Eleftherios Kyriakou Venizelos (Greek: Ελευθέριος Κυριάκου Βενιζέλος, romanized: Eleuthérios Kyriákou Venizélos, pronounced [elefˈθeri.os cirˈʝaku veniˈzelos]; 23 August [O.S. 11 August] 1864 – 18 March 1936) was a Cretan Greek statesman and prominent leader of the Greek national liberation movement. As the leader of the Liberal Party, Venizelos served as prime minister of Greece for over 12 years, spanning eight terms from 1910 to 1933.
A prominent figure of the 1897 Cretan Revolt, Venizelos first made his mark on the international stage with his leading role in securing the autonomy of the Cretan State, and later in the island's union with Greece. He led the Theriso revolt in 1905 and the declaration of union with Greece following the Young Turk Revolution. In 1909, he was invited to Athens to resolve the political deadlock and became Prime Minister. He initiated constitutional and economic reforms that set the basis for the modernization of Greek society, culminating in the transformative 1911 Constitution, and of the Greek Army and the Greek Navy in preparation for future conflicts. Before the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, Venizelos' catalytic role helped Greece to gain entrance to the Balkan League, an alliance of the Balkan states against the Ottoman Empire. Through his diplomatic acumen with the Great Powers and with the other Balkan countries, Greece doubled its area and population with the liberation of Macedonia, Epirus, and most of the Aegean islands.
In World War I (1914–1918), he brought Greece on the side of the Allies, further expanding the Greek borders. However, his pro-Allied foreign policy brought him into conflict with the nonaligned faction of Constantine I of Greece, causing the National Schism of the 1910s. The Schism became an unofficial civil war of the pro-Venizelos northern provisional government and the pro-royal government of Athens, with the struggle for power between them polarizing the population between the royalists and Venizelists for decades. Following the Allied victory, Venizelos secured new territorial concessions in Western Anatolia and Thrace in an attempt to accomplish the Megali Idea, which would have united all Greek-speaking people along the Aegean Sea under the banner of Greece. He was, however, defeated in the 1920 General Election, which contributed to the eventual Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–22). Venizelos, in self-imposed exile, represented Greece in the negotiations that led to the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne and the agreement of a mutual population exchange between Greece and Turkey.
As a leading figure of the Second Republic, Venizelos returned to active politics with a landslide victory in the 1928 elections. His final tenure focused on improving relations with Turkey, resettlement policies for refugees from Asia Minor, anti-communism and responding to the Great Depression. After electoral defeats in 1932 and 1933, In January of that year, Venizelos became prime minister for the last time, before a failed coup attempt tried to keep him in power. In March 1935, after a second coup attempt, he was sentenced to death in absentia, after having fled to Paris, where he died.
Under his leadership, Greece underwent profound modernization through liberal-democratic policies. His diplomatic and military efforts expanded Greece's territory, marking a shift in the country's orientation from East to West. Venizelos achieved international fame in his lifetime, and is often called "The Maker of Modern Greece" for his transformative role. His legacy as the "Ethnarch" continues to endure.
Historians disagree on the exact ancestry of Venizelos. Chester and Kerofilas, contemporary historians and Venizelos' biographers, stated that the 18th century ancestors of Venizelos, under the surname of Cravvatas, lived in Mystras, in southern Peloponnese. In the Ottoman raids in the peninsula in 1770, a member of the Cravvatas family (Venizelos Cravvatas), the youngest of several brothers, managed to escape and established himself in Crete. His sons abandoned the patronymic name and called themselves Venizelos instead. However, during the National Schism, politician Konstantinos Krevattas denied that his family had any relation to Venizelos. In a letter to a Cretan partner, Venizelos wrote that his father Kyriakos had taken part in the siege of Monemvasia in 1821 with his brother Hatzinikolos Venizelos and three more brothers, suggesting that his grandfather probably was Hatzipetros Venizelos, a merchant from Kythira. Michael Llewellyn-Smith stated in a 2022 biography that Venizelos' father was "born in Crete, in or around 1810, to a family from the Peloponnese." Venizelos' mother, Styliani Ploumidakis, descended from the village of Theriso in Crete, from a well-respected family partly because it was (distant) related to a prominent 1821 revolution general Vasilios Chalis.
On 23 August [O.S. 11 August] 1864, Venizelos was born in Mournies, near Chania (formerly known as Canea) in then Ottoman Crete, to Kyriakos Venizelos, a Cretan merchant and revolutionary, and Styliani Ploumidaki. When the Cretan revolution of 1866 broke out, Venizelos' family fled to the island of Kythira due to the participation of his father in the revolution. After three years and the revolt ended, the family of Venizelos moved to the island of Syros. They were not allowed to return to Crete and stayed in Syros until 1872, when Abdülaziz granted an amnesty.
He spent his final year of secondary education at a school in Ermoupolis, the principal town of Syros, from which he received his certificate in 1880. In 1881, he enrolled at the University of Athens Law School and got his degree in Law with excellent grades. He returned to Crete in 1886 and worked as a lawyer in Chania. Throughout his life, he maintained a passion for reading and was constantly improving his skills in English, Italian, German, and French.
In December 1891, Venizelos married Maria Katelouzou, daughter of Eleftherios Katelouzos. The newlyweds lived on the upper floor of the Chalepa house, while Venizelos' mother and his brother and sisters lived on the ground floor. There, they enjoyed the happy moments of their marriage and also had the birth of their two children, Kyriakos Venizelos in 1892 and Sofoklis in 1894. Their married life was short and marked by misfortune. Maria died of post-puerperal fever in November 1894 after the birth of their second child. Her death deeply affected Venizelos, and as a sign of mourning, he grew his characteristic beard and mustache, which he retained for the rest of his life.
After his defeat in the November elections of 1920, he left for Nice and Paris in self-imposed exile. In September 1921, twenty-seven years after the death of his first wife, Maria, he married Helena Schilizzi (sometimes referred to as Elena Skylitsi or Stephanovich) in London. Advised by police to be wary of assassination attempts, they held the religious ceremony in private at Witanhurst, the mansion of a family friend and socialite Lady Domini Crosfield. The Crosfields were well connected and Venizelos met Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd George and the arms dealer Basil Zaharoff in subsequent visits to the house.
The married couple settled down in Paris in a flat at 22 rue Beaujon. He lived there until 1927, when he returned to Chania.
The situation in Crete during Venizelos' early years was fluid. The Ottoman Empire was undermining the reforms, which were made under international pressure, while the Cretans desired to see the Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, abandon "the ungrateful infidels". Under these unstable conditions, Venizelos entered politics in the elections of 2 April 1889 as a member of the island's liberal party. As a deputy, he was distinguished for his eloquence and radical opinions.
The numerous revolutions in Crete, during and after the Greek War of Independence (1821, 1833, 1841, 1858, 1866, 1878, 1889, 1895, 1897) were the result of the Cretans' desire for enosis — union with Greece. In the Cretan revolution of 1866, the two sides, under the pressure of the Great Powers, came to an agreement, which was finalized in the Pact of Chalepa. Later the Pact was included in the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, which was supplementing previous concessions granted to the Cretans — e.g. the Organic Law Constitution (1868) designed by William James Stillman. In summary, the Pact granted a large degree of self-government to Greeks in Crete as a means of limiting their desire to rise up against their Ottoman overlords. However the Muslims of Crete, who identified with Ottoman Empire, were not satisfied with these reforms, as in their view the administration of the island was delivered to the hands of the Christian Greek population. In practice, the Ottoman Empire failed to enforce the provisions of the Pact, thus fueling the existing tensions between the two communities; instead, the Ottoman authorities attempted to maintain order by dispatching substantial military reinforcements during 1880–1896. Throughout that period, the Cretan Question was a major issue of friction in the relations of independent Greece with the Ottoman Empire.