Eleftherios Venizelos

Eleftherios Venizelos was born in 1863 in the village of Mournies, close to Chania. He studied law in Athens and returned to Crete to work as a lawyer.

 His thirst for politics led him to become a member of parliament for Kydonia in 1887. Later, in 1897, he played a prominent part in the Cretan insurrection. His vision was to unite then-independent Crete with Greece, in order to bring some much-needed stability to the island. Thus, the Cretan Assembly of 1905, which he led, declared the union of Crete with Greece.

 His influence was such that in 1909 he was called in Athens to help bring an end to Military Rule for the whole of Greece. One year later, in 1910, in collaboration with King George I, Venizelos became Prime Minister of Greece. In the time that followed, Venizelos completed the revising of the constitution (1911), undertook military and financial reform in an effort to protect Greece and signed the Balkan Alliance. That move proved to be decisive, to the winning course of Greece in the Balkan Wars that followed, first against Turkey (1912) and later Bulgaria (1913).

 During World War I, Venizelos was forced to resign twice from his position as Prime Minister, due to internal and external political influences, but he immediately got back in office on both occasions by winning landslide elections. In 1924, after failing to collaborate with the military leadership, he resigned for the third time. However, in 1928 he managed to be reelected for the last time as Prime Minister of Greece. He died in 1936 in Paris, having suffered a brain stroke.

Venizelos is widely regarded as the greatest statesman of modern Greece.