Memorials dedicated to communist guerrillas unveiled by the KKE in northern Greece

With two events held in the northern provinces of Florina and Kastoria on Sunday 27 October, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) unveiled two new memorials dedicated to the struggle of the Democratic Army of Greece, the communist-backed guerrilla army which fought against the bourgeois forces and their imperialist allies during the 1946-1949 Civil War.

Both events were attended by the General Secretary of the CC of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas. 

 

The KKE, USSR and Sergey Radchenko's anti-communism

By Nikos Mottas.

Recently, the name of Sergey Radchenko made headlines in Greece's media. A historian and professor at John Hopkins University, Radchenko posted on his personal Twitter account “declassified documents” from the Russian State Archives concerning the relations of the Communist Parties of Greece (KKE) and the Soviet Union (USSR), as well as the struggle of the communist-backed Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) during the 1946-1949 Civil War. 

Paul Éluard: To the heroes of the Democratic Army of Greece

French communist poet Paul Éluard (1895-1952) was part of the delegation which visited  the strongholds of the communist-led Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) in Vitsi and Grammos mountains of northern Greece in June 1949. 

Back then, DSE was in the midst of a fierce battle against the National Army and its imperialist allies, namely the United States. 

At the end of his visit, Éluard dedicated the following message to the heroic fighters of the Democratic Army:

Hands off the DSE memorial in Dziwnów - New anticommunist provocation in Poland

The memorial with the plaque dedicated to the heroes of the
DSE in Dziwnowie. 

The anti-communist frenzy in Poland continues through the application of the reactionary "decommunization" laws which have been established by the bourgeois governments with the support of the European Union. A month ago, we had reported the demolition by polish authorities of a memorial dedicated to Soviet Red Army soldiers in Warsaw.

The latest incident in the series of anticommunist hysteria is taking place in the town of Dziwnów, where there is a monument in honor of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE)*. More specifically, the monument pays tribute to wounded fighters of the Democratic Army of Greece who had been treated in a special military hospital especially founded by the Polish People's Republic. The fighters subsquently succumbed to their wounds and were buried in Dziwnów. The monument was built by polish soldiers during the socialist era.

Nikos Zachariadis- Tito's dagger stabs the People's Democratic Greece in the back

Note: The article below, written by Nikos Zachariadis, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece from 1931 to 1956, was published in the newspaper-organ of the information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties- "For a lasting Peace, for a People's Democracy" on 1/8/1949. In the article, Zachariadis refers to the role of Josip Broz Tito's leadership during the struggle of Greece's guerrilla Democratic Army (DSE) against the bourgeois Greek Army and the imperialists, between the years 1946-1949. 

Tito's dagger stabs the People's Democratic Greece in the back

Memorial in honor of the communist guerrilla Democratic Army was unveiled in northern Greece

KKE Gen. Sec. Dimitris Koutsoumbas at the
DSE memorial (Source: 902.gr)

Theotokos, Greece - With the participation of hundreds members, supporters and friends of the Communist Party (KKE) and its youth wing (KNE), as well as numerous locals, the inauguration of the Memorial-museum dedicated to the heroic, communist-backed guerrilla Democratic Army of Greece (1946-1949) took place in the mountain of Gramos, at the northern Greek prefecture of Ioannina. 

The General Secretary of the CC of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas unveiled the memorial, while the major speech was delivered by the member of the CC of the Party Dimitris Gontikas. The names of 438 Democratic Army fighters, natives of the Gramos and Smolikas mountainous area, are inscripted in plagues surrounding the memorial. 

Declaration of the CC of the KKE: On the 70th anniversary of the Democratic Army of Greece 1946-1949

Athens, February 2016

We are inspired and learn from the 100-year history of the KKE, from the 3-year epic of the DSE.

The CC of the KKE, the entire party and KNE, honours the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the democratic Army of Greece (DSE).

1946 was a year of important developments directly connected to the creation of the DSE, such as:

The 2nd Plenum of the CC of the KKE (12-15 February 1946), which began exactly a year after of the signing of the Varkiza Agreement (12th of February 1945).The 2nd Plenum, even if in a contradictory way, was the one that decided to conduct the armed struggle.

The attack of a group of partisans on the gendarmerie station of Litohoro, on the night of the 30th and early in the morning of the 31st of March 1946, took place on the eve of the parliamentary elections.

Nikos Zachariadis (1903-1973)

The 1st of August marks the 43rd anniversary of the death of Nikos Zachariadis, General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1931 to 1956. He was born to ethnic Greek parents in Ottoman Empire's Edirne (Andrianoupolis) in 1903. At the age of 16, Nikos moved to Istanbul where he worked in various jobs, including as a dockworker and sailor. It was there when he started having his first organised relationship with the working-class movement. 

In 1919-1922 he travelled extensively to the Soviet Union. In 1923 he became a member of the Communist Party of Turkey. He studied in the newly-founded "KUTV" (Communist University of the Toilers of the East), also known as "Stalin School", in the Soviet Union. After the Greco-Turkish War and the exchange of populations, the Zachariadis family moved permanently to Greece, during a period of severe political and economic crisis. 

On summer 1924, after finishing his studies in the Soviet Union, Nikos Zachariadis travelled secretly to Greece where he undertook duties at the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). In 1926, during the dictatorship of General Pangalos, he was arrested and imprisoned in Thessaloniki. He managed to escape and worked secretly in various party positions. He was re-arrested and re-imprisoned in 1929, but once again he escaped and fled to the Soviet Union. During his stay in the Soviet Union he became a member of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). 

'Captain-Yiotis' remembered: Charilaos Florakis, 1914-2005

Nikos Mottas writes about the legendary Greek Communist leader, partisan-fighter in WW2 and Greece's Civil War, long-time (1972-1991) General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, CHARILAOS FLORAKIS.

By Nikos Mottas.

It was the 22^nd of May 2005 when the tireless communist, the militant guerrilla captain, the popular leader, comrade Charilaos Florakis passed away. At 91 years of age, he was completing a life full of struggles; a life given to the ideals of a better world, for the perspective of Socialism and Communism. His life was given to KKE, to the Party he loved and gave everything.

The life and activity of Charilaos Florakis has been core part of KKE's history, of the most glorious- but also difficult- peoples struggles in Greece during WW2 occupation, during the Civil War as well as the country's modern history. Comrade Florakis, with his firm faith in the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, was never absent from Greek working class struggles.

Charilaos Florakis' political activity began in the pre-war decade of 1930s, as a member of the Communist Party's youth wing (OKNE) and later as a student and vigorous worker at the so-called “TTT” (Posts, Telegraphs, Telephone Offices). At an early age, as a teenager, he understood the signs of the ongoing class-struggle in the Greek countryside of '30s:

"The man with the carnation": 64 years since the execution of communist hero Nikos Beloyannis

Written by Nikos Mottas / In Defense of Communism.

Nikos Beloyannis, the man with the carnation, the Communist, the hero. It was in the dawn of Sunday 30th March 1952 when his heart stopped beating. The bullets of the firing squad gave an end to the lifes of Beloyannis and three of his comrades- Dimitris Batsis, Elias Argyriadis and Nikos Kaloumenos. 

The post-civil war bourgeois, centrist government of Plastiras, under the orders of his imperialist patrons, had done it's job. Beloyannis, a member of the Central Committee of the- then illegal- Greek Communist Party, was dead. However, his legacy and ideals were already immortal. 

"Beloyannis instructs us one more time,how to live and how to die. 

With just one carnation he unlocked all of immortality.With just one smile he brightened the world so darkness can never fall. Good morning comrades 

Good morning sun 

Good morning Beloyannis".  

- Yannis Ritsos, Poem "Man with the Carnation".