Existing accounts of life under the Colonels’ dictatorship (1967-1974) contend that cultural activity in Greece was all but eradicated due to repression and censorship. However, our research uncovers exactly the opposite, nothing less than a cultural Big Bang. I outline the evidence and address two questions: First, what made this development possible--and, more generally, which conditions facilitate the development of cultural life under authoritarianism? And second, why was this cultural boom erased from collective memory?
