Q & A
Tassos Symeonides
(RIEAS Academic Advisor)
Copyright: Research Institute for European and American Studies (www.rieas.gr) Publication date: 27 October 2019
Note: The article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the views of the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS)
It is a common secret that communist “truths” are widely accepted in Greece. For a country that survived the post-WWII Soviet land grab and never came under communist rule this is a rather strange phenomenon, isn’t it?
It is indeed. To understand fully the roots of widespread leftism in Greece we should quickly recap historical events that help explain this proclivity, the most prominent of which was the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in 1918.
KKE’s early life was turbulent as it oscillated between underground action vs. suggestions to follow “full legitimacy” like the rest of the political parties. Internal dissension and “comradely conflict” helped turn KKE into a confused lump of bitter ideological rivals—Marxist/Leninists/Stalinists vs Trotskyites being the most prominent such conflict... Read more