Theoretical Framework: Collective Memory and Ethnic Identity

This analysis considers memory as a social and political construct. This perspective is rooted in Maurice Halbwachs’s (Reference Halbwachs1992) seminal work, On Collective Memory, which introduced the concept of collective memory. Halbwachs argued that memory is not merely individual but is socially constructed through community and institutional frameworks. Collective memory is inherently selective: different groups remember the past in distinct ways, and these variations in recollection shape group behavior and identity. In the case of the Pontian refugees and indigenous Slav-speaking inhabitants of Kastoria, their collective memories were shaped by the political and social upheavals of the 1940s and subsequently transmitted within families, local communities, and political circles that represented their interests.

Memory forms the foundation of a social group’s collective identity. The question of “who we are” is answered, in part, by what we remember and share as a common past (Azaryahu and Foote Reference Azaryahu and Foote2007). The indigenous Slav-speaking inhabitants and the Pontian refugees of Kastoria represent what the relevant literature defines as ethnic groups. An ethnic group can be understood as a community of people who perceive themselves to share a common culture, ancestry, and destiny. The key components of ethnicity include identification, labeling, and explicit or implicit contrast between the identified group and any other grouping or category of people. There must be a we/they dichotomy for the concept of ethnicity to be applicable, a dichotomy which, according to certain criteria, will distinguish groups of people one from another (Michail Reference Michail1991). Ethnic groups are not merely interest groups; rather, their members feel they belong to an extended “family,” a cohesive “us” defined in opposition to “others” (Barth Reference Barth1998; Karakasidou Reference Karakasidou and Roudometof2000). Ethnic identity fosters strong bonds of solidarity within a group and can become a source of friction or conflict with those perceived as outside the group (Barth Reference Barth1998; Mackridge and Yannakakis Reference Mackridge, Yannakakis, Mackridge and Yannakakis1997; Danforth Reference Danforth and Cowan2000).

In recent theoretical debates, scholars caution against reifying ethnic identity as a fixed essence. Rogers Brubaker (Reference Brubaker2004; Brubaker and Cooper Reference Brubaker and Cooper2000) has argued that the term “identity” often conflates diverse processes, and he advocates focusing on identification (how people define themselves and others) and categorization (how institutions classify people). These are active, processual terms that direct our attention to who is doing the identifying and how, thereby avoiding the pitfall of treating identities as static things. This approach highlights the role of powerful agents — such as the modern state or political leaders — as key “identifiers” and categorizers of social groups. Indeed, the modern state has been one of the most important agents in categorizing populations, and political entrepreneurs (including nationalist leaders) often seek to shape or solidify group identities through deliberate classification. Crucially, Brubaker emphasizes that the sense of “groupness” — the feeling of belonging to a distinct, bounded group — is not constant but variable and contingent. Groupness can harden during moments of intense conflict or mobilization and soften in periods of peace or social change. Politicians and activists often strive to transform mere categories into unitary and exclusive groups. In other words, they portray fluid ethnic categories as if they were already solid groups, a move that can be performative in its effects. By invoking a strong us vs. them narrative, such actors contribute to making those groups a social reality. This theoretical lens will inform our analysis of Kastoria’s communities by recognizing that their ethnic and political identities were not preordained; rather, they were continually constructed and reinforced through memory, discourse, and strategic action (Brubaker and Cooper Reference Brubaker and Cooper2000; Brubaker Reference Brubaker2004).

This study seeks to illuminate how memories of the 1940s in Kastoria (also understood as dynamic, living social and political processes) have shaped ethnic identities and associated social conflicts up to the present. The 1940s in this region were marked not only by political strife — World War II occupation and the civil war — but also by intense ethnic tensions between the two communities. Thus, it provides a compelling case study of how collective memory and ethnic identity can become mutually reinforced. The memories of wartime violence and persecution form an active repertoire that each community draws upon to define itself and differentiate itself from the other. In Kastoria, the intersection of political and ethnic divisions meant that the civil war’s legacy was experienced not just as a left-right political conflict but also as an ethnic conflict between communities. As this study shows, each group’s narrative of the 1940s emphasizes different events and assigns blame differently, aligning with the group’s historical experiences and sense of identity. Adopting Brubaker’s (Reference Brubaker2009) cognitive perspective, ethnicity, race, and nationhood are not things in the world but perspectives on the world (p. 32). In postwar Western Greek Macedonia, ethnic identification functioned as a classificatory lens through which people perceived threat, trust, and political belonging. This cognitive framing helps explain why similar events were remembered differently by Pontians and Dopii, and why the salience of boundaries waxed and waned across contexts.

Historical Context

Northern Greece experienced profound geopolitical and demographic transformations during the first half of the 20th century. In 1913, following Greece’s victory over the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Wars, the region of Macedonia, including Kastoria, was incorporated into the Greek nation-state after centuries of Ottoman rule. However, Greece’s decade of warfare (1912–1922) ended with the disaster. In 1922, the Greek army suffered a devastating defeat by Turkish forces in Anatolia, which led to a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Approximately 1.2 million Greek Orthodox refugees from Asia Minor were resettled in Greece, while five hundred thousand of Greece’s Muslim population was deported to Turkey under compulsory exchange. Simultaneously, a voluntary population exchange was implemented between Greece and Bulgaria. By 1925, the Slavic-speaking population remaining in Greece’s Macedonian region was estimated at 162,506 individuals. Τhose who remained were presumed by the Greek state to have consciously chosen Greek citizenship and were therefore expected to assimilate into a Greek national identity (Michailidis, Reference Michailidis2003).

This expectation reflects a broader nation-building logic identified by Harris Mylonas (Reference Mylonas2012). Mylonas conceptualizes such Slav-speakers as a “non-core group” — any aggregation of individuals that is perceived as an unassimilated ethnic group by the ruling political elite of a country (2012: xx) — and argues that state elites decide whether to assimilate, accommodate, or exclude such groups based on strategic considerations. In the interwar period, Greek authorities clearly chose assimilation: the Slav-speaking residents of Macedonia who remained were given no official minority status or autonomy, but rather were expected to shed their distinct language and culture in favor of the Greek national identity. Granting special minority rights (that is, accommodation) was eschewed, and outright exclusion was applied only through the exchanges with Bulgaria. This aligns with Mylonas’s observation that states often pursue assimilationist policies toward groups perceived as potential co-nationals, especially when those groups lack strong external protection.

The interwar period (1922–1940) offered only eighteen years of relative peace. On October 28, 1940, Italy invaded Greece, drawing it into World War II. Although Greek forces initially repelled the Italian invasion, Germany’s intervention in April 1941 resulted in Greece’s occupation by a tripartite Axis force (German, Italian, and Bulgarian). The occupation (1941–1944) was a period of extreme hardship for Greek civilians. The occupying powers violated basic human rights and exploited the country’s resources, precipitating a devastating famine during the first two winters that disproportionately affected the urban populations. In response, a significant portion of Greek society supported the National Liberation Front (Εθνικό Απελευθερωτικό Μέτωπο — EAM), the principal resistance organization, and its armed wing, the Hellenic People’s Liberation Army (Ελληνικός Λαϊκός Απελευθερωτικός Στρατός — ELAS). Both EAM and ELAS, founded and led primarily by communists, emerged as dominant resistance forces against the Axis (Fleischer Reference Fleischer1995).

Following the withdrawal of German forces from Greece in late 1944, a government of national unity including communist representatives was established. This unity proved short-lived, as communist ministers resigned from the government shortly after the liberation. Political deadlock — primarily over the issue of disarming resistance fighters — culminated in an armed confrontation in Athens between ELAS and government forces in December 1944, known as the Dekemvriana. For 33 days, intense battles raged between ELAS partisans and government-loyal troops in Athens. Government forces were reinforced by substantial British military support, as Britain sought to ensure that Greece remained within its Western sphere of influence (Voglis Reference Voglis2010; Charalambidis Reference Charalambidis2014).

Following ELAS’s defeat in Athens, the disarmament agreement known as the Varkiza Agreement (February 1945) was signed, under which communist guerrillas agreed to lay down their arms. In the aftermath, however, a campaign of persecution known as the “White Terror” was unleashed against leftists and former resistance members. Paramilitary right-wing gangs, frequently composed of former Nazi collaborators, targeted communists and suspected sympathizers with impunity. In the March 1946 elections, the Communist Party of Greece (Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας — KKE), citing the ongoing violence, chose to abstain. The election was won by far-right factions, which escalated repression against leftists, accusing the KKE of conspiring to cede Greek Macedonia to Yugoslavia (Alivizatos Reference Alivizatos1983). By early 1947, armed communist groups had remobilized and seized control of several mountainous areas. In December 1947, the KKE announced the establishment of a “Provisional Democratic Government” and openly committed to armed struggle against the Athens regime, aiming to “liberate” northern Greece from the “monarcho-fascists.” The Greek Civil War began in earnest. It became the first conflict of the emerging Cold War, effectively a proxy battle between the Western Allies and the Eastern Bloc, and was marked by exceptional brutality, with atrocities committed by both sides (Voglis Reference Voglis2016).

In the Kastoria region, the primary focus of this study, civil war was especially intense. Pre-existing tensions between the Slav-speaking population and refugees significantly shaped the course of the conflict. To understand this dynamic, it is necessary to examine the developments dating back to the interwar period. The refugees arrived in the Kastoria region between 1922 and 1925 as part of the population resettlement. The central grievance fueling hostility between the two groups was the distribution of land previously owned by Muslim landowners, who departed during the population exchange. Both the local peasants and newcomers felt aggrieved by the land distribution, each believing they were entitled to a larger share.

At the same time, each group contested the other’s right to reside in the region. Influenced by the nationalist logic that had precipitated their displacement, the refugees viewed the Slav-speaking inhabitants of the area as “Bulgarians” who had no legitimate claim to reside in Greece. The Dopii (word meaning locals), who had inhabited the area for centuries, resented the notion that “outsiders” could lay claim to land they regarded as rightfully theirs. This mutual antagonism primarily manifested in rhetoric and social discrimination rather than overt violence during the interwar period. Despite these tensions, the interwar period in Kastoria was marked by prosperity and significant population growth. On the eve of World War II, the Kastoria prefecture had approximately 68,000 inhabitants, including roughly 30,000 Slav-speakers and 15,000 refugees (Alvanos Reference Alvanos2019).

The Axis occupation drastically transformed this situation. By the end of the occupation in 1944, Kastoria’s infrastructure lay in ruins, and its population was left impoverished. In March 1943, ELAS partisans emerged as a significant force in the region, challenging the Axis authority. Italian occupation authorities, increasingly distrustful of the local Greek gendarmerie, decided to disarm them. In their place, they established a collaborationist militia known as the Axis Bulgarian-Macedonian Committee ( Axonovoulgaromakedoniko Komitato ), composed largely of Slav-speaking locals (Dopii) who were sympathetic to Bulgarian national ambitions concerning the incorporation of Greek Macedonia. These armed villagers, known as komitatzídes , primarily guarded their own villages, though some joined roving bands that, alongside Axis forces, fought against ELAS and perpetrated violent acts, including burning villages, looting homes, and assaulting or killing those suspected of aiding resistance. The Communist Party (KKE), aiming to neutralize this threat, established a Slavic-Macedonian section of EAM known as the Slavomacedonian People’s Liberation Front (SNOF) and, to some extent, succeeded in persuading a number of the komitatzídes to join the partisan cause (Alvanos Reference Alvanos2005).

Following the Varkiza Agreement in 1945, a widespread campaign of retribution was unleashed against the Slav-speaking population of Kastoria, targeting both the “guilty and the innocent.” The criminal actions of the komitatzídes during the occupation triggered indiscriminate reprisals against all Slav-speakers who were now perceived by extreme nationalists as collectively treasonous and unwelcome in Greece. The principle of collective responsibility means that many innocent individuals suffer from the actions of a few within their community. Refugee settlers and other right-wing militants, organized into armed bands, entered Slav-speaking villages to assault and loot inhabitants in retaliation for events during the occupation. Historians from present-day North Macedonia characterize this period as the onset of what they describe as the “genocide of the Macedonians.” (Kirjazovski Reference Kirjazovski1990, Reference Kirjazovski1994.) Meanwhile, Ioannis Koliopoulos, a Greek historian from Kastoria, describes postwar repression as an “ill-conceived and unjustifiable heartlessness” by the government and its agents toward the Slav-speaking population. (Koliopoulos Reference Koliopoulos1995, 159).

One consequence of this persecution was that many Slav-speaking villagers joined the Democratic Army of Greece (Δημοκρατικός Στρατός Ελλάδας — DSE) when the civil war erupted in 1946. The KKE recognized Slav-speakers as a distinct Slavomacedonian national minority, pledging to safeguard their rights in future socialist Greece. Until 1948, when Yugoslavia broke the Soviet bloc, it actively supported the DSE. Yugoslav leaders regarded the Slav-speaking inhabitants of northern Greece as ethnic kin of the Slav Macedonians in Yugoslavia, who had established their own People’s Republic of Macedonia within the Yugoslav federation (Kofos Reference Kofos1964). Both the leadership of Yugoslav Macedonia and Marshal Tito entertained the idea of incorporating Greek Macedonia into their state. On October 11, 1945, in a speech delivered in Skopje before a crowd of thousands, Tito declared that Yugoslavia would never renounce “the right of the Macedonian people to unite. […] There are brethren in Aegean Macedonia, and their fate is not indifferent to us. Our thoughts are with them, and we are taking care of them. […] I hope that all Macedonians will one day be united in their community, Macedonia.” Such statements exacerbated Greek fears that KKE’s armed struggle served as a front for Yugoslav territorial ambitions (Michailidis, Reference Michailidis2004).

As Mylonas (Reference Mylonas2012) argues, when a non-core group is backed by a rival foreign patron, the state of residence is far more likely to adopt exclusionary or repressive nation-building policies toward that group. In the case of Western Macedonia, Yugoslavia’s open support for the Slav-Macedonian cause reinforced Greek state elites’ perception of the Dopii as a potential fifth column. This perception drove the Greek state to respond with coercive measures and a refusal to accommodate the minority, treating the issue as a matter of national security rather than a domestic diversity question. Indeed, the Greek authorities’ harsh crackdown on Slav-speakers during that period — ranging from intimidation and violence to the denial of minority rights — aligns with the predicted outcome when a state’s “nation-building” imperative is heightened by fears of irredentism and foreign intervention.

At the local level, these broader dynamics translated into palpable fear and suspicion. KKE’s wartime stance on the Macedonian question enraged many Greek anticommunists, who saw it as confirmation of their long-held fears — that the communists intended to detach parts of Greek territory and cede them to Yugoslavia (Alvanos Reference Alvanos and Voglis2012). Among Pontian refugees in Kastoria, this anxiety had an even deeper resonance: they perceived the conflict not only as a political struggle but as a threat to their newly secured homeland. The fear of once again being uprooted — just two decades after their 1923 exile — proved a major factor in their political radicalization, driving many toward the royalist and right-wing camp.

This interplay between state policy, ideological polarization, and refugee insecurity helps explain why the experience of 1945–1946 became such a decisive turning point in local political alignments. It also clarifies why local refugee communities, themselves recently “nationalized” subjects, reacted so intensely to Yugoslav involvement.

Many refugees who had previously supported the anti-monarchist Venizelist camp gradually shifted toward royalist and right-wing positions. This political realignment persisted across generations; even today, many of their descendants tend to support conservative or far-right parties (Alvanos Reference Alvanos2008, 2012).

The defeat of the DSE in late August 1949 marked the total victory of anti-communist forces in Greece. Thousands of Slav-speakers followed the retreat of communist partisans into exile in Eastern countries. Those who remained in Greece had to demonstrate their loyalty to the Greek nation to avoid persecution by the state. As part of this effort, they avoided speaking their mother tongue in public, as it had become stigmatized as a language of treason. In official discourse, it was closely associated with communism and was therefore labeled as “anti-Hellenic.” By the early 1950s, the Slav-speaking inhabitants of Kastoria were forced to suppress the essential aspects of their culture to survive within an aggressively nationalistic environment. In sharp contrast, the Pontian Greeks, celebrated as victorious patriots, faced no such pressures or stigmatization (Karakasidou Reference Karakasidou and Roudometof2000).

The Pontians’ Memory

Today, the Pontian Greeks of Kastoria largely preserve the memory of the victors of the civil war. The vast majority supported the government, and as a result, they recounted their wartime experiences without hesitation or stigma. On the contrary, they feel that history vindicated them, particularly after the collapse of the communist bloc in 1989, which, in their view, confirmed the failure of the communist cause.

However, their narratives are not typically triumphalist or celebratory. Rather than emphasizing heroism, Pontian interviewees often presented themselves as victims, focusing especially on their suffering during the Axis occupation. In these accounts, considerable attention has been devoted to the komitatzídes, Axis-aligned, Slavophone militias. The Pontians describe these collaborators as “Bulgarians” who sought to expel the Greek refugees from the region and who committed a wide range of atrocities, including murder, rape, theft, arson, and beatings, in pursuit of that goal.

Pontian accounts of the occupation disproportionately emphasize violence committed by the komitatzídes over that of Italian or German forces. Over time, the memory of Axis atrocities appears to have receded, likely because recalling foreign occupiers’ crimes no longer serves a contemporary purpose for the Pontian community. In interviews, some Pontian informants even remarked, “the Germans wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t provoke them,” implicitly attributing blame to EAM/ELAS for inciting German reprisals. This framing suggests that partisan actions — rather than Axis aggression — were responsible for brutal countermeasures, an interpretation that aligns with their enduring anti-communist political identity. This anti-communist memory and corresponding political outlook emphasize that the KKE (Communist Party of Greece) was more interested in an armed power grab than in genuinely fighting foreign occupiers. As a result, the party allegedly avoided clashes with the Germans whenever possible to preserve its forces for the post-liberation struggle. According to this viewpoint, ELAS partisans would occasionally kill German soldiers and then withdraw, leaving nearby villages to suffer the consequences of horrific German reprisals (Alvanos Reference Alvanos2022). According to this anti-communist narrative, which was also echoed by many Pontian informants, the ELAS guerrillas (and by extension, the KKE) are ultimately morally responsible for “provoking” the enemy and thereby causing suffering to innocent villagers.

It is noteworthy that in nearly all Pontian narratives, the term komitatzídes is used not only to describe wartime collaborators but also to label the communist partisans of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) during the 1946–1949 civil war. In their recollections, the Pontians often refer to the DSE guerrillas simply as komitatzídes . This pejorative label is part of a broader anti-communist memory framework that discredits the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) by associating it with the “national enemies” of the recent past (Voglis Reference Voglis2007; Alvanos Reference Alvanos2022).

For Pontians, civil war is interpreted through the lens of the traumatic occupation years. They emphasize that the KKE not only failed to punish the wartime komitatzídes for their crimes, but instead co-opted and supported many of them (Alvanos, Reference Alvanos and Voglis2012). This narrative aligns with the postwar Greek state’s ethnikofrosýni (“national-mindedness”) ideology, which framed leftists as traitors and “Bulgarian-minded” elements (Alivizatos Reference Alivizatos1983; Kazamias Reference Kazamias and Tziovas2014).

Ethnikofrosýni (εθνικοφροσύνη), Greece’s Cold War-era anti-communist ideology, framed leftists as elements outside the national body, frequently denouncing them as traitors or “Bulgarian-minded EAM-ists” (Alivizatos Reference Alivizatos1983; Voglis Reference Voglis2007). In postwar Greece, the dominance of ethnikofrosýni in public discourse legitimized the Pontian narrative of the 1940s, while marginalizing or silencing the perspectives of Slav-speaking locals (Karakasidou Reference Karakasidou1997). The Pontian community thus became carriers of the official national narrative, positioning themselves as guardians of Macedonia’s “Greekness” (Kazamias Reference Kazamias and Tziovas2014).

Conflicting Memories

Oral testimonies reveal that Slav-speaking informants emphasize different aspects of the past compared to their Pontian neighbors. The Dopii ^{Footnote 1} particularly highlight the period following the Varkiza Agreement — after April 1945 — when right-wing militias and Maydes (Rural Security Units, officially known as Μονάδες Ασφαλείας Υπαίθρου) terrorized their villages. These armed groups, composed largely of local anticommunists, often including many Pontian refugees, would break into Slav-speakers’ homes, plunder belongings, and beat anyone they suspected of being a “communist” or a “Bulgarian.”

As a result, many Slav-speaking villagers, even those who initially had no intention of rebellion, were forced to flee to the mountains for safety and ended up joining the DSE guerrillas out of desperation. The Maydes were essentially the postwar mirror image of the wartime komitatzídes : paramilitary bands formed by local residents, tasked with combating communist insurgents. The starkly different perceptions of the Maydes between Pontian and Dopii are particularly noteworthy.

For Pontians, the Maydes are remembered in a positive or protective light as agents of stability. Some characteristic remarks from the Pontian interviewees recorded by OPIKAS include the following:

In sharp contrast, the image of the Maydes in the accounts of the Dopii is overwhelmingly negative. When describing the armed Maydes, Slav-speaking informants commonly used phrases such as:

It is noteworthy that Pontian accounts of the komitatzídes ’ actions during the Occupation followed similar patterns. After all, both the komitatzídes and the Maydes were products of this turbulent era. These were armed groups composed of local inhabitants, tasked with countering the partisan forces. According to refugee testimonies, the komitatzídes forced them to work in their fields, looted their possessions, committed acts of rape, hurled insults when they spoke Greek, imprisoned them, repeatedly threatened expulsion, and generally rendered their lives unbearable during the Occupation.

The Memory of the Komitatzídes in Vasiliada Village

The testimonies above reflect accounts from Dopii whose families were not directly linked to the komitatzídes — that is, none of them or of their immediate relatives belonged to the Komitato . However, it is critical to focus on the village of Vasiliada in Kastoria, a stronghold of the komitatzídes that was tellingly nicknamed “the little Sofia.” During my fieldwork in the village (1996–2004), I initially encountered significant reluctance among local residents (Dopii) to discuss their experiences during the Occupation. This silence contrasted sharply with the openness of the Pontic refugees, who generally felt vindicated by history and more willing to articulate their memories. For many locals, by contrast, the past remained a source of unease and stigma — rooted in accusations of collaboration with the occupiers and in the lingering label of “Bulgarians.” My residence in the village, along with the fact that my former spouse’s grandfather had been a member of the wartime Komitato , greatly assisted me in gaining the trust of some elderly former komitatzídes .

Although I was born and raised in Athens and thus approached Vasiliada as an outsider, my long-term residence in the village and my marriage to a local woman created a position of partial belonging. Everyone knew of my family ties, and this familiarity eased interactions and helped establish trust with interlocutors. The link to a family history associated with the Komitato gave our conversations an additional emotional and interpretive layer, often shaping how narratives of collaboration, resistance, and betrayal were framed. This positionality — simultaneously distant and proximate — demanded constant reflexivity. While it enabled access to sensitive memories, it also required vigilance to ensure that empathy did not slip into identification. The interpretations that follow, therefore, reflect an effort to balance insider familiarity with analytical distance, acknowledging that all oral histories are co-produced within specific social and affective contexts.

As discussions unfolded, the memories of wartime violence and its aftermath revealed the deep moral ambivalence that characterized the local experience of occupation. Former komitatzídes described their actions in pragmatic terms — “we did what we had to do to survive” — while others recalled the pervasive fear of reprisals from both German forces and communist partisans. What emerged was not a coherent political ideology but a dense web of survival strategies, shifting loyalties, and unspoken guilt. The local memory of the 1940s thus remained fragile, oscillating between silence and self-justification.

To the best of my knowledge, no other researcher has conducted oral history interviews with surviving komitatzídes of that era. This makes their testimonies particularly significant, as they offer a rare glimpse into the perspective of history’s so-called “villains” — those who continue to carry the burden of defeat. This represents a striking case of counter-memory, a narrative that challenges, subverts, or supplements the hegemonic official account produced by state or other power structures (Van Boeschoten Reference Van Boeschoten2021).

The former komitatzídes I interviewed in Vasiliada and neighboring villages felt that their group had been unfairly demonized by others in the region. They insisted that they had not committed the atrocities attributed to them and maintained that their primary mission was to guard their villages against ELAS partisans. They emphasized one critical reason for taking up arms: the deep-seated insecurity fueled by the collective memory of an earlier massacre in 1905, during what is known in Greece as the Macedonian Struggle.

During that period of Greek–Bulgarian guerrilla rivalry over Macedonia, Greek fighters ( Makedonomáchi ) attacked the village — then called Zagorichani — to avenge the burning of a nearby Greek Orthodox monastery by Bulgarian komitadjis. The 1905 attack resulted in the indiscriminate killing of 62 villagers, including some who were loyal to the Greek cause (Karavangelis Reference Karavangelis1958).

During the interwar years, villagers largely tried to erase this trauma from collective memory as they sought integration into Greek society and acceptance within the nation. At that time, the officially sanctioned memory in Vasiliada focused on the “useful dead” — those who had died fighting for Greece, such as in the Asia Minor campaign. A monument was erected for the war dead, and annual commemorations reinforced the village’s Greek patriotism. These symbolically useful deaths underlined the sacrifices Vasiliada made for the national ideal.

However, under the Axis occupation in the 1940s, power relations shifted, and the previously suppressed memory resurfaced. New local leaders — heads of the Komitato — reinvoked the 1905 massacre to justify armed mobilization. The 1905 victims now became once again the “useful dead,” whose remembrance could legitimize resistance against Greek partisans. Every former komitatzís I spoke to stressed that they had taken up arms to prevent a repetition of 1905, an event remembered as having caused “great fear.” Many also admitted that they were pressured to join the militia and took weapons reluctantly, serving mainly as sentries on the outskirts of the village.

It is true that the komitatzídes turned against Pontic refugees during the Occupation. The ex- komitatzídes explained that this was partly an act of revenge: during the Metaxas dictatorship (1936–1941), the public use of the Slavic (Macedonian) language had been banned, and some Pontians would inform the police when Dopii were heard speaking their mother tongue, resulting in heavy fines.

According to my informants, many Dopii in the late 1930s began to identify with Bulgaria less out of ideological conviction than as a reaction to being constantly labeled “Bulgarian” by the Pontians. As one former komitatzís from Vasiliada starkly recalled: “They kept calling us ‘Bulgarians.’ So during the Occupation, we wanted to push back (na tous pame kontra).” The interviewees acknowledged that some komitatzídes had committed criminal acts, but emphasized that those individuals fled to Bulgaria after liberation, anticipating punishment. Most of the remaining komitatzídes claimed to have been unjustly imprisoned for long periods despite not having committed crimes, insisting that they were pressured by peers to take up arms and merely stood guard at the village perimeter.

This pattern of selective remembrance — of reviving certain memories while suppressing others — exemplifies the broader dialectic of memory and denial that shaped postwar identity in Western Macedonia. In Vasiliada, as elsewhere in the region, the moral ambiguity of wartime experience was not transformed into proud narratives of patriotism but into a quiet strategy of compliance and discretion. In the decades that followed the war, those locals who remained sought primarily to be accepted by the Greek state and nation — to live undisturbed in their homeland by demonstrating loyalty and adherence to the norms of the postwar ethnikofron state.

Political and Ethnic Identities

Dopii and Pontians have constituted two ethnic groups locked in a trajectory of intense conflict over the last 100 years. Simultaneously, both are products of profoundly turbulent eras that have emerged as distinct social groups during periods marked by severe poverty, deprivation, and violence. To better understand how memory intertwines with identity for members of these groups, it is essential to recognize two critical similarities between them.

The first similarity concerns their national identity: both the Pontians and Dopii are identified as Greek. Although there is a small number of Dopii in northern Greece who identify with the neighboring nation of North Macedonia and consider themselves a distinct ethnic Macedonian minority, the overwhelming majority of Dopii in the Kastoria area see themselves as Greeks and adhere to Greek national ideology. The Pontians, for their part, not only feel that they are authentically Greek but also believe that their very presence in Macedonia serves as a safeguard for the region’s Hellenic character.

However (and here lies the second critical similarity), both groups faced contestation over their right to belong to the Greek nation, and even their presence on Greek soil was disputed. From the 1920s onward, the members of each group, in some sense, felt like outsiders ( ξένοι ). Pontian refugees were actually outsiders, having arrived in a new homeland where they had to start over. The indigenous Dopii, by contrast, became “outsiders” in a more figurative sense: although they had not moved, the world around them had changed dramatically. With the incorporation of their region into the Greek state, their familiar Ottoman environment vanished — Muslim neighbors were expelled through population exchange with Turkey, Greek officials and settlers arrived, the administrative language changed to Greek, and new state institutions were imposed. Most crucially, they were perceived by both the refugees and segments of the state apparatus as outsiders unworthy of living in Greece, primarily because their mother tongue was not Greek.

The interwar-era mutual perception of both groups as outsiders profoundly shaped their behavior and choices during the 1940s and continues to influence their self-perception and intergroup relations today. Strikingly, even now — decades later — descendants of Pontian refugees vividly recall the rejection they faced from the Dopii: being labeled “Turk-sowers” or “Turks” and threatened with expulsion. At the same time, Pontian interviewees expressed grievances against the Greek state regarding discriminatory treatment. The following are some characteristic quotes from Pontian informants recorded by the OPIKAS:

On the other hand, Dopii recalled the severe persecution of the 1940s and conveyed a lingering sense of being unwanted in Greece. A common phrase among local interviewees when referring to that period is: “They wanted to uproot us from our land.”

Among the younger generation of the Dopii, some have internalized the postwar state policy against the Slavic language: they refuse to learn it from their elders, claiming “it brought us enough trouble.” Others lament the stigmatization of the Slavic language. Others express resentment about the stigma attached to their identity. All, however, express bitterness and resentment at being labeled “Bulgarians” — a slur used against them for decades, including to this day, particularly by Pontians.

Each group contested the other’s right to belong to the region and Greek nation, fueling a cycle of mutual exclusion that escalated over time. This antagonism peaked in the 1940s, when their confrontation became intertwined with broader conflicts — World War II and the Civil War — leading to heightened tensions. Ethnic identities intersect with political identities, amplifying their divisive power. As one interviewee starkly put it, “Where one went, the other went the opposite way.” The vast majority of Pontians aligned with the Right, whereas most Dopii were identified with the Center or the Left. The selective reconstruction of historical events remains a crucial element in collective identity formation — a process vividly illustrated in Kastoria. The two communities engage in competing historical narratives that reflect their opposing political identities.

This trajectory demonstrates how fluid ethnic categories can harden into polarized group identities under the pressure of conflict and sustained boundary work. In Brubaker’s terms, what began as a context of diverse identifications was transformed into episodes of intensified groupness, as each community came to see itself as a bounded “us” against a corresponding “them.” Through recurrent practices of classification and naming — across everyday interactions, commemorations, schooling, and local administrative routines—an “us versus them” frame was repeatedly activated, performatively stabilizing categories that were otherwise fluid. Discourse that treats groups as if they were “always already there” helps congeal boundaries and mobilize solidarities. The result in Kastoria was that ethnic labels (“Pontii”, “Dopii,” “local,” “Slavomacedonian,” “foreigner”) became tightly linked with political allegiance; these fused identifications then guided how each side remembered the past and interpreted the present (Brubaker and Cooper Reference Brubaker and Cooper2000; Brubaker Reference Brubaker2004).

Shifting Memories over Time

The clash of competing narratives is not merely about interpreting the past; it shapes how ethnic and political identities are constructed in the present. The intergenerational transmission of these memories within families and communities reveals how the past remains active; the traumatic experiences of the 1940s continue to influence how people perceive themselves and others. However, memory itself is a dynamic process that evolves across time and adapts to the historical contexts and needs of each era.

As noted earlier, this study draws on two sets of oral history research conducted during different periods. A noteworthy difference emerged between the accounts collected in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, and those gathered more recently by the OPIKAS. During my earlier fieldwork (1996–2005), I was struck by how vividly the fear of a potential revival of the “Bulgarian threat” and a new uprooting remained alive among the Pontians and even many Dopii. Considering the historical context of the 1990s, many interviewees, both Pontians and Dopii, remarked that what was happening in Bosnia at that time could also occur in Greece, referring to ethnic conflict and displacement. Some Pontians told me they believed there were Dopii who were still “waiting for the chance to drive us out.” At that time, extremely negative stereotypes continued to be expressed: Pontians frequently described Dopii as a “barbaric tribe” of questionable Greekness, while similarly harsh stereotypes about Pontians were voiced by Dopii. These mutually reinforcing prejudices reveal how historical trauma and political instrumentalization sustained intergenerational animosities.

However, such fears and deeply negative stereotypes were notably absent in interviews conducted by the OPIKAS during the last five years. Times have changed. While distinctions between Dopii and Pontians persist, the traumatic experiences of the 1940s, forged in blood and pain, no longer dominate collective identities with the same intensity. Identities evolve similarly to all social constructs. New challenges (notably the severe economic crisis), increasing intermarriage between Dopii and Pontians, the arrival of new migrant communities, and emerging social fissures have diminished the salience of earlier divisions.

The conflict between Dopii and Pontian refugees, which sparked in 1922, peaking in the 1940s, and reverberating throughout the 20^th century, is increasingly becoming a subject of history rather than living memory. What once shaped daily life in Kastoria now occupies a quieter space in the region’s consciousness, studied as a chapter of the past rather than as a defining force in the present.