Communist Party of Greece

The Communist Party of Greece (Greek: Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας, romanized: Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas, KKE) is a Marxist–Leninist political party in Greece. It was founded in 1918 as the Socialist Workers' Party of Greece (SEKE) and adopted its current name in November 1924. It is the oldest political party in modern Greek politics.

Communist Party of Greece Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας
Abbreviation	KKE
General Secretary	Dimitris Koutsoumpas
Founders	List Demosthenes Ligdopoulos Stamatis Kokkinos Michael Sideris Nikos Demetratos Nikos Giannios Avraam Benaroya Michael Oikonomou Spyros Komiotis Giorgos Pispinis Aristos Arvanitis
Founded	4 November 1918; 106 years ago (1918-11-04) as "SEKE"
Legalised	1974; 51 years ago (1974)
Banned	1936; 89 years ago (1936)
Headquarters	145 Leof. Irakliou, 142 31 Athens (Nea Ionia)
Newspaper	Rizospastis
Student wing	Panspoudastiki
Youth wing	Communist Youth of Greece
Trade union wing	All-Workers Militant Front
Ideology	Communism Marxism-Leninism Social conservatism Hard Euroscepticism
Political position	Far-left^[A]
National affiliation	National Liberation Front (1941–1946) Coalition of the Left and Progress (1989–1991)
European affiliation	European Communist Action (2023–present) Historical: INITIATIVE (2013–2023)
European Parliament group	Non-Inscrits
International affiliation	International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP)
Slogan	Προλετάριοι όλων των χωρών, ενωθείτε! ('Proletarians of all countries, unite')
Anthem	The Internationale
Parliament	21 / 300
European Parliament	2 / 21
Election symbol
Party flag
Website
kke.gr
Politics of Greece Political parties Elections ^ A: The party is also described as left-conservative, or left-authoritarian, given its conservative stances on social issues.

The party was banned in 1936, but played a significant role in the Greek resistance and the Greek Civil War, and its membership peaked in the mid-1940s. Legalization of the KKE was restored following the fall of the Greek Junta in 1974. The party has achieved appointing MPs in all elections since its restoration in 1974, and took part in a coalition government in 1989 when it got more than 13% of the vote.

The KKE is a member of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP) and the European Communist Action (ECA).

The KKE describes itself as a revolutionary party that wants to build a socialist-communist society through the dictatorship of the proletariat. In addition to being a communist party, it has also been described as Stalinist,nationalist or left-wing nationalist,economic nationalist,socially conservative,culturally conservative, and anti-imperialist.

History

Foundation

Plaque at the building of Piraeus, where the first congress and foundation of the party was held

View of the Piraeus building

The October Revolution of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 gave impetus for the foundation of communist parties in many countries globally. The KKE was founded on 4 November 1918 by Aristos Arvanitis, Demosthenes Ligdopoulos, Stamatis Kokkinos, Michael Sideris, Nikos Dimitratos [el], and others. The party was run by a five-member Central Committee which initially consisted of Dimitratos, Ligdopoulos, Sideris, Arvanitis and Kokkinos, and had a three-member Audit Committee initially including George Pispinis, Spyros Koumiotis, and Avraam Benaroya. Ligdopoulos was elected director of the party's official newspaper, Ergatikos Agon.

The background of the KKE has roots in more than 60 years of small socialist, anarchist, and communist groups, mainly in industrialized areas. Following the example of the Paris Commune and the 1892 Chicago workers' movement for the eight-hour working day, these groups had as immediate political goals the unification of Greek workers into trade unions, the implementation of an eight-hour day in Greece and better salaries for workers. Inspired by the Paris Commune and the communist revolutionary efforts in the United States, the German Empire, and Imperial Russia at the beginning of the century and the destruction that almost 20 years of wars had brought upon the Greek workers, a unified social-communist party was founded in Greece.

At the Second Congress of the SEKE in April 1920, the party decided to affiliate with the Comintern, an international communist organization founded in Moscow in 1919. It changed its name to the Socialist Workers' Party of Greece (Communist) (SEKE(K)). A new Central Committee was elected, which included Nikos and Panaghis Dimitratos, Yanis Kordatos, G. Doumas, and M. Sideris.^{[citation needed]} At the Third Extraordinary Congress of the SEKE(K) in November 1924, the party was renamed the Communist Party of Greece and adopted the principles of Marxism–Leninism. Pandelis Pouliopoulos was elected as general-secretary. Ever since, the party has functioned on the basis of democratic centralism.

KKE between the two World Wars

KKE strongly opposed the military and political involvement of the Kingdom of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922, which it considered an imperialistic scheme to control the market of Asia Minor given the new political situation after the defeat and collapse of the Ottoman Empire. KKE members propagated this position both on the front—which provoked accusations of treason from the Greek government—as well as in the mainland. KKE collaborated with the Soviet ambassador to persuade Venizelos’ administration to withdraw its troops from Asia Minor and to persuade the Soviet Union to exert political pressure on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to allow autonomy for Greek cities in Asia Minor.

KKE played a prominent role in strikes, anti-war demonstrations, foundation of trade unions and worker associations. KKE and other leftist political forces fostered the creation of labor unions in all sectors, including the General Greek Workers Confederation (ΓΣΕΕ), which shared common goals with KKE.

These activities met by opposition from the Mid-War governments. In 1929, as minister of Education in the government of Eleftherios Venizelos, Georgios Papandreou passed legislation against organised communist teachers, known as Idionymon. Such legislation was often used to prosecute KKE members and other leftist activists. Under the Idionymon all members of the Communist Party of Greece, being considered dangers to the state, were to be removed from public service or put in exile.

The first prison camps for left-wing citizens and communists were founded in that era. KKE and its organisations, although small in numbers, continue operating in all Greek major cities, especially industrial areas such as Athens, Piraeus, Patra, Thessaly and Volos, Thessaloniki, Kavala, and elsewhere.

The KKE collaborated with other newly founded Communist Parties to oppose the rise of the Fascist movements in Europe. In 1934, the Comintern decreed that anti-fascist fronts be formed internationally. KKE responded by creating the People's Front, which was the largest Marxist anti-fascist organisation in Greece prior to the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas. The party was banned in 1936 by the dictatorial regime of Metaxas and brutally persecuted by his security chief, Konstantinos Maniadakis. Many KKE members were imprisoned or exiled on isolated Aegean Islands.

KKE members volunteered to fight on the side of the republican government of Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. About 440 Greeks joined the ranks of the International Brigades, especially brigades such as the XV International Brigade and the Dimitrov Battalion, many of whom were high-ranking KKE members.

The KKE and the Macedonian issue

After the Balkan Wars, World War I and the Greco-Turkish War, there were diplomatic approaches from the superpowers of that era regarding the re-drawing of Greek borders, based on the territorial claims of the Kingdom of Bulgaria and diplomatic relations between Turkey and the United States pressing for more territory to improve trade routes with the British Empire. The ruling parties were simultaneously trying to move parts of Northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace) to Bulgaria and Turkey; and to win the return of islands in the Aegean and parts of Macedonian territory to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This policy was repeated several times throughout the pre-war era.

The main impetus for their demand was the ethnic and religious minorities then living inside Greek borders in Northern Greece. The KKE opposed any geo-strategic game in the area which would use minorities to start a new imperialistic war in the region. At its Third Party Congress in 1924, KKE announced its policy for the self-determination of minorities, pointing out the minorities in Macedonia. Its policy was dictated by each Marxist–Leninist theory, that stated any minorities should be self-determined under a common socialist state and it had its roots in the example of the newly founded Soviet Union.

In 1924, the KKE expressed the official position of the Third International for "independent Macedonia and Thrace". Some members disagreed with this, but it remained the official position of the party and caused expulsions of communists by the Greek state. KKE was seen by many as a party whose policy was "the detachment of large areas of northern Greece". According to Richard Clogg, "this was dictated by Comintern and hurt the popularity of Communism at the time".

In 1934, the KKE changed its view and expressed its intent to "fight for the national self-determination, under a People's Republic where all nations will found their self-determination and will build the common state of the workers".

Nikos Zachariadis, General Secretary of the party, officially renounced KKE's policy of secession in 1945. Anti-KKE propaganda up-to-day added on this quote the will to collaborate for this goal with the Bulgarian organizations of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Thracian Revolutionary Organisation. This is not mentioned on any of KKE official documents. The quote is referenced as KKE's policy for "giving Greek soil to the northern enemies of the country", a fact that can not be crossed referenced with any of KKE referenced literature of that era.

During the civil war (1946–1949), an article written by Nikos Zachariadis expressed the KKE's strategy after the envisioned victory of the Democratic Army of Greece regarding what was then known as the "Macedonian Issue": "The Macedonian people will acquire an independent, united state with a coequal position within the family of free peoples' republics within the Balkans, within the family of Peoples' Republics to which the Greek people will belong. The Macedonian people are today fighting for this independent united state with a coequal position and is helping the DSE with all its soul". The policy of self-determination for Macedonia within a People's Republic was reiterated during the 5th KKE Central Committee meeting held in January 1949, which declared that the "Macedonian people participating in the liberation struggle would find their full national re-establishment as they want giving their blood for this acquisition [...] Macedonian Communists should pay great attentions to foreign chauvinist and counteractive elements that want to break the unity between the Greek and Macedonian people. This will only serve the monarcho-fascists and British imperialism".

In order for KKE to clear up its position on the "Macedonian subject", the 6th Congress of its Central Committee was called a few months later, during which was clearly stated that KKE was fighting for a free Greece and for a common future for Greeks and Macedonians under the same state.

The issue was ended by Central Committee in 1954 with the withdrawal of the position of self-determination of minorities. In 1988, the General Secretary of KKE, Charilaos Florakis, once again presented KKE's political position on the matter in a speech to the Greek Parliament.

The KKE during World War II

1940

By 1940, the KKE had almost collapsed after Metaxas' dictatorship had imprisoned many of its leadership and members. By October, half of the party's two thousand members were in prison or in exile. The Security Police proved successful in dismantling the party structure; not only had it imprisoned the leadership, but it created a fake series of Rizospastis, the Central Committee newspaper. This generated confusion among the remaining scattered underground members.

A small group of old party officials formed the "Old Central Committee" and two of them were elected by the 6th Conference. In his memoirs for the Greek Civil war, C. M. Woodhouse (the British liaison with Greek resistance groups during World War II) wrote: "The 'Old Central Committee' interpreted a directive issued by Comintern as indicating collaboration with the German and Italian dictatorships, given the Hitler-Stalin alliance". On the other hand, Woodhouse argues that Georgios Siantos, who had escaped from prison; and Nikos Zachariadis, who was still incarcerated, took the opposite view that KKE must support Metaxas in his fight against Mussolini. The archives of KKE also address the confusion between different KKE cadres as the "Old Committee" interpreted the politics of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as part of the "imperialistic game between the Axis forces and the British". This faction of KKE felt that the Metaxas regime was a "pawn of British imperialism in the region" and therefore the "Old Committee" viewed any war between the Axis forces and the British as an "imperialistic war that the people of any of the countries involved should not participate in". According to KKE's account, this position was criticised by Comintern in 1939 (a few months after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), which had instructed KKE to fight against Italy in the event of an invasion of Greece.

Nikos Zachariadis, KKE General Secretary, wrote from prison on 2 November 1940: "Today the Greek people are waging a war of national liberation against Mussolini's fascism. In this war we must follow the Metaxas government and turn every city, every village and every house of Greece into a stronghold of the National Liberation Fight... On this war conducted by Metaxas government all of us should give all our forces without reservation. The working people's and the crowning achievement for today's fight should be and shall be a new Greece based on work, freedom, and liberated from any foreign imperialist dependence, with a truly pan-popular culture".

Several party members, including Nikos Ploumpidis of the "Old Central Committee", denounced this letter as a forgery produced by the Metaxas regime. Zachariadis was even accused of writing it to win the favour of Konstantinos Maniadakis, the Minister for Public Order, to win his release from prison. According to one source, when drafting this letter Zachariadis was unaware of the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact and was castigated by the Comintern for an anti-Soviet stance.

According to KKE's archives, the "Old Central Committee" had been denounced for its stance on the war issue and today KKE claims that the majority of the party membership had not followed the decision of being neutral in case of an invasion. On 16 November 1940, Zachariadis repudiated the line of his first letter in a second letter where he accused the Greek Army of waging a "fascist" and "imperialistic war" and appealed to the Soviet Union for peaceful intervention, thus aligning his position with that of the "Old Central Committee".

On 7 December 1940, the "Old Central Committee" issued a manifesto addressed "to all the workers and public servants, to all soldiers, sailors and airmen, to patriot officers, to the mothers, fathers, wives and children of the fighters and the workers of all neighboring countries", in which it describes the war as a game of the imperialist powers, headed by the British. According to KKE, the "Old Central Committee" based this opinion on the belief that Mussolini's Italy would not dare to attack a country that had a cooperation agreement with the Soviet Union. The main political line of this manifesto was the call to the soldiers on the front not to go beyond Greek borders, but after securing them to try seek a peace agreement with the enemy.

Zachariadis may have issued a third letter on 17 January 1941, in which he explained the motives for his first letter and wrote: "Metaxas remains the principal enemy of the people and the country. His overthrowing is in the most immediate and vital interest of our people ... the peoples and soldiers of Greece and Italy are not enemies but brothers, and their solidarity will stop the war waged by capitalist exploiters".

According to KKE archives, Zachariadis had issued no further letters and the third letter may have been in fact the statement of the "Old Central Committee" on 18 March 1941. In any case, Zachariadis himself referred in his public statements after liberation almost exclusively to his first letter as proof of the patriotic character of KKE and its role as an inspiration to the Greek resistance movement during the war.

On 22 June 1941, the very same day that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, KKE ordered its militants to organize "the struggle to defend the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the foreign fascist yoke".

1941: German invasion and beginning of the Resistance

The German invasion of Greece

On 6 April 1941, the German invasion and occupation was launched and Athens was occupied on 27 April following an unconditional surrender of the Greek forces by General Georgios Tsolakoglou, who was later appointed Prime Minister by the Nazis. Confusion remained among many Greek Communists as to what the Moscow-sanctioned position was. In his memoirs, KKE leader Ioannis Ioannidis wrote about a regional communist cadre who proclaimed the following as Greece was being bombed by the Axis: "The Germans will not bomb us. The mustached-one [Stalin] will not let them". Ioannis Ioannidis was purged by Nikos Zachariadis, leader of the KKE in exile in 1953, and was stripped of his party offices. The article in the reference just cited ends with just the fact of his "Purge" and being "stripped of his Party offices", so it is unclear whether he was physically Purged (executed), as many Communists still were in 1953.

A large number of KKE members were already in prison before the Nazi invasion. The pro-Nazi occupation government handed some of them over to the Nazis fearing that they—following the pro-Soviet party line—would resort to sabotage in Greece following Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. There were many occasions that police officers released Communist prisoners, especially the ones who were in exile in Aegean islands. In 1941, several KKE members managed to escape prison. One of many stories includes the 20 communists held as political prisoners in Heraklion, Crete, who demanded to be released to fight against the invading Germans. The Greek government, which had left mainland Greece by then and was en route to Egypt, had no power to release them. They eventually escaped after their jail was damaged by German bombs and joined the British and Greek forces defending the Heraklion harbor. After the fall of Crete, many officers of the Greek Army joined forces with ELAS and became commanders in ELAS's corps of partisan units.

It became German policy—especially after it became obvious to them that they were losing the war—to execute civilians in retaliation for attacks against them by communist or non-communist partisans. Approximately 200 communists, delivered to the Germans on 1941, were executed at the Kaisariani Shooting Range on 1 May 1944.

Although the KKE was suffering from a lack of central political leadership since its leader Nikos Zachariadis had been taken by the Germans to the Dachau concentration camp, its members succeeded in maintaining communication with each other. The 6th Meeting of KKE Central Committee was held in Athens from 1–3 July 1941, which decided on strategy for an armed liberation struggle against the Axis invaders. At the same time, the "Old Central Committee" submitted to the authority of the new Central Committee. The first united resistance organization was founded in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace on 15 May 1941. In Thessaloniki, the Macedonian Bureau of KKE established the Eleftheri (Liberty) Organization, along with the Socialist Party, the Agrarian Party, the Democratic Union and Colonel Dimitrios Psarros (who later founded the EKKA).

The Macedonian Bureau of KKE organised the first two partisan units at the end of June 1941. The first was based in Kilkis and was named Athanasios Diakos, the second was based in Nigrita and was named Odysseas Androutsos. These small partisan units blew up bridges, attacked police stations and eventually organized into larger combat units of more than 300 men each. In several other places and in major cities, small armed groups of KKE members and non-communists began to emerge, protecting people from looters, the Germans, or collaborators. On 27 September 1941, Greek communists together with five other leftist parties formed the National Liberation Front (EAM) in Kallithea, Athens and began forming partisan militia units.

1942 to Liberation

Cavalry of ELAS

On 16 February 1942, the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) was founded in a small kiosk in Phthiotis and by 1943 it consisted of 50,000 members, both men and women, with 30,000 as reserve units in major cities. The KKE played a prominent role in the organisation. By the end of the war, some 200,000 Greek citizens, both workers and peasants, had joined the ranks of KKE. KKE maintained its alliances with the EAM. Its main stated aim at this time was to form a united government with all parties that wanted to see Greece liberated from foreign powers.

ELAS conflicted finally with the rest of the resistance organizations and armies (especially EDES and EKKA), accusing most of them of being traitors and collaborators of the Nazis. These were the first conflicts of the coming civil war.

Nikos Zachariadis was imprisoned in Dachau; he was released in 1945 and returned to Greece as the elected general secretary of the KKE. During his imprisonment, Andreas Tsipas and Georgios Siantos served as party general secretaries.

KKE and the Greek Civil War

Nikos Zachariadis

After the liberation of Greece from German occupational forces, the government of National Unity, led by G. Papandreou, landed in Athens in October 1944. The government was formed after the Treaty of Cazerta and its main purpose was to form the new Greek state, try accused political and military personnel of collaboration with the Germans and to hold a referendum for the government and the constitution. After several weeks, it became obvious to the KKE and EAM that the returning Greek government and their British allies were hostile to the significant amount of control that they exerted in Greece. Papandreou demanded the disarmament of ELAS and the trials of the collaborators were stalled. Meanwhile, British-led Allied forces together with Greek troops were landing in all major Greek cities and EAM was welcoming them as liberators.^{[citation needed]}

In mid-November 1944, the situation escalated dramatically; KKE criticised the interference of General Ronald Scobie in Greek affairs, and EAM refused to disarm ELAS and ELAN as demanded by Scobie. Six ministers of the EAM, resigned from their positions in the government of Georgios Papandreou in November 1944. Fighting broke out in Athens on 3 December 1944 during a demonstration organised by EAM and involving more than 100,000 people. During the demonstration, Greek gendarmes opened on the crowd. More than 28 demonstrators were killed and 148 injured. According to other accounts, it is uncertain if the first shots were fired by the gendarmes or the demonstrators. A member of the pro-monarchists Nikos Farmakis, in one of his interviews revealed that they had a direct order to fire at will when the demonstrators reach the court of the Palace. This incident was the beginning of the 37‑day Battle of Athens (Dekemvriana). Following a ceasefire agreement called the Treaty of Varkiza, ELAS laid down the majority of its weapons and dissolved all of its units. Right-wing groups, including elements which had collaborated with the Germans, seized this opportunity to persecute many KKE members.

According to EAM figures, in the few months after the Treaty of Varkiza the anticommunist violence on the Greek mainland had resulted in the imprisonment or exile of 100,000 ELAS partisans and EAM members, the deaths of 3,000 EAM officials and members, the rape of between 200 and 500 women, the burning of houses and other acts of violence. The KKE Central Committee issued a directive to all party forces not to engage in any armed conflict, but to try to prevent attacks by other means. This caused confusion among the majority of its supporters and served to weaken the party organisation across the country.

Fighters of DSE

Badge of the DSE in which the letter Delta stands for Demokratia, meaning both "Democracy" and "Republic" (in Greek language these words are one and the same)

Large groups had returned to their partisan hideouts in the mountains and gradually formed smaller partisan units. As most of the ELAS armoury had been surrendered under the terms of the Varkiza treaty, these units armed themselves with weapons seized from attacks on militia units that had been provided arms by the police as well as attacking police stations. By mid-1946, these units forced the KKE leadership to change its neutral position and to plan the formation of a partisan army with the officers and fighters that were still free. On 26 October 1946, KKE militia units attacked the police station in Litochoro, armed their forces and founded the Central Greece Command of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). After this successful operation, the remaining scattered groups reorganized the pre-Varkiza Treaty ELAS formations all over the country. KKE's political influence and organization structure helped form units in the Aegean Islands of as Mytilene, Chios, Icaria, Samos and Crete.

The Civil War involved two sides. On the one side was the British and American-backed Greek government, led by Konstantinos Tsaldaris and later Themistoklis Sofoulis, which was elected in the 1946 elections which the KKE had boycotted. On the other side was the Democratic Army of Greece, of which the KKE was the only major political force, backed by the NOF, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania.

In December 1947, the KKE and its allies that participated in the Civil War formed the Provisional Democratic Government ("Mountain Government") under the premiership of Markos Vafeiadis. After this, the KKE (still legal due to the Treaty of Varkiza) turned illegal.

On 29 January 1949, the Greek National Army appointed General Alexandros Papagos Commander-in-Chief. In August 1949, Papagos launched a major counter-offensive against DSE forces in northern Greece, code-named "Operation Torch". The plan was for the Greek National Army to gain control of the border with Albania in order to surround and defeat the DSE forces, numbering 8,500 fighters. The DSE suffered heavy losses from the operation, but managed to retreat its units to Albania.

Charilaos Florakis, whose nom de guerre was Kapetan Yiotis, was a DSE-appointed Brigadier General during this battle. Florakis was ordered by the DSE High Command to re-enter Greece with his battalion via the Gramos Mountains and try to establish connection with all the DSE forces that remained within Greece. The battalion indeed reached small DSE units south of Gramos down to Evritania and retreated thereafter back to Albania. Floriakis later served as General Secretary of KKE from 1972 to 1989.

On 28 August 1949, the Civil War in Greece ended with the DSE forces defeated militarily and politically and KKE entered a new phase in its history.

Post-war era

After the Civil War, the KKE was outlawed and most of its prominent members had to flee Greece, go underground or provide a signed declaration that they renounced communism to avoid prosecution as under Law 504, issued in 1948, a large number of KKE members were either prosecuted, jailed or exiled. Prominent members of the KKE were tried and executed, including Nikos Beloyannis in 1952 and Nikos Ploumpidis in 1954. The execution of Ploumpidis was the last such execution by the post-Civil War governments. The fear of widespread reaction from left-wing citizens curbed further executions and eventually led to the gradual release of most political prisoners. In 1955, there were 4,498 political prisoners and 898 exiles while in 1962 there were 1,359 prisoners and 296 exiles. However, under the prevailing anticommunist rules the communists and KKE sympathizers were barred from the public sector and lived under a repressive anticommunist surveillance system. Such discrimination against communists was partially relieved with the legalization of KKE in 1974 and the discrimination ended in the 1980s.

During this period of illegality, the KKE supported the United Democratic Left (EDA) Party. EDA functioned as the legal political expression of the outlawed KKE. It was not openly communist and attracted moderate voters reaching 70,000 members in the early 60s. Moreover, EDA had a very active youth wing. Historians have argued that the two parties operated parallel paths, something that contributed to the 1968 split between KKE and KKE Esoterikou.

Former king Constantine II claims that in 1964 he proposed to George Papandreou that the KKE be legalized. According to the former monarch, Papandreou refused to comply so as not to lose his party's left-wing supporters. This allegation cannot be verified as it was expressed after Papandreou's death. Moreover, Constantine's public statements regarding communism during the 1960s renders the veracity of this allegation questionable.

During the junta

On 21 April 1967, a group of right-wing Greek Army colonels led by Georgios Papadopoulos successfully carried out a coup d'état on the pretext of imminent "communist threat", establishing what became known as the Regime of the Colonels. All political parties, including EDA, were dissolved and civil liberties were suppressed for all Greek citizens. KKE members were persecuted along with other opponents of the junta.

In 1968, a crisis escalated between KKE's two main factions. The crisis was already festering during the 12th plenum of the party's central committee held in Budapest between 5 and 15 February 1968 in which three members of the politbureau (M. Partsalidis, Z. Zografos and P. Dimitriu) were expelled for fractionist activity and was further triggered by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. This event led a number of Greek communists who were ideologically leaning with the so-called opportunist faction to break with KKE that was loyal to the Socialist Republic's policy and to follow the nascent Eurocommunist line, which favored a more pluralistic approach to socialism. A relatively large group split from KKE, forming what became the Communist Party of Greece (Interior). The spin-off party forged bonds with Eurocommunist parties such as the Italian Communist Party as well as with Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romanian Communist Party. Its supporters referred to KKE as the KKE (Exterior) ("ΚΚΕ εξωτερικού"), inferring that KKE's policies were dictated by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Despite the difficulties resulting from the split, KKE continued its opposition to the Greek Junta throughout the next six years. Its political fighting against the regime took the form of labour disruptions and strikes and small demonstrations all over the country. Its power was rising inside the Universities where the newly founded Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) began working underground. KKE underground forces continued to work closely with other political groups of the center and left within Greece and abroad. In many European capitals anti-Junta committees were founded to support the struggle in Greece.

Legalisation

After the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1974, Konstantinos Karamanlis legalised the KKE hoping to reclaim "a vital part of national memory". In the 1974 elections, the KKE participated with the KKE Interior and the EDA under the name of the United Left, receiving 9.36 per cent of the vote. In the elections from 1977 to 1989, the KKE participated on its own.

In 1989, the political consequences of the Civil War were finally lifted. The war was named "Civil War" instead of "War against the gangs" ("συμμοριτοπόλεμος"), that was the official state name for that era up until that point and DSE fighters were named "DSE fighters" instead of "Communist Gangfighters" ("κουμουνιστοσυμμορίτες").^{[citation needed]}

Participation in government

In 1944, following the Liberation of Greece, KKE participated in the national unity government of George Papandreou, holding the positions of Minister of Finance, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Labor, Minister of National Economy and Public Works and Deputy Minister of Finance. KKE members retained their portfolios until December 2nd (one day before the onset of the Dekemvriana).

In 1988, KKE and Greek Left (Greek EAP; the former KKE Interior), along with other left-wing parties and organisations, formed the Coalition of the Left and Progress (Synaspismos). In the June 1989 elections, Synaspismos gained 13.1 per cent of votes and joined a coalition with New Democracy to form a short-lived government amidst a political spectrum shaken by accusations of economic scandals against the previous administration of Andreas Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement. In November of the same year, Synaspismos participated in the "Ecumenical government" with New Democracy and Panhellenic Socialist Movement which appointed Xenophon Zolotas as prime minister for three months. In 1991, KKE withdrew from Synaspismos. Some KKE members left the party and remained in Synaspismos, which evolved into a separate left-wing party that is now an alliance of Synaspismos with other leftist groups called the Coalition of the Radical Left.

21st century

KKE central building in Athens

Aleka Papariga, the longest serving general secretary of KKE (1991–2013)

Dimitris Koutsoumpas, the incumbent general secretary of KKE since 2013

KKE actively participated in the anti-austerity protests beginning in 2010 and also supported Greek steel worker's strikes.

In the first 2012 legislative election held on 6 May, the party got 8.5% of the vote and increased its parliamentary seats by five for a total of 26 seats. However, in the second 2012 legislative election held a month later, on 17 June 2012, the party's support halved, resulting in a loss of 4 percentage points and 14 MPs.

On 3 June 2014, following the 2014 European elections, the Central Committee of the KKE announced that it would no longer continue the party's affiliation with the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group in the European parliament.

After the failure of the Hellenic Parliament to elect a new President of State in late 2014, the parliament was dissolved and a snap legislative election was scheduled for 25 January 2015, where the party increased its support by one percentage point to 5.5%. At the fresh elections later that year, the party got a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points, reaching 5.6% of the vote. Since the 2015 election, the party saw a further increase in its support in opinion polls, overtaking the former major party PASOK to reach 4th place.

Although KKE was again overtaken by PASOK (now called Movement for Change – KINAL) in the 2019 election, it nonetheless managed to maintain a fourth-place in the polls, due to the decline of far-right party Golden Dawn.

In the 2023 Greek legislative election, KKE won in Icaria.

Policies

Drug reform

KKE opposes decriminalization of drug consumption and drug trafficking. It opposes the division of drugs on more and less harmful, considering harm reduction legislation as "dominant bourgeois policy". It also opposes substitution rehabilitation programs (and endorses "cold turkey" programs) as it believes drug substitutes replace one addiction for another.

KKE positions on drug reform are summed up, among other texts, in an article on one of their websites:

(KKE).. is opposed both to the current repressive policy that imprisons users and frees traders and to the problem management policies as well as to the efforts to privatize the existing detoxification and prevention services. KKE believes in tackling the drug problem effectively. It supports the only realistic solution which is to strengthen the prevention – treatment – reintegration efforts. It says: No to ALL drugs. It denies the separation of soft – hard (drugs). It does not believe in substitution programs, which maintain drug addiction and do not cure it. The substitution should concern special groups (eg with chronic diseases). NO to the decriminalization of hashish. "Demand reduction" policy not "harm reduction" policy.

Economy

The KKE proposes the nationalization of the means of production and to centrally plan the economy. The latter, they argue, would enable the needs of the Greek people to be met. The party seeks the establishment of "popular power" and "popular economy", which would be characterized by social ownership of the means of production, central planning and workers' control. The short-term economic goals of the KKE are redistributive measures such as universal social security, labour protection rights and universal public education. At the same time, the party states that the limits of capitalism in redistributive measures, stressing that only a 'cohesive socialist programme' could provide adequate welfare to the workers.

According to the party, the free market is completely undesirable for the working class; while socialism is a long-term demand, short-term demands also include full employment, wage and pensions increases, the establishment of a 35-hour working week, provisions for the unemployed, establishment of agricultural cooperatives and a social wage system based on need rather than competitiveness. At the same time, the party takes an unequivocally anti-reformist stance, rejecting the possibility of governing within a capitalist system and advocating the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat, built through the central action of a revolutionary socialist state that proceeds to socialise the means of production under the leadership of the party. The KKE stresses that its political proposals depend, first and foremost, on the socialist revolution.

The party supports the economic policy of Joseph Stalin, praising the overall contribution of the USSR to socialism and arguing that history had vindicated Stalin's policies. The party argues that the USSR did not collapse because of structural flaws in its economy, but rather it fell because of the pressure from 'counter-revolutionary' forces inside the CPSU that forced deviations from Marxism-Leninism. The KKE criticises Soviet economic policy of Nikita Khrushchev and his successors, arguing that it resulted in the "disempowerment of central planning" and was based on faulty application of socialist principles of economic management. Instead, the party postulated socializing means of production under central planning and the centralized rule of the communist party.

The KKE connects class struggle with the defense of national sovereignty; it argues that the significance of nation-states did not wither away and instead became crucial, as the influence and sovereignty of the nation-states depends on the power of their national capital and their military power. The party states that the struggle of the proletariat must take place at the national level. At the same time, the KKE argues that the root of issues such as globalization and neoliberalism is capitalism. It states: "The people produce the wealth that belongs to them. But capital receives it. Here lies the root of the problem. Only socialism, with the workers’ taking power, with the social property of the main means of production, has the potential to provide solutions for humankind's great problems."

Foreign policy

The KKE takes a hard Eurosceptic stance. It advocates Greek patriotism alongside proletarian internationalism and considers it its patriotic duty to oppose Greece's EU membership. Furthermore, the KKE is absolutely opposed to Greece remaining in NATO. It argues that Greece is a dependent country, attacking the Greek ruling class for "putting foreign interests above national ones and surrendering national sovereignty by fostering the cosmopolitanism of capital, taking on the role of the flag bearer for NATO, the USA, the EU and playing the role of NATO’s salesman." The party argues that NATO serves the interests of "murderous states such as Israel and Saudi Arabia"; KKE demands the "closure of all foreign military bases in Greece [and] return of the Greek military forces involved in missions outside its borders."

The party considers the United States, the European Union, and Japan to be imperialist powers. The party is also critical of China, accusing it of "predominance of capitalist relations of production" and "assimilation into the imperialist system". It proposes a theory of an "imperialist pyramid", according to which the imperialist system had evolved to make even non-imperialist states interdependent on them, making all capitalist states a part of the imperalist pyramid. However, within the pyramid there exist contradictions and unequal relations which make it possible for the party to outline a 'hierarchy' of imperialism. It considers the United States to be the dominant imperialist power "at the top" of the pyramid, while countries such as China, Russia, Türkiye and Greece are seen as "2nd- and 3rd-tier imperialists". The KKE also believes that the Chinese Communist Party has lost its revolutionary elements, although both parties still maintain bilateral relations with each other. The party does not take a position on Vietnam and Laos, countries that implemented reforms similar to those of China.

In 2022, the KKE condemned "the imperialist war in Ukraine" by issuing an appeal, which was also signed by communist parties in Spain (PCTE), Turkey (TKP), and Mexico (PCM). The KKE has condemned Russia's actions, stating that "the murders of civilians is the most atrocious and barbarous picture of the imperialistic wars from whenever it comes from wherever they take place, either now in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion or in the past in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere with the responsibility of USA and NATO."

The KKE is also critical of the Ukrainian government and boycotted Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the Greek parliament, stating that he "represents a reactionary government backed by the US-NATO-EU camp and like Russia is responsible for the drama of the Ukrainian people" and that he has supported neo-Nazi groups and persecuted Ukrainian communists. The party stresses that it does not support Ukraine, and takes an ambivalent stance by arguing that Western imperialism is the main culprit for the war. Greek political scientist Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos wrote that the KKE takes "a quiet, if not ambivalent, pro-Russian stance". Along with the Portuguese Communist Party, the KKE has a perfect record on voting against resolutions that target Russia in the European Parliament. It also voted against the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, along with a few other Greek parties such as Independent Greeks and the Golden Dawn.

The party supported independent Cyprus, speaking for "a Cyprus united, independent, with one single sovereignty, one citizenship and international personality, without foreign bases and troops, without foreign guarantors and protectors." It rejects a compromise between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots as "an imperialist plot".

In October 2023, KKE officially supported Palestine and condemned Israel in the Gaza war.

LGBT rights

In December 2015, KKE voted against the Civil Partnerships Bill proposed by Syriza that would extend cohabitation agreements to same-sex couples, responding, among other things:

The family is a social relationship, it is an institution for the protection of children, as it was formed in the context of today's society, capitalism. We also believe that civil marriage should be the only, obligatory form of marriage. And whoever wants, let him have the right to the corresponding religious ceremony. But you do not touch upon this urban modernization that has taken place in other countries for years.

If the government wanted to introduce a less "bureaucratic" civil marriage, it could propose the necessary amendments to the Civil Code. There is no need for two legal regulations (civil marriage and cohabitation agreement) on the rights and obligations between spouses, the core of which is the potential reproduction, upbringing and upbringing of children.

Today, this is confirmed by the fact that the Cohabitation Agreement is extended in terms of obligations and rights of both parties, which essentially resembles marriage and especially by the fact that it extends to same-sex couples. Greece's condemnation by the European Court of Justice, cited by the government and the Report, was not a breach of any positive obligation imposed by the European Convention on Human Rights. But it was a negative discrimination against homosexual scales, but in the context of the institutionalization of the Cohabitation Pact. If there was no Cohabitation Pact for heterosexual couples, there would be no question of condemning Greece.

The aim of the bill is essentially the institutional recognition of same-sex couples, including – in a process – the acquisition of children by them. And there, is our disagreement.

Rights and obligations arise within marriage, which is the legal expression of the social relations of the family. It includes social protection of children, who are biologically the result of sexual relations between a man and a woman.

With the formation of a socialist-communist society, a new type of partnership will undoubtedly be formed—a relatively stable heterosexual relationship and reproduction.

One of the party's MPs, Giannis Gkiokas, made a speech further explaining the party's opposition to the Co-habitation Agreement. Gkiokas argued that homosexuality is a personal choice rooted in "chronic social problems arising out of capitalist development", and that same-sex cohabitation agreement would open the way to child adoption by same-sex couples which would "damage children and the reproductive process". He also affirmed KKE's support for the nuclear, heterosexual family as a stable institution of reproduction and raising children that cannot be undermined. Many democratic socialist parties, including Syriza, denounced the KKE's stance as bigotry.

However, the KKE also supports strengthening legislation to punish homophobic behavior, and has spoken against such discrimination, stating that "unacceptable and condemnable discrimination and violence against our fellow human beings, based on their sexual orientation and other personal characteristics, are not addressed by cheap declarations of equality and words of sympathy, but by strengthening legislation against perpetrators of sexism, racism and homophobia, with the full social support of those who suffer from such behaviors. A real shield against such discrimination is collectivism, the struggle for modern social rights for all people."

In 2024, the party voted against legalising gay marriage and same-sex adoption, claiming that "same-sex marriage means abolishing paternity-maternity".

The party published an article by Makis Papadopoulos, a member of the KKE's Central Committee, in its newspaper Rizospastis and 902 TV media outlet. In the article, the party denounces gender transition and puberty blockers, comparing them to experiments of Nazi criminal Josef Mengele. The article also addresses the LGBT movement, arguing that it is a part of the agenda of Western capitalist and imperialist institutions, as well as billionaires like George Soros:

The promotion of gender identity, the right to continuous gender transition, postmodern positions of "individual self-determination," and the lumping together of people with different class positions, political views, and expressions of sexuality into a single "LGBTQ community" are official strategies of the EU and NATO.

A series of legislative measures, such as the European Parental Certificate (which recognizes the parental relationship of a child with three parents of the same biological sex) have already been implemented. Mass entertainment platforms, such as Netflix, bombard viewers with identical messages and portray anyone who rejects them as reactionary, religious, and fascist.

In this direction, the self-proclaimed leadership of LGBTQI is also being utilized, funded and supported by groups such as George Soros, JP Morgan, and General Electric. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, participants discussed how corporate diplomacy will promote the LGBT agenda.

Other policies

The KKE takes a skeptical view towards movements such as feminism and environmentalism and instead adheres to a "workerist and statist tradition". The party has been described as 'conservative communist' as it is considered to be TAN on the GAL-TAN dimension (Green/Alternative/Libertarian vs Traditionalist/Authoritarian/Nationalist) used to measure stances on cultural issues. It is considered one of "the most conservative and least connected to post-materialist values" radical-left parties in Europe. It is considered culturally conservative, and socially conservative. Political scientist Federico Trastulli described KKE as "a markedly economically left-wing party and right-of-centre culturally". The party adopted distinctively socially conservative views in the early 2000s.

It has been described as Stalinist. Political scientist Luke March compared the party to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), writing: "The most appropriate parallel for the contemporary CPRF is now arguably the Greek Communist Party (KKE), known as being a ‘paleaostalinist’ party, with a strong tendency towards national-populism and sectarianism, particularly towards other left-wing parties."

The KKE denounces reformism and progressivism of other left-wing parties as a betrayal of the working class. The party instead "respects the religious feeling that has deep roots in much of the population, and people’s devotion to the Greek language, tradition, habits, prejudices, and superstition", and argues that it "does not attempt to change these behaviors, nor to develop them on a higher theoretical or ideological level, but rather to turn them against what is foreign". It opposes the introduction of foreign universities in Greece, arguing that it amounts to an intellectual and cultural penetration of Greece and its society, injecting the cultural norms of foreign, dominant countries into Greece. Instead, KKE proposes to restore traditional teaching of Greek universities, criticizing reforms as profit and business-oriented that "will only broaden the gap between Greek universities and renowned foreign institutions". Critics of the party consider this stance nationalist.

The party takes a very critical stance towards spontaneous social protests, arguing that they are not revolutionary in substance and stand in contradiction with the actual interests of the workers. It highlights examples such as Greek industrial workers organizing counterprotests against environmental activists given the prospects of losing their jobs. The party denounces movements for environmental causes, animal rights and gender issues as "a form of opportunism that underplays the significance of class struggle" that is easily controlled by imperialist states and institutions. Political scientists Dan Keith and Giorgos Charalambous describe the KKE as traditionalist, authoritarian and nationalist, writing that it is a communist party that is "completely untouched by any kind of liberal, red-green or other leftist thinking".

The party's stances on immigration have been described as nationalist.

It supports the separation of church and state. However, religious people are allowed to join the party and it also has religious associates such as Liana Kanelli; the KKE states that it respects religion and its connection to Greek culture and nation, and does not seek to challenge it.

Splits and alliances

In 1956, after the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at which Nikita Khrushchev denounced the excesses of Joseph Stalin, a faction created the Group of Marxist–Leninists of Greece (OMLE), which split from the party in 1964, becoming the Organisation of Marxists-Leninists of Greece.^{[clarification needed]}

In 1968, amidst the Greek military junta of 1967–1974 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, a relatively big group split from KKE, forming KKE Interior, claiming to be directed from within Greece rather than from the Soviet Union.

In 1988, KKE and Greek Left (the former KKE Interior), along with other left parties and organisations, formed the Coalition of the Left and Progress.

Also in 1989, a majority of members and officials from Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), the KKE's youth wing, split to form the New Left Current (NAR), drawing mainly youth in major cities, especially in Thessaloniki. However, KNE managed to overcome the split of 1989-91, despite the losses in members and officials that resulted initially in a decline of its influence and presence in the country. Already from 1991 the KNE had begun to rebuild itself after the split. Today KNE's student wing, PKS, has won the student elections in Greece since 2022, while the member base of the organisation and its activities have been growing steadily over the years to become one of the most influential and significant youth organisations in Greece during the 2020s.

In the early 2000s, a small group of major party officials such as Mitsos Kostopoulos left the party and formed the Movement for the Unity of Action of the Left (KEDA), which in the 2007 legislative election participated in the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza), which was to win the 2015 national elections with a plurality.

The Congresses of the Communist Party of Greece

• The First Panhellenic Socialist Congress (the founding congress of SEKE) – November 1918, Piraeus
• The 2nd congress – April 1920, Athens
• Extraordinary pre-election congress – September 1920, Athens
• Extraordinary congress – October 1922, Athens
• Extraordinary pre-election congress – September 1923, Athens
• The 3rd (extraordinary) congress – 26 November–3 December 1924, Athens
• The 3rd (ordinary) congress – March 1927, Athens
• The 4th congress – December 1928, Athens
• The 5th congress – March 1934, Athens
• The 6th congress – December 1935, Athens
• The 7th congress – October 1945, Athens
• The 8th congress – August 1961 (illegally)
• The 9th congress – December 1973 (illegally)
• The 10th congress – May 1978
• The 11th congress – December 1982, Athens
• The 12th congress – May 1987
• The 13th congress – 19–24 February 1991, Athens
• The 14th congress – 18–21 December 1991, Athens
• The 15th congress – 22–26 May 1996, Athens
• The 16th congress – 14–17 December 2000, Athens
• The 17th congress – 9–12 February 2005, Athens
• The 18th congress – 18–22 February 2009, Athens
• The 19th congress – 11–14 April 2013, Athens
• The 20th congress – 30 March – 2 April 2017, Athens
• The 21st congress – 24–27 June 2021, Athens

KKE delegations participated in international conferences of Communist and working parties (1957, 1960, 1969, Moscow). KKE approved the documents accepted at the conferences.

Organization

List of First Secretaries and General Secretaries

Pandelis Pouliopoulos, a supporter of the internationalist and revolutionary character of the communist movement

1. Nikolaos Dimitratos (November 1918 – February 1922), expelled from the party on charges of "suspect behavior"^{[citation needed]}
2. Yanis Kordatos (February–November 1922)
3. Nikolaos Sargologos (November 1922 – September 1923), expelled from the party on charges of "espionage"^{[citation needed]}
4. Thomas Apostolidis (September 1923 – December 1924), expelled from the party on charges of "opportunism"^{[citation needed]}
5. Pandelis Pouliopoulos (December 1924 – September 1925)
6. Eleftherios Stavridis (1925–1926), expelled from the party on charges of pro-bourgeoisies political position
7. Pastias Giatsopoulos (September 1926 – March 1927), expelled from the party on charges of "liquidarism"^{[citation needed]}
8. Andronikos Chaitas (March 1927 – 1931), expelled from the party and executed in the Soviet Union in 1938^{[citation needed]}
9. Nikos Zachariadis (1931–1936), first term
10. Andreas Tsipas (July 1941 – September 1941)
11. Georgios Siantos (January 1942 – May 1945), caretaker until the return of Zachariadis
12. Nikos Zachariadis (May 1945 – March 1956), second term
13. Apostolos Grozos (March – June 1956)
14. Kostas Koligiannis (June 1956 – December 1972)
15. Charilaos Florakis (December 1972 – July 1989)
16. Grigoris Farakos (July 1989 – February 1991), resigned from the party to join Synaspismos
17. Aleka Papariga (February 1991 – April 2013)
18. Dimitris Koutsoumpas (April 2013 – present)

Party membership

Membership (1918–2008)
Year	Number of members
1918	1,000
1920	1,320
1924	2,200
1926	2,500
1928	2,000
1930	1,500
1933	4,416
1934	6,000 (est.)
1936 (start)	17,500
1936 (mid)	<10,000 (est.)
1941	200 (est.) free + 2,000 in prison
1942 (December)	15,000
1944 (June)	250,000
1944 (October)	420,000–450,000
1945 (October)	45,000
1946 (February)	<100,000
1948	<50,000
2008	<10,000

Youth organisation

The youth organization of the KKE is the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), which is under the all-round guidance of the KKE. It was illegally founded in 1968 during the anti-communist military junta. KNE members have been dominant in the Greek universities since 2022 under the Panspoudastiki.

Associated organizations

It publishes the daily newspaper Rizospastis. It also publishes the political and theoretical journal Komounistiki Epitheorisi (Communist Review) every two months and a journal covering educational issues, Themata Paideias.

International affiliation

KKE 100 year anniversary logo

The KKE stands in elections and has representatives in the Hellenic Parliament, local authorities and the European Parliament, where its two MEPs sit with the Non-Inscrits.

KKE is currently trying to mold a loose and rather disorganised international communist movement along a purely Marxist–Leninist line. Since its 18th congress (February 2009), KKE has opened up a discussion within the ranks and more broadly within the Greek left-leaning community on the future evolution of communism in the 21st century, with a particular emphasis on examining the causes of the collapse of the Socialist system in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe.

Election results

Communist Party support in June 2023 election

Hellenic Parliament

Election	Hellenic Parliament					Rank	Government	Leader
	Votes	%	±pp	Seats won	+/−
1928	14,352	1,56%	0	0 / 250	0	#12	No seats	Collective leadership
1932	58,233	4.97%	3.56	13 / 250	13	#6	Opposition	Νikos Zachariadis
1933	52,958	4.64%	0.33	0 / 248	13	#4	No seats
1935	All People Front			0 / 300	0	#3	No seats
1936				15 / 300	15	#4	Opposition
1974	With United Left			5 / 300	5	4th	Opposition	Charilaos Florakis
1977^A	480,272	9.4%	−0.1	11 / 300	6	4th	Opposition
1981	620,302	10.9%	+1.5	13 / 300	2	3rd	Opposition
1985	629,525	9.9%	−1.0	12 / 300	1	3rd	Opposition
June 1989	With Synaspismos			20 / 300	8	3rd	Interim government ND–SYN
November 1989				16 / 300	4	3rd	National unity government ND–PASOK–SYN	Grigoris Farakos
1990				15 / 300	1	3rd	Opposition
1993^B	313,001	4.5%	−5.7	9 / 300	6	4th	Opposition	Aleka Papariga
1996	380,046	5.6%	+1.1	11 / 300	2	3rd	Opposition
2000	379,454	5.5%	−0.1	11 / 300	0	3rd	Opposition
2004	436,818	5.9%	+0.4	12 / 300	1	3rd	Opposition
2007	583,750	8.2%	+2.3	22 / 300	10	3rd	Opposition
2009	517,154	7.5%	−0.7	21 / 300	1	3rd	Opposition
May 2012	536,105	8.5%	+1.0	26 / 300	5	5th	Snap election
Jun 2012	277,227	4.5%	−4.0	12 / 300	14	7th	Opposition
Jan 2015	338,138	5.5%	+1.0	15 / 300	3	5th	Opposition	Dimitris Koutsoumpas
Sep 2015	301,632	5.6%	+0.1	15 / 300	0	5th	Opposition
2019	299,592	5.3%	−0.3	15 / 300	0	4th	Opposition
May 2023	426,741	7.2%	+1.9	26 / 300	11	4th	Snap election
June 2023	401,187	7.7%	+0.5	21 / 300	5	4th	Opposition

^A 1977 results compared to the United Left totals in the 1974 election.
^B 1993 results compared to the Synaspismos totals in the 1990 election.

European Parliament

European Parliament
Election	Votes	%	±pp	Seats won	+/−	Rank	Leader	EP Group
1981	729,052	12.84%	New	3 / 24	New	3rd	Charilaos Florakis	COM
1984	693,304	11.64%	−1.20	3 / 24	0	3rd
1989^A	936,175	14.31%	+2.67	4 / 24	1	3rd		EUL
1994	410,741	6.29%	−8.02	2 / 25	2	4th	Aleka Papariga	GUE/NGL
1999	557,365	8.67%	+2.38	3 / 25	1	3rd
2004	580,396	9.48%	+0.81	3 / 24	0	3rd
2009	428,151	8.35%	−1.13	2 / 22	1	3rd
2014	349,342	6.11%	−2.24	2 / 21	0	6th	Dimitris Koutsoumpas	Non-attached
2019	302,677	5.35%	−0.76	2 / 21	0	4th
2024	367,796	9.25%	+3.90	2 / 21	0	5th

^A Contested as part of the Coalition of the Left and Progress.

See also

• Communism portal
• Conservatism portal
• Greece portal
• Politics portal

• All-Workers Militant Front (PAME)
• International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties
• Initiative of Communist and Workers' Parties
• Socialism in Greece

Notes

1. The party was formerly part of the Communist International (Comintern; 1920–1943).
2. Greek: Σοσιαλιστικό Εργατικό Κόμμα Ελλάδος – Sosialistikó Ergatikó Kómma Elládos. After the party's admission to the Communist International in 1920, it changed its full name to Socialist Workers' Party of Greece (Communist) (SEKE (K)).

Citations

1. ΔΕΝΕΖΑΚΗΣ, ΑΝΔΡΕΑΣ (16 November 2021). "17 Νοέμβρη 1918 – Η ίδρυση του ΚΚΕ (του Ανδρέα Δενεζάκη)". Ημεροδρόμος. Archived from the original on 2 February 2022. Retrieved 14 September 2022.
2. Sam, Bollier (1 May 2012). "A guide to Greece's political parties". Retrieved 25 December 2014.
3. Nordsieck, Wolfram (2019). "Greece". Parties and Elections in Europe. Archived from the original on 26 January 2018. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
4. Santana, Andrés; Rama, José (2018). "Electoral support for left wing populist parties in Europe: addressing the globalization cleavage". European Politics and Society. 19 (5). Taylor & Francis: 13. doi:10.1080/23745118.2018.1482848. Finally, although some authors posit that KKE in Greece has assumed a populist discourse, for others, the KKE is a communist party with a clear Leninist-Marxist discourse.
6. • Sam, Bollier (1 May 2012). "A guide to Greece's political parties". Retrieved 25 December 2014.
   • Nordsieck, Wolfram (2019). "Greece". Parties and Elections in Europe. Archived from the original on 26 January 2018. Retrieved 22 April 2018.
   • "KKE". VouliWatch. Retrieved 22 April 2024.
   • Santana, Andrés; Rama, José (2018). "Electoral support for left wing populist parties in Europe: addressing the globalization cleavage". European Politics and Society. 19 (5). Taylor & Francis: 13. doi:10.1080/23745118.2018.1482848. Finally, although some authors posit that KKE in Greece has assumed a populist discourse, for others, the KKE is a communist party with a clear Leninist-Marxist discourse.
   • Raos, Višeslav (2022). "After the Storm: Party Systems in Southern Europe in the Wake of the Eurocrisis". Suvremeni Mediteran. 1 (1). Hrčak: 28. doi:10.17818/SM/2021/1.2. The rather unusual far-right outliers for the Greek party system in the 2000s pertain to the Greek Communist Party (KKE), an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party with underpinnings of social conservatism.
7. • Tye, Danny (23 February 2024). "The Cradle of Queer Civilisation? Why Gays Still Love Greece". Gay 45. NPR reported that political opposition to the bill was present within the Hellenic Parliament, though limited to small far-right parties and the socially conservative Communist Party.
   • Raos, Višeslav (2022). "After the Storm: Party Systems in Southern Europe in the Wake of the Eurocrisis". Suvremeni Mediteran. 1 (1). Hrčak: 28. doi:10.17818/SM/2021/1.2. The rather unusual far-right outliers for the Greek party system in the 2000s pertain to the Greek Communist Party (KKE), an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party with underpinnings of social conservatism.
   • Glasser, Brad (22 November 2024). "'Conservative leftists' want to upset the political spectrum". Semafor. BSW has been placed in a tradition of "Old Left" parties that retain the social conservatism of the Soviet era. Communist and social democratic parties across Europe fall into this vein, like the Communist Party of Greece, which has campaigned against same-sex marriage in the country.
   • Chessum, Michael (16 February 2025). "Why the left failed". The New World. The Greek Communist Party (KKE), for instance, has long combined strong leftist economic policies with socially conservative views, including opposition to gay marriage.
   • "(Re) Elecciones Griegas: ¿Otra mayoría absoluta para la derecha?". Carta Política (in Spanish). 24 June 2023. Asimismo, la presencia del KKE, el cual no solo es socialmente conservador, sino también pro - ruso, rompe casi todas las posibilidades de esta unidad, pues muchos dirigentes de este partido prefieren la continuación de ND antes que un gobierno progresista. [Furthermore, the presence of the KKE, which is not only socially conservative but also pro-Russian, undermines almost all possibilities for this unity, as many leaders of this party prefer the continuation of ND to a progressive government.]
   • Heinö, Andreas Johansson [in Swedish] (April 2024). "Índice del Populismo Autoritario". Timbro (in Spanish). Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation: 169. Además de estar muy a la izquierda en cuestiones económicas, el KKE está en contra de la pertenencia de Grecia a la OTAN y a la UE, y adopta posturas conservadoras en cuestiones sociales. [In addition to being far to the left on economic issues, the KKE is against the Greek membership in NATO and the EU and takes conservative positions on social issues.]
   • Martins Lopes, José Pedro (April 2019). O marxismo-leninismo e a crise económica e financeira de 2008: oportunidades e desafios em análise (PDF) (Mestrado em Ciência Política thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade do Minho. p. 90. Demonstra-se nesta dissertação que a crise trouxe um aumento do ceticismo face à integração europeia para ambos os partidos, que o KKE se tornou mais autoritário no pós-crise e o PCP mais nacionalista. Os comunistas gregos mantêm-se mais à esquerda e mais eurocéticos do que os portugueses. PCP e KKE radicalizaram ligeiramente o seu posicionamento na dimensão esquerda-direita económica e não só se tornaram um pouco mais céticos face à integração europeia, como aumentaram a saliência desta dimensão nas suas posições políticas. O posicionamento de ambos face às new politics não registou alterações significativas, especialmente no que toca ao conservadorismo social. [This dissertation demonstrates that the crisis has led to increased scepticism towards European integration for both parties, with the KKE becoming more authoritarian in the post-crisis period and the PCP becoming more nationalist. The Greek communists remain further to the left and more Eurosceptic than their Portuguese counterparts. The PCP and KKE have slightly radicalised their position on the economic left-right dimension and have not only become a little more sceptical about European integration, but have also increased the prominence of this dimension in their political positions. The position of both parties on new politics has not changed significantly, especially with regard to their social conservatism.]
   The party is also considered culturally conservative:
   
   • Charalambous, Giorgos (2020). "The Communists". In Kevin Featherstone; Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 324. ISBN 978-0-19-882510-4. Moreover, Greek communism is pervaded by a cultural conservatism, most evident in the KKE's adamantly negative position on soft drugs and its recent intervention concerning the (SYRIZA) Government's proposed legislation on same-sex marriage (the Co-habitation Agreement).
   • Tsatsanis, Emmanouil (2024). Lamprini Rori; Vasiliki Georgiadou; Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos; Eftychia Teperoglou; Yannis Tsirbas; Lamprini Rori (eds.). "The Greek Party Landscape in 2023" (PDF). Democracy and Human Rights Policy Brief. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: 11. By looking at the distribution of KKE voters' answers on each of the 30 issues included in the What2Vote questionnaire, we are able to identify the main sources of party–voter incongruence. On the cultural axis, much of the incongruence results from the party's conservative stances on issues.
   • Souer, Michael (2020). The Missing Quadrant: Left-conservative parties and voters in Western Europe (Master in Political Science thesis). Universiteit Leiden. p. 14. In 2006, before these developments, Greece had two parties positioned in the leftconservative quadrant; the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI), a split-off of PASOK, both combined a far-left economic position with a mildly culturally conservative position. While DIKKI has since descended into obscurity, Figure 4 reveals that the KKE has in fact moved further right on the sociocultural dimension, from a 6.1 to a 7.
   • Thorne, Judy (2020). 'What do you want the world to be like in the future?' Utopian ethnography in the crisis-ordinary of late 2010s Pátra, Greece (Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities thesis). University of Manchester. Cóstas point blank refused to attend the party's summer cultural festival, at which the ageing Greek rockstar Vasilis Papakonstantinou headlined, to an enormous crowd of people who my KKE informants pointed out to me were not communists but who had just showed up for the free concert. Cóstas told me that this kind of crowd-pleasing was how the party justified its cultural conservatism.
8. Tsakatika, Myrto (2018). "SYRIZA's Electoral Rise in Greece: Protest, Trust and the Art of Political Manipulation". In Anna Bosco; Susannah Verney (eds.). Crisis Elections, New Contenders and Government Formation: Breaking the Mould in Southern Europe. Taylor & Francis. p. 215. ISBN 978-1-138-57243-0. SYRIZA could be argued to have been in a better position than both the hard eurosceptic KKE and the 'uncritically' pro-European DIMAR and The River to benefit from this upsurge.
9. Martins Lopes, José Pedro (April 2019). O marxismo-leninismo e a crise económica e financeira de 2008: oportunidades e desafios em análise (PDF) (Mestrado em Ciência Política thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade do Minho. p. 11. O autor demonstra que a maioria dos PER são soft eurosceptics (por exemplo, Partido Comunista Espanhol, Die Linke e Rifondazione); contudo, comprova também a existência hard eurosceptics (por exemplo, KKE e PCP). [The author demonstrates that most PERs are soft Eurosceptics (e.g., Spanish Communist Party, Die Linke, and Rifondazione); however, he also proves the existence of hard Eurosceptics (e.g., KKE and PCP).]
11. Nicolò Conti (4 December 2013). Party Attitudes Towards the EU in the Member States: Parties for Europe, Parties Against Europe. Routledge. p. 155. ISBN 978-1-317-93656-5. Archived from the original on 25 December 2023. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
12. Bart van der Steen (1 September 2014). The City Is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present. PM Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-60486-683-4. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020.
13. David Sanders; Pedro Magalhaes; Gabor Toka (26 July 2012). Citizens and the European Polity: Mass Attitudes Towards the European and National Polities. OUP Oxford. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-19-960233-9. Archived from the original on 25 December 2023. Retrieved 30 September 2016.
14. March, Luke (2009). "Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream?" (PDF). IPG. 1: 126–143. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 June 2018 – via Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
15. Escalona, Fabien; Keith, Daniel; March, Luke (17 April 2023). The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Left Parties in Europe. Springer Nature. p. 263. ISBN 1137562641. Retrieved 15 August 2025. There were also two parties of the radical left ranging from 10 to 15 per cent of the vote. Before the 1990s, these were the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Communist Party of Greece (interior) (KKE [es]). After the 1990s, these were the KKE and Synaspismós (Coalition of Left and Progress/Coalition of Left of Movements and Ecology), which later transformed into Syriza (Coalition of Radical Left).
17. "European Communist Action | Founding Declaration". www.eurcomact.org. Retrieved 17 December 2023.
18. "Communist Party of Greece – Statement of the Central Committee of the KKE on the stance of the KKE in the EU parliament". inter.kke.gr. Archived from the original on 22 May 2023. Retrieved 18 December 2022.
19. • Souer, Michael (2020). The Missing Quadrant: Left-conservative parties and voters in Western Europe (Master in Political Science thesis). Universiteit Leiden. p. 14. In 2006, before these developments, Greece had two parties positioned in the leftconservative quadrant; the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI), a split-off of PASOK, both combined a far-left economic position with a mildly culturally conservative position. While DIKKI has since descended into obscurity, Figure 4 reveals that the KKE has in fact moved further right on the sociocultural dimension, from a 6.1 to a 7.
    • "National elections in Greece: Conservatism and the far right win". Pressenza Athens. Athens. 28 June 2023. Only the conservative left, expressed by the KKE, emerged stronger, while MeRA25 was left out of parliament.
    • Kostopoulou, Maria (2020). Far-Left Party Family in Europe: The socioeconomic factors of far-left voting (Bachelor thesis). Athens: Athens University of Economics and Business. p. 15. The Communist Party of Greece* (KKE) classified as a conservative extremist far-left party and the Syriza classified as a radical far-left party until 2015.
20. Thomeczek, Jan Philipp (2024). "Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW): Left-Wing Authoritarian—and Populist? An Empirical Analysis". Politische Vierteljahresschrift. 65 (1). Springer: 552. doi:10.1007/s11615-024-00544-z. hdl:10419/315570. According to the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Bakker et al. 2019), there are several parties with a similar left-authoritarian profile in Europe. Examples are the Social Democratic Party in Romania (PSD), the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), and far-left parties such as the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM). Furthermore, a similar profile is found in the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland (Hillen and Steiner 2020, p. 344), which led the government for almost 20 years.
21. Kyrkos, Vaggelis (3 November 2018). "Ποιοι ήταν αυτοί που ίδρυσαν το ΚΚΕ [Who were founders of the KKE]". Newsbeast (in Greek). Archived from the original on 4 November 2018.
22. Bollier, Sam (1 May 2012). "A guide to Greece's political parties". Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 9 July 2021.
23. "European Communist Action's Founding Declaration". 27 November 2023. Archived from the original on 2 December 2023. Retrieved 1 December 2023.
24. "Καταστατικό". www.kke.gr (in Greek). Retrieved 21 June 2025.
25. Trimikliniotis, Nicos (2019). "The national question, partition and geopolitics in the 21st century: the Cyprus problem, the social question and the politics of reconciliation". In Robert Latham; Karen Bridget Murray; Julian von Bargen; A. T. Kingsmith (eds.). The Radical Left and Social Transformation: Strategies of Augmentation and Reorganization. Taylor & Francis. p. 266. ISBN 978-0-367-10989-9.
26. Halikiopoulou, Daphne; Vasilopoulou, Sofia; Nanou, Kyriaki (19 July 2010). "The Paradox of Nationalism: The Common Denominator of Radical Left and Radical Right Euroscepticism". SSRN. SSRN 1643722. α) «Although KKE is not an anti-immigrant party (KKE, 2009: 14), it is still a party whose rhetoric is strongly nationalistic.» β) «Similarly to the KKE, this radical left nationalism can be understood as anti-imperialist, anti-collaborationist, anti-Western and economically isolationist.
27. Halikiopoulou, Daphne; Vasilopoulou, Sofia; Nanou, Kyriaki (19 July 2010). "The Paradox of Nationalism: The Common Denominator of Radical Left and Radical Right Euroscepticism". SSRN. SSRN 1643722. α) The party suggests that the only economic route for Greece is one of self-sustenance which would entail complete nationalisation of the means of production and a return to more traditional means of economic development such as agriculture of specifically Greek products (KKE, 2007: 12). β)) «KKE's economic nationalism equates the EU with globalisation and globalisation with capitalism. The party suggests that the only economic route for Greece is one of self-sustenance which would entail complete nationalisation of the means of production and a return to more traditional means of economic development such as agriculture of specifically Greek products (KKE, 2007: 12).»
28. • Tye, Danny (23 February 2024). "The Cradle of Queer Civilisation? Why Gays Still Love Greece". Gay 45. NPR reported that political opposition to the bill was present within the Hellenic Parliament, though limited to small far-right parties and the socially conservative Communist Party.
    • Raos, Višeslav (2022). "After the Storm: Party Systems in Southern Europe in the Wake of the Eurocrisis". Suvremeni Mediteran. 1 (1). Hrčak: 28. doi:10.17818/SM/2021/1.2. The rather unusual far-right outliers for the Greek party system in the 2000s pertain to the Greek Communist Party (KKE), an orthodox Marxist-Leninist party with underpinnings of social conservatism.
    • Glasser, Brad (22 November 2024). "'Conservative leftists' want to upset the political spectrum". Semafor. BSW has been placed in a tradition of "Old Left" parties that retain the social conservatism of the Soviet era. Communist and social democratic parties across Europe fall into this vein, like the Communist Party of Greece, which has campaigned against same-sex marriage in the country.
    • Chessum, Michael (16 February 2025). "Why the left failed". The New World. The Greek Communist Party (KKE), for instance, has long combined strong leftist economic policies with socially conservative views, including opposition to gay marriage."(Re) Elecciones Griegas: ¿Otra mayoría absoluta para la derecha?". Carta Política (in Spanish). 24 June 2023. Asimismo, la presencia del KKE, el cual no solo es socialmente conservador, sino también pro - ruso, rompe casi todas las posibilidades de esta unidad, pues muchos dirigentes de este partido prefieren la continuación de ND antes que un gobierno progresista. [Furthermore, the presence of the KKE, which is not only socially conservative but also pro-Russian, undermines almost all possibilities for this unity, as many leaders of this party prefer the continuation of ND to a progressive government.]
    • Heinö, Andreas Johansson [in Swedish] (April 2024). "Índice del Populismo Autoritario". Timbro. Swedish Free Enterprise Foundation: 169. Además de estar muy a la izquierda en cuestiones económicas, el KKE está en contra de la pertenencia de Grecia a la OTAN y a la UE, y adopta posturas conservadoras en cuestiones sociales. [In addition to being far to the left on economic issues, the KKE is against the Greek membership in NATO and the EU and takes conservative positions on social issues.]
    • Martins Lopes, José Pedro (April 2019). O marxismo-leninismo e a crise económica e financeira de 2008: oportunidades e desafios em análise (PDF) (Mestrado em Ciência Política thesis) (in Portuguese). Universidade do Minho. p. 90. Demonstra-se nesta dissertação que a crise trouxe um aumento do ceticismo face à integração europeia para ambos os partidos, que o KKE se tornou mais autoritário no pós-crise e o PCP mais nacionalista. Os comunistas gregos mantêm-se mais à esquerda e mais eurocéticos do que os portugueses. PCP e KKE radicalizaram ligeiramente o seu posicionamento na dimensão esquerda-direita económica e não só se tornaram um pouco mais céticos face à integração europeia, como aumentaram a saliência desta dimensão nas suas posições políticas. O posicionamento de ambos face às new politics não registou alterações significativas, especialmente no que toca ao conservadorismo social. [This dissertation demonstrates that the crisis has led to increased scepticism towards European integration for both parties, with the KKE becoming more authoritarian in the post-crisis period and the PCP becoming more nationalist. The Greek communists remain further to the left and more Eurosceptic than their Portuguese counterparts. The PCP and KKE have slightly radicalised their position on the economic left-right dimension and have not only become a little more sceptical about European integration, but have also increased the prominence of this dimension in their political positions. The position of both parties on new politics has not changed significantly, especially with regard to their social conservatism.]
29. • Charalambous, Giorgos (2020). "The Communists". In Kevin Featherstone; Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 324. ISBN 978-0-19-882510-4. Moreover, Greek communism is pervaded by a cultural conservatism, most evident in the KKE's adamantly negative position on soft drugs and its recent intervention concerning the (SYRIZA) Government's proposed legislation on same-sex marriage (the Co-habitation Agreement).
    • Tsatsanis, Emmanouil (2024). Lamprini Rori; Vasiliki Georgiadou; Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos; Eftychia Teperoglou; Yannis Tsirbas; Lamprini Rori (eds.). "The Greek Party Landscape in 2023" (PDF). Democracy and Human Rights Policy Brief. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: 11. By looking at the distribution of KKE voters' answers on each of the 30 issues included in the What2Vote questionnaire, we are able to identify the main sources of party–voter incongruence. On the cultural axis, much of the incongruence results from the party's conservative stances on issues.
    • Souer, Michael (2020). The Missing Quadrant: Left-conservative parties and voters in Western Europe (Master in Political Science thesis). Universiteit Leiden. p. 14. In 2006, before these developments, Greece had two parties positioned in the leftconservative quadrant; the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and the Democratic Social Movement (DIKKI), a split-off of PASOK, both combined a far-left economic position with a mildly culturally conservative position. While DIKKI has since descended into obscurity, Figure 4 reveals that the KKE has in fact moved further right on the sociocultural dimension, from a 6.1 to a 7.
    • Thorne, Judy (2020). 'What do you want the world to be like in the future?' Utopian ethnography in the crisis-ordinary of late 2010s Pátra, Greece (Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities thesis). University of Manchester. Cóstas point blank refused to attend the party's summer cultural festival, at which the ageing Greek rockstar Vasilis Papakonstantinou headlined, to an enormous crowd of people who my KKE informants pointed out to me were not communists but who had just showed up for the free concert. Cóstas told me that this kind of crowd-pleasing was how the party justified its cultural conservatism.
30. "Political parties of Greece". archive.wikiwix.com (in German). Retrieved 21 June 2025.
31. Eleftheriou, Costas (1 January 2015). "Greek anti-imperialism: contemporary era". Cope, Z. And I. Ness (Eds), Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, Pp. 341-346.
32. Οι ρίζες του Ελληνικού Κομμουνιστικού Κινήματος – Roots of the Greek Communist Movement.
33. Andrew L. Zapantis, Greek Soviet Relations 1917–1941, 1983.
34. Δοκίμιο Ιστορίας του ΚΚΕ-Study on the history of CPG
35. KKE, Επίσημα Κείμενα, τ1, τ2 – CPG, Official Documents v1, v2
36. S. Seferiadis, 'The Coercive Impulse: Policing Labour in Interwar Greece', Journal of Contemporary History, January 2005.
37. Δοκίμιο Ιστορίας του ΚΚΕ – Study in the History of CPG
38. Rizospastis, 27 January 1925.
39. Rizospastis, 1 March 1925.
40. Ireneusz A. Ślupkov, The Communist Party of Greece and the Macedonian National Problem 1918–1940, Szczecin, Poland, 2006, pp. 31–48
41. For The Issue of Self-Determination of the People, V.I.Lenin
42. Α. Δάγκας - Γ. Λεοντιάδης, Κομιντέρν και Μακεδονικό ζήτημα: το ελληνικό παρασκήνιο, 1924, Τροχαλία, σελ. 91.
43. Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece, Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 106, 141.
44. KKE, Πέντε Χρόνια Αγώνες 1931–1936, Athens, 2nd ed., 1946.
45. Rizospastis, 24 October 1945.
46. Δημοκρατικός Στρατός magazine, edited by Ριζοσπάστης, 1996, vol. I, pp. 408–412.
47. KKE, Official Documents, vol. 6, pp. 356, 338.
48. Επίσημα Κείμενα ΚΚΕ, vol. 6
49. KKE, History of the Communist Party of Greece.
50. Aggelos Elefantis, The Promise of the Impossible Revolution, Greek Communist Party self-meditation and the bourgeois during the inter-war Period, Themelio, 3rd edition, 1999.
51. KKE, Official Documents, vol. 5, 1940–1945, p. 11.
52. C. M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece, Hurst & Company, 1976, p. 16
53. KKE, Official Documents, vol 5, 1940–1945
54. KKE, Official Documents, vol4, vol5
55. History of the National Resistance, 1940–1945, vol1
56. Study in the History of KKE
57. KKE, Official Documents, vol. 5, 1940–1945, p. 9.
58. Aggelos Elefantis, The Promise of the Impossible Revolution, Greek Communist Party self-meditation and the bourgeois during the inter-war Period, Themelio, 3rd edition, 1999, pp. 300–301.
59. C. M. Woodhouse, The Struggle for Greece, Hurst & Company, 1976, p. 17.
60. Ριζοσπάστης, 17 June 1941
61. Giannis Marinos (29 October 2006). "Ένα παράθυρο στην αλήθεια". To Vima. Archived from the original on 23 December 2007. Retrieved 2 October 2007.
62. KKE, Official Documents, vol. 5, 1940–1945.
63. Study of the History of the KKE.
64. Courtois, Stéphane, et al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 326.
65. KKE Central Committee, 7 December 1940.
66. KKE, Official Documents, vol. 5, 1940–1945, p. 15.
67. KKE, Official Documents, vol.6
68. Γιάννης Ιωαννίδης, ΑΝΑΜΝΗΣΕΙΣ p. 63
69. Biographical Dictionary of The Comintern, by Branko Lazitch and Milorad Drachkovitch, The Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1986, p.192.
70. History of the National Resistance 1940–1945
71. The Civil War in Peloponissos , A. Kamarinos
72. Experiences of Armed Struggles, 1940–1949, Papageorgiou
73. Charilaos Florakis, The People's Leader
74. "Εφημερίδα "Ριζοσπάστης" – "Rizospastis" newspaper : ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΗ". Archived from the original on 15 February 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
75. "Εφημερίδα "Ριζοσπάστης" – "Rizospastis" newspaper : ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΗ". Archived from the original on 15 February 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
76. History of the National Resistance 1940–1945, vol 1
77. KKE, Official Documents.
78. V. Georgiou, History of the National Resistance 1940–1945, vol. 1, Aylos, 1979, pp. 188, 248–249.
79. History of the National Resistance 1940-145
80. P. Papastratis, 'From the "Great Idea" to Balkan Union', in M. Sarafis and M. Eve (eds.), Background to Contemporary Greece, Rowman & Littlefield, 1990.
81. K. Barbis, The Greek tragedy, in three stages, Pelasgos, Athens, 2000.
82. Kessel Album, Athens 1944.
83. Spyros Kotsakis, Captain in ELAS First Army, December 1944 in Athens, Athens, 1986.
84. C. M. Woodhouse, Modern Greece, Faber and Faber, 1991, p. 253.
85. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9km1I5tuaY Archived 31 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine, 4:38
86. Stavrianos, L. S., and Panagopoulos, E. P. "Present-Day Greece." The Journal of Modern History. Vol. 20, no. 2, (June 1948), pp. 149–158.
87. "To Pontiki, Civil War: 60 Years Later". Archived from the original on 4 October 2011. Retrieved 16 October 2007.
88. A. Kamarinos, The Civil War in the Peloponessus, Athens, 2000.
89. Δημοκρατικός Στρατός magazine, edited by Ριζοσπάστης, 1996.
90. Thrasimvoulos Tsakalotos 40 years soldier of Greece
91. Charilaos Florakis, The Peoples Leader
92. Polymeris Voglis, Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners During the Greek Civil War, Berghahn Books, 2002, p. 223.
93. Minas Samatas, "Greek McCarthyism: A Comparative Assessment of Greek Post-Civil War Repressive Anticommunism and the US Truman-McCarthy Era", Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora.
94. Kalyvas, Stathis; Marantzidis, Nikos (2002). "Greek Communism, 1968–2001" (PDF). East European Politics and Societies. 16 (3): 665–690 here 666–667. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 August 2019. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
95. Thanassis Lalas, "Constantine Speaks About All", BHMAgazino, 3 June 2001.
96. "KNE, Our History". Archived from the original on 23 December 2007.
97. "ΕΚΘΕΣΗ ΚΑΙ ΣΥΜΠΕΡΑΣΜΑΤΑ ΓΙΑ ΤΑ ΓΕΓΟΝΟΤΑ ΤΟΥ ΝΟΕΜΒΡΗ 1973" KE, Ιούλιος 1976, http://www.kne.gr/179.html Archived 28 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine
98. Carabott, Philip; Sfikas, Thanasis D. (2004). The Greek Civil War: Essays on a Conflict of Exceptionalism and Silences. Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-4132-2.
99. Lubin, Gus (17 May 2010). "How The Greek Communist Party Plans To Solve The Crisis". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 6 January 2015. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
100. https://nonomnismoriarfilm.weebly.com/tauomicron-nutauomicronkappaiotamualphanutauepsilonrho.htmls ^{[dead link]}
101. "Communist Party of Greece – Statement of the Central Committee of the KKE on the stance of the KKE in the EU parliament". Archived from the original on 7 June 2014. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
102. "Πρώτο κόμμα το ΚΚΕ στην Ικαρία". StoNisi.gr. Archived from the original on 22 May 2023. Retrieved 22 May 2023.
103. "Δήλωση του Δημήτρη Κουτσούμπα για την Παγκόσμια Ημέρα Κατά των Ναρκωτικών". www.kke.gr (in Greek). Archived from the original on 14 March 2021. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
104. "Whole life, not in doses". Ριζοσπάστης. 13 May 2010. Archived from the original on 15 March 2015. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
105. "What About the Greek Communist Party?". Archived from the original on 24 January 2022. Retrieved 12 January 2022.
106. Teperoglou, Eftichia. "Political parties of Greece – a map of the political landscape". Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. Athens.
107. Keith, Dan; Charalambous, Giorgos (2016). "On the (non) distinctiveness of Marxism-Leninism: The Portuguese and Greek communist parties compared". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 49 (2). Elsevier. doi:10.1016/j.postcomstud.2016.04.001.
108. Lopes, José Pedro; Vieira, Alena (October 2022). "O que resta do marxismo-leninismo? O Partido Comunista Português (PCP) e o Partido Comunista da Grécia (KKE) em análise". In Fernando Bessa Ribeiro; Manuel Carlos Silva; Almerindo Janela Afonso; Cristina Matos; Francisco Mendes; Isabel Estrada Carvalhais; Sílvia Sousa e Ana Jorge (eds.). Karl Marx: legado, críticas e atualidade (in Portuguese). Edições Húmus. pp. 358–360. ISBN 978-989-755-788-0.
109. Vasilopoulou, S. (2018). The party politics of Euroscepticism in times of crisis: The case of Greece. Politics, 38(3), 311–326. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718770599 Archived 25 December 2023 at the Wayback Machine
110. "ΚΚΕ: Ο πατριωτισμός ταυτίζεται με την πάλη κατά του ευρωμονόδρομου". m.naftemporiki.gr (in Greek). 14 April 2018. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
111. Göçek, Naz (May 2020). "Transatlantic Turmoil: Populist Parties and NATO Membership in the European Union" (PDF). Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. Freeman Spogli Institute: 56–60.
112. "Communist Party of Greece – The International role of China". inter.kke.gr. Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
113. Kim, Jang-Min (2025). "A Critique of the Theory of Imperialist Pyramids and State Capitalism" (PDF). World Anti-imperialist Platform. PNYX Institute for Political Economy.
114. Dagkas, Alexandros (2008). "The Labor Movement and Higher Education: Developments in China and Greece in the Context of Globalization" (PDF). NST: Nature, Society and Thought. 20 (1). Marxist Educational Press: 55–58. ISSN 0890-6130.
115. "The Communist Party of Greece condemned the imperialist war in Ukraine – Athens News". 24 February 2022. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
116. "Greek communists protest country's involvement in Ukraine War with banners on the Acropolis". Greek City Times. 12 May 2022. Archived from the original on 22 August 2023. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
117. Sweeney, Steve. "Communist Party of Greece to boycott Zelensky's address to parliament". Morning Star. Archived from the original on 22 August 2023. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
118. Adam Balcer (ed.). Long-term sympathy transformed into a visible rift: Greece, Russia and the war in Ukraine (PDF). Wrocław: College of Eastern Europe. p. 6. ISBN 978-83-7893-365-6.
119. Wondreys, Jakub; March, Luke [in Spanish]; Pytlas, Bartek (28 September 2024). "'My enemy's enemy is my friend'? European radical left parties' response to Russia's war in Ukraine". The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Political Studies Association: 8 (note on page 26). doi:10.1177/13691481241284204. While RLMEPs were significantly more reluctant to vote against Russia than any other MEPs (two-tailed p-value = 0.0001, see Table 1), including those on the radical right (see Appendix 2), there were also notable differences among them. Even though a vote against these resolutions was indeed the preferred vote outcome for RLMEPs (in 42.6% of the cases), only a few parties had a perfect voting record in this direction: The Greek Communist Party (KKE), the Irish Independents 4 Change (I4C), the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), and the Spanish Anticapitalistas (Anticap.)
120. Alina Polyakova; Markos Kounalakis; Antonis Klapsis; Luigi Sergio Germani; Jacopo Iacoboni; Francisco de Borja Lasheras; Nicolás de Pedro (November 2017). The Kremlin's Trojan Horses: Russian Influence in Greece, Italy, and Spain (PDF) (2nd ed.). Atlantic Council Policy on Intellectual Independence. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-61977-387-5.
121. Central Committee of the KKE (29 October 2016). "Decision of the CC of the KKE on the developments around the Cyprus Issue and the position of the KKE".
122. "Με μια κατάπτυστη ανακοίνωση ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ στηρίζει το Ισραήλ!". www.902.gr (in Greek). 7 October 2023. Archived from the original on 8 October 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
123. "Αλληλεγγύη στο λαό της Παλαιστίνης που υπερασπίζεται τα δικαιώματά του". www.902.gr (in Greek). 7 October 2023. Archived from the original on 8 October 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
124. "Ο παλαιστινιακός λαός έχει το δικαίωμα να υπερασπιστεί τα δικαιώματά του και χρειάζεται μεγαλύτερη λαϊκή στήριξη και αλληλεγγύη". www.902.gr (in Greek). 7 October 2023. Archived from the original on 8 October 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.
125. "Greek Communist Party on Cohabitation Agreement". Ριζοσπάστης. 20 December 2015. Archived from the original on 24 December 2015. Retrieved 20 December 2015.
126. Charalambous, Giorgos (2020). "The Communists". In Kevin Featherstone; Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Modern Greek Politics (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 324. ISBN 978-0-19-882510-4.
127. "Δήλωση του Δημήτρη Κουτσούμπα για τη Διεθνή Ημέρα κατά της Ομοφοβίας". www.kke.gr (in Greek). Archived from the original on 17 May 2022. Retrieved 19 May 2022.
128. "Greece's Mitsotakis makes progressive pivot with same-sex marriage bill". POLITICO. 7 February 2024. Retrieved 15 April 2024.
129. Παπαδόπουλος, Mάκης (3 February 2024). "Οι στόχοι του κεφαλαίου μεταμφιεσμένοι σε «ατομικά δικαιώματα» στην εποχή του «ίντερνετ των σωμάτων»". 902 TV (in Greek).
130. Francisco Maia, Rodrigo I. (2021). The European Left: Democracy and Sovereignty in Italy, Spain, and Portugal (PDF) (Degree of Doctor of Philosophy thesis). Brunel University London. p. 143.
131. Cardoso Lourenço, Pedro Miguel (2017). Cold pragmatism, warm radicalism: ideological differences between radical left parties from Nordic and Southern European countries (PDF) (Master in Political Science thesis). University of Aveiro. pp. 55–56.
132. Trastulli, Federico (7 December 2022). "Two is better than one? Testing a deductive MARPOR-based left-right index on Western Europe (1999-2019)". Quaderni dell’Osservatorio elettorale – Italian Journal of Electoral Studies. 85 (2). Firenze University Press: 69. doi:10.36253/qoe-13796.
133. Gemenis, Kostas; Nezi, Roula (2020). "Government–Opposition Dynamics during the Economic Crisis in Greece". In Elisabetta De Giorgi; Catherine Moury (eds.). Government-Opposition in Southern European Countries during the Economic Crisis. Library of Legislative Studies (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-415-81752-3.
134. March, Luke [in Spanish] (2016). "The 'Post-Soviet' Russian Left – Escaping the Shadow of Stalinism?". In Cameron Ross (ed.). Systemic and Non-Systemic Opposition in the Russian Federation: Civil Society Awakens?. Post-Soviet Politics. Routledge. p. 145. ISBN 978-1-3170-4722-3.
135. Wagner, Sarah (23 January 2020). "Is Corbyn's departure the end of the Left's reincarnation?". Political Studies Association.
136. "1991: 17ο Φεστιβάλ ΚΝΕ - Οδηγητή". festival.kne.gr (in Greek). Retrieved 4 July 2025.
137. "Η «Πανσπουδαστική ΚΣ» 1η δύναμη ξανά: Αποστομωτική καταδίκη της εγκληματικής πολιτικής - Μήνυμα ελπίδας και αγωνιστικής αισιοδοξίας". 902.gr (in Greek). 19 May 2025. Retrieved 4 July 2025.
138. The table is part of a larger table found in Chr. Vernadakis and G. Mavris (1988). Απο τη 'Λαοκρατία' στην 'Αλλαγή'. Theseis (in Greek). No. 22. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 11 January 2011. The table in the article provides detailed sources for the numbers stated above which are from CPG's official documents and/or independent historians.
139. alterthess (2 June 2014). "Αποχώρησε από την ομάδα της Αριστεράς στο Ευρωκοινοβούλιο το ΚΚΕ". AlterThess.gr - Όλες οι Ειδήσεις από την άλλη Θεσσαλονίκη (in Greek). Retrieved 21 October 2024.

Further reading

• Dimitri Kitsikis, Populism, Eurocommunism and the Communist Party of Greece, in M. Waller, Communist Parties in Western Europe – Oxford, Blackwell, 1988.
• Dimitri Kitsikis, "Greece: Communism in a Non-Western Setting," in D. E. Albright, Communism and Political Systems in Western Europe. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979.
• Dimitri Kitsikis, "Greek Communists and the Karamanlis Government," Problems of Communism, vol.26 (January–February 1977), pp. 42–56.
• Artiem Ulunian, "The Communist Party of Greece and the Comintern: Evaluations, Instructions, and Subordination," in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Communist Party of Greece.

Wikinews has related news:

• KKE: Interview with the Greek Communist Party

• Official website (in Greek)
• Charalambous, Giorgos (2 September 2012). "Understanding the Greek Communist Party". Greece@Lse. London School of Economics.
• Neni Panourgiá. Dangerous "Citizens Online". Online version of Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State. ISBN 978-0823229680.
• Gabriele D'Angeli (19 April 2012). "The KKE and the Greek revolution". National Committee of the Italian Young Communists.
• Dimitri Kitsikis (January 2010). Kitsikis/article "Grèce. Le Synaspismos tiraillé entre social-démocratie et anarchisme". Grande Europe. No. 16. La Documentation Française.
• Dimitri Kitsikis (1975). "Le mouvement communiste en Grèce". Études internationales. Vol. 6. No. 3.