ARCHIVES

Archives are often of limited value in the study of civil war violence, since much of the violence simply goes unrecorded (Klinkhammer 1997:xi; Roy 1994:5). The archives of developing countries (where most civil wars take place) are usually run-down or poorly maintained. Several Greek archives, for instance, are either inaccessible or in poor condition. I had the good fortune to locate a major archival source: the judicial archives for the criminal courts of the entire eastern Peloponnese. Although the archive was uncatalogued at the time that I did my research, it contains records from all the courts of the eastern Peloponnese of criminal trials that took place after 1945. Between 80 and 90 percent of criminal trials between 1945 and 1950 dealt with either wartime crimes by the Communist-led resistance (which made up the bulk of these trials) or with postwar crimes committed by right-wing militias. The archive also contains the records of the Special Court of Collaborators (Eidikon dikastirion dosilogon) for the Argolid, a tribunal set up to try individuals accused of collaboration with the occupation authorities. Most files include extensive summaries of the trials; a substantial number, however, contain the entire trial files, which include the relevant indictments, depositions and affidavits, and interrogation records, as well as supplemental materials such as police records, newspapers, letters, and photographs.

The major problem in using judicial evidence lies in its inherent biases. Justice in postwar Greece was biased against the Left (Delaportas 1978).