Addendum contributed by Michalis 1997
KKE (a.k.a. the Communist Party of Greece) was founded in 1918 by many socialist groups and organisations among which we can remark the Jewish Socialist Convention, and the Thessaloniki Socialist Federation and several other socialists of the time. During the ’20s the party was turned upside down by an internal crisis which had many similarities with the one in the Soviet party - but also quite a lot of differences too. Due to its unorthodox (meaning without any clear political direction) and general ideological inconsistency, the party found itself being apparatised by admirers of the German Social-Democrats, along with pure Leninists and some fans of the so called Trotskyist "left wing". Actually during the twenties the position of the Secretary General was held by a Trotskyist named Pantelis Pouliopoulos. At that time, the party threw out of its ranks members considered to be of the "menshevik" mould and later on, when things in Comintern got settled up, Trotskyists followed them out. Pouliopoulos and his comrades then founded their own Trotskyist organisation and they later joined the so called 4th International.
During the ’30s, the Greek communist movement was making its first insecure steps, being hit by the terrorist policy of Venizelos and also dealing with stupid conflicts (unfortunately not always bloodless) among the so called Stalinists and the Trotskyists. In the ’40s – and after the fascist Greek government handed all the imprisoned communists to the Nazis – KKE, together with a few other minor organisations, launched the legendary ELAS national liberating struggle which was so brutal that caused Germans to deal with Greece as a territory at war – and not as a simple revolting province.
At that time Trotskyists, although they participated in the resistance by their own point of view, blamed ELAS for being not the organisation of the people, but an army aiming to carry out a war only to satisfy the interests of part of the Greek bourgeois!!! (This I think explains why Trotskyist organisations in Greece never even managed to make their presence clear to the masses: They are out of the masses! And apart from that – or rather because of that – they always end up with the wrong conclusions).
Now, when later on ELAS made the Nazis flee and brought the Brits to a dead end – since the older parties and generally the bourgeois system had been humiliated in the eyes of the Greek people – KKE was faced a dilemma: take the power or what?
The answer wasn't as easy as it seems... First of all, KKE hadn't really made clear the matter of taking the power: being a small and unexperienced party as it was it came to a surprise when it saw EAM gaining the support of 70% of the Greeks – it didn't know what to do with it. Also, the Americans – being now our urban-class daddies instead of the Brits – didn't want Greece to end up socialist or something, and thought of the Greek issue as the best cause to start the 3rd World War.
Could the Soviets win? They didn't think so, and in my opinion they probably couldn't, so what our party actually resolved was to make the least possible retreat, establish a normal urban democratic regime and continue the struggle under the new circumstances, waiting for a better moment in the world class struggle to take power.
Unfortunately KKE underestimated the class-enemy.
Michalis