Unveiling the Ugly Underside of Post-Ottoman Nation-Building

On the morning of Nov. 7, 1923, Georgios Adoniadis, a highly respected barrister and aspiring politician, was walking to the local courthouse from his house in the center of Ioannina, the capital of the Epirus province in northwestern Greece. The area of Ioannina was incorporated into the Greek state in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, when Greece allied with Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro in the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. Before that, Ioannina was part of the Ottoman Empire and the capital of the province of Yanya. Yet the nation-making process proved tumultuous. In the previous months, Adoniadis had published a series of articles in which he decried increasing levels of crime and political corruption and the immunity enjoyed by officials, politicians and businesspeople with ties to criminal gangs, war veterans and bandit groups. 

The articles sparked an outcry among the local and national political classes and earned him some determined enemies. It was perhaps the most resolute of them, Vasilis Kolovos, a politician, veteran of the Balkan Wars and rumored consigliere for some local bandit gangs, who ensnared him outside the courthouse demanding to know why he was besmirching his reputation. Before Adoniadis managed to answer, Kolovos was on top of him, hitting him with his fists and the butt of his pistol. The fracas ended within a few moments, leaving Adoniadis battered and bleeding. After he recovered, Adoniadis visited the district attorney and beseeched him not to press charges against Kolovos, as there was no telling what he would do next.