Letters from Tomis

Introduction

The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), founded in 1918 amidst the global tremors of the Bolshevik Revolution, stands as one of the oldest and most ideologically consistent Marxist-Leninist parties in Europe. Its history, punctuated by waves of heroic resistance, brutal repression, and ideological steadfastness, mirrors the class struggles and geopolitical convulsions of modern Greece itself. From the anti-fascist resistance during Nazi occupation to the bitter civil war and its long outlawed existence under postwar right-wing regimes, the KKE has consistently represented the political will and historic consciousness of Greece’s working class and rural poor. This essay traces the party’s historical trajectory while highlighting its unique contributions to the international communist movement, examining how it preserved revolutionary Marxism-Leninism against the twin pressures of imperialist domination and domestic bourgeois counterrevolution.

Origins: The Birth of Revolutionary Consciousness (1918–1936)

The KKE originated as the Socialist Labour Party of Greece (SEKE) in 1918, in the wake of the Russian Revolution and the crumbling of European empires. Greece’s working class, concentrated in industrial hubs like Piraeus, Thessaloniki, and Patras, had begun organizing into powerful syndicalist unions by the 1910s, responding to poor wages, miserable conditions, and landlord domination of the countryside. SEKE was a product of this class ferment, formed by trade unionists and left intellectuals inspired by the Bolsheviks and determined to bring scientific socialism to the Greek proletariat.

By 1920, the SEKE affiliated with the Communist International (Comintern), becoming the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in 1924 and embracing the Marxist-Leninist framework of class struggle, dictatorship of the proletariat, and internationalism. From the beginning, the KKE was persecuted by the bourgeois Greek state, which feared its growing influence among workers, peasants, and conscripts traumatized by the disastrous Asia Minor Campaign (1919–1922). The rise of fascist and royalist tendencies in the Greek military, combined with internal political instability, pushed the ruling classes to repeatedly ban or repress the KKE throughout the interwar years.

Nonetheless, the KKE’s early period saw the development of robust labor organizing, strikes, and the publication of theoretical works that sought to adapt Marxism to the Greek context. It defended the rights of Macedonia’s Slavic population and built alliances among oppressed nationalities—a position that later exposed it to nationalist attacks. Its analysis of Greece as a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country under the economic domination of Anglo-French imperialism and domestic comprador capital laid the foundation for its anti-imperialist program in the decades to follow.

The People’s Struggle and the Heroic Years: Resistance and Civil War (1941–1949)

The German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupation of Greece during World War II gave rise to one of the most dynamic periods in KKE history. While bourgeois parties collapsed or collaborated with the Axis, the KKE formed the backbone of the National Liberation Front (EAM) and its armed wing, Greek People’s Liberation Army (ELAS), which waged a guerrilla war against fascist occupiers. By 1944, ELAS had liberated large parts of the countryside and established popular democracy in liberated zones—rudimentary organs of socialist power and land redistribution that functioned as embryonic soviets.

The KKE’s wartime role demonstrated its unparalleled roots in the working class and peasantry. It organized popular militias, women’s committees, partisan schools, and revolutionary justice systems. These structures reflected Leninist principles of mass participation and workers’ power, and challenged both foreign fascism and domestic feudalism.

The December 1944 Dekemvriana events in Athens—where British forces and Greek monarchist collaborators attacked ELAS—signaled the beginning of the counterrevolution. The Treaty of Varkiza in 1945, which demanded ELAS’s disarmament, was cynically used by the British and the Greek right to initiate a “White Terror” against communists, with tens of thousands imprisoned or executed. By 1946, a new civil war erupted, this time against the Anglo-American-backed Greek government and its royalist army.

The Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), organized under the KKE, fought valiantly in the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), establishing mountain strongholds and revolutionary zones in northern Greece. Despite enormous sacrifices, the KKE was defeated, in large part due to U.S. military support under the Truman Doctrine and the betrayal of the Titoist regime in Yugoslavia after the Cominform split in 1948, which closed vital logistical corridors to the DSE.

Yet, even in defeat, the civil war represented one of the most significant attempts at socialist revolution in postwar Europe. The KKE’s line remained committed to the armed overthrow of the bourgeois state and the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat—unlike many European parties which were already drifting into parliamentary reformism under Soviet guidance.

Exile, Illegality, and the Cold War Clampdown (1949–1974)

With the civil war lost, the KKE was outlawed, and thousands of its cadres were imprisoned, exiled to island concentration camps like Makronisos, or fled to socialist countries such as the USSR, Romania, and the GDR. A large exile community of communists emerged across Eastern Europe, where the KKE reorganized its Central Committee and continued party work under clandestine conditions.

The postwar Greek state developed into a NATO-backed anti-communist police state. The so-called “democratic” regimes were, in truth, deeply repressive bourgeois dictatorships dominated by the monarchy, U.S. military advisors, and comprador capital. Between 1949 and 1967, Greece became a front-line state in Cold War containment, with the KKE remaining banned and monitored by the CIA-supported KYP (Greek Intelligence Service).

Nonetheless, the KKE maintained underground press operations, supported mass labor movements through legal fronts, and kept alive the spirit of socialist resistance. A major blow came in 1968, when the party split between the pro-Soviet KKE (Interior) and the “orthodox” KKE (Exterior), the latter remaining loyal to Marxist-Leninist principles and opposing the rightward drift of Eurocommunism.

During the U.S.-backed military junta (1967–1974), the KKE played a crucial role in organizing clandestine resistance. It supported workers’ and students’ uprisings, culminating in the 1973 Athens Polytechnic Uprising, a mass revolt that helped catalyze the fall of the junta. The party’s underground press and trade union links provided the only serious resistance network to the fascist regime.

Legalization and the Long March through Parliament (1974–1991)

The post-junta restoration of formal democracy in 1974 brought the KKE back into legality. Though much of the Left had been decimated or pushed into reformist positions, the KKE reemerged with its program intact, continuing to advocate for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism through proletarian rule.

However, the new era posed novel challenges. Greece’s incorporation into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1981, the rise of the reformist Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), and the global collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989–1991 created immense pressures on the KKE to abandon its principles. Many former communist parties in Europe collapsed or transformed into social-democratic electoral machines.

Yet the KKE remained defiant. While briefly participating in a left unity coalition (Synaspismos), it withdrew when that coalition drifted toward Eurocommunism and parliamentary opportunism. In 1991, amid the dissolution of the USSR and widespread ideological demoralization, the KKE held a historic congress reaffirming its Marxist-Leninist identity. While the party experienced organizational ruptures and electoral setbacks, it preserved its theoretical clarity, distinguishing itself from the global crisis of the Left.

The Twenty-First Century: Resistance in the Age of Capitalist Crisis

In the neoliberal period, marked by privatizations, EU-imposed austerity, and deepening class inequality, the KKE has emerged as the most class-conscious and uncompromising party in Greek politics. It played a leading role in organizing workers during the 2008–2015 economic crisis, when Greece became ground zero for IMF and EU-imposed structural adjustment.

Unlike the opportunist Syriza coalition, which betrayed its anti-austerity mandate upon winning power in 2015, the KKE refused to compromise with imperialist institutions. It called for a complete rupture with the EU, NATO, and capitalist ownership—rejecting the false dichotomy between “good” and “bad” capital. Its trade union front, PAME (All-Workers’ Militant Front), led strikes, factory occupations, and student mobilizations across the country.

The KKE’s ideological education work, historical documentation, and youth organization (KNE) have sustained a revolutionary consciousness in Greek society, even when electoral success remains modest. The party continues to uphold a scientific socialist analysis of Greek capitalism, identifying its monopolistic, comprador character, and its enmeshment in imperialist blocs.

Conclusion: An Unyielding Beacon of Marxist-Leninist Struggle

The KKE’s history is one of resilience, fidelity to principle, and revolutionary courage. It is a history written not in parliamentary debates or academic journals but in blood: in the guerrilla campaigns of ELAS and the DSE, in the exile camps of Makronisos, in the strikes of Thessaloniki’s tobacco workers, and in the slogans painted on Polytechnic walls in 1973. Its strategic clarity, rooted in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, has enabled it to withstand the seductions of reformism and the intimidation of repression.

In a Europe of decaying social democracy, fascist revivalism, and imperialist realignments, the KKE remains a beacon for those who believe that another world is not only possible but necessary—a world without exploitation, war, or poverty. As capitalism enters a new phase of systemic crisis, the KKE’s legacy and its living struggle offer invaluable lessons for revolutionaries worldwide.