11. Big Bandits and Small Bandits¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter dissects the predatory logic of imperialism as it played out in the Balkan and Eastern European theatres of the First World War and its aftermath. The core argument is that the war was not a clash of civilisations or a struggle for national liberation, but a squabble between rival gangs of capitalists—both big and small—over territory, markets, and strategic advantage. The veneer of diplomacy and national self-determination merely masked the brutal reality of plunder.
The Greek case exemplifies this dynamic. In 1915, the British sought Greek troops for Gallipoli, but the Greek bourgeoisie was split between the Entente and the Central Powers, its loyalty determined solely by which side promised the greater spoils. Prime Minister Venizelos championed the expansionist Megali Idea, leading to the National Schism with King Constantine. Greece eventually entered on the victorious side, reaping territory under the Treaties of Neuilly and Sèvres. Yet, encouraged by Lloyd George, Greece launched its own predatory invasion of Turkey in 1919, only to be routed in 1922. The bourgeois dream of empire became a nightmare, culminating in the forced expulsion of over a million Anatolian Greeks. Asquith himself compared the great powers’ discussions to a gang of buccaneers, a fitting description of the entire enterprise.
Romania’s trajectory was equally cynical. It remained neutral until the Entente promised Transylvania, then attacked Austria-Hungary in 1916, only to be crushed and occupied. After the Russian Revolution, it re-entered the war on 10 November 1918, and the Entente rewarded it with Bukovina and Transylvania, deliberately using Romania as a counter-revolutionary force against the Hungarian Soviet Republic, ignoring the large Hungarian-speaking population. The Hungarian Soviet government fell on 1 August 1919 after just 133 days, drowned in blood by Romanian, Serbian, and Czech bourgeois forces, backed by French and Italian officers. Upon entering Budapest, the Romanian army terrorised the working class, while landlords and capitalists exacted revenge: wounded Red Army soldiers were dragged from hospitals and murdered, with 5,000 people killed using medieval torture methods. Reformist labour leaders, who had previously denounced workers’ ‘excesses’, now justified the murder and repression to retain their jobs and privileges, showing no qualms about ‘ruthless acts of cruelty’. Romania occupied Hungary at the behest of Versailles, leaving only in early 1920 after plundering the country. The Transylvania question has poisoned Hungarian-Romanian relations ever since, a toxic inheritance of the Great War. The chapter’s polemic is clear: the self-determination of nations was a hollow slogan wielded by the big bandits to justify the crushing of the small bandits and, above all, the working class.