Nikos Zachariadis

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A photo of Zachariadis

Nikolaos Zachariadis (27 April 1903, Adrianople, Ottoman Empire -8 August 1973, Surgut, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1931 to 1956.

[edit] Early life

Born in Adrianopole in 1903, the son of an employee of the Ottoman tobacco monopoly. He worked as a seaman on the Black Sea, where he came under the influence of the Bolshevik Revolution. He studied at the International Lenin School and the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV) in Moscow.

[edit] Political activity in Greece

In 1923, he was sent back to Greece to organise the Federation of Communist Youths of Greece (OKNE). Imprisoned, he subsequently fled to the Soviet Union. In 1931, he was sent back to Greece to restore order in the highly factionalised KKE and in the same year (other accounts claim 1935), he was appointed, by order of Stalin and the Comintern, General Secretary of KKE.

In August 1936, he was arrested by the State Security of the Metaxas regime and imprisoned. From prison, he issued a letter urging all Greeks to resist the Italian invasion of October 1940 and transform the war into an anti-fascist war. According to KKE, which considered the war to be a feud between imperialist opponents, this letter was fabricated by the Metaxas regime. Zachariadis was even accused of releasing it to win the favor of Maniadakis and be released from prison.^[1]

On November 16 1940, a second letter was released by Zahariadis which accused the Greek army of waging a "fascist" and "imperialistic war" and appealed to the USSR Metaxas regime.^[2] In a third letter (January, 1941), Zahariadis reiterated this position, and reasserted KKE’s position for the secession of Greek Macedonia from Greece.

KKE's anti-war position was definitively reversed when Germany surprise-attacked the USSR on June 22 1941. KKE then called upon the Greek people to resist the fascist and Nazi invaders, and the resistance group EAM-ELAS were formed.

After the German invasion of Greece, in 1941 the Germans transferred him to the Dachau concentration camp, from where he was released in May 1945. Returning to Greece, he re-assumed the leadership of the KKE from Georgios Siantos, acting general secretary of the KKE since January 1942.

[edit] Civil War

Zachariadis conducted the military operations of the communist Democratic Army of Greece, which was formed to install a socialist People's Republic in Greece. According to the official KKE party-line, Greece at the time was under British occupation. After several years of civil strife, the communist uprising was defeated in 1949.

[edit] Post-war

In 1949, the KKE leadership and the remnants of the Democratic Army fled into exile in the communist states. From abroad, Zachariadis still enjoyed a mandate by the Soviet Union to act as leader of KKE. However, following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Zachariadis fell out of favor with new Soviet leadership, despite his support by the large number of party members.

In May 1956, during the 6th General Assembly of the Central Committee of KKE, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union intervened to expel Zachariadis from the post of General Secretary. In February 1957 Zachariadis was also expelled from KKE, as were a large number of his supporters.

Zachariadis spent the rest of his life in exile in Siberia, initially in Yakutia and later in Surgut, where, as KGB claims he committed suicide in 1973, while there are other accounts that he was assassinated. As of today, the Russian state archives for his death conditions remain secret.^[3]

[edit] References