of Printworkers, which had a Greek section, with Joseph Chionis as its secretary. Another printworker Gerasimus Luzis, with Chionis and the Italian anarcho-syndicalist printers Vozai, Lotzi and Pitzoritti influenced all the print-workers in Egypt at that time (1907-1913). As their organ they had the weekly Buletino Typografico, and with the active movement of the print-workers they won the eight hour day where previously they had 12-14 hour days.

The Buletino (it came out from 1909 until 1914) gave great service to the syndicalist movement in Egypt. In the period...

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