Communist Party of Greece

The Communist Party of Greece (Greek: KKE, Kommunistiko Komma Elladas) was formed on November 17, 1918 in Greece due to the upsurge in the revolutionary movement in the country, which was strengthened by the effect of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia. Until 1920 it was called the Socialist Labor Party of Greece; at the second congress, which approved the party's relationship to the Comintern, it was called the Socialist Labor Party of Greece (Communist). In 1924, at the third extraordinary congress of the party, it was renamed the Communist Party of Greece. From 1929-1931 KKE had a leadership factional fight - the party made it through this crisis within the inner party, which the Comintern became involved in (address of the Executive Committee of the Comintern, November 1931). The sixth plenum of the Central Committee of the KKE (January 1934), in consultation with the Comintern, planned strategy and tactics of the party, defining the future revolution in Greece as bourgeois democratic with the likelihood of it rapidly growing into a socialist one. With the establishment in Greece of the openly fascist dictatorship of General Ioannis Metaxas (August 1936), KKE was outlawed. During World War II (1939-1945), KKE took the initiative of creating the National Liberation Front (EAM) in September 1941, and the People's Liberation Army (ELAS) in December 1941. In March 1944, EAM created the Political and Security committee of national liberation. The basis of the people's democratic authority was laid by the heroic fight of Greek people in the country (numbering 435,000 in October 1944) led by KKE; however this process was interrupted by the armed intervention of England in December 1944. The anti-democratic forces, whose authority was backed by the British military, established a regime of terror, pushing the country towards civil war.