On November 20th, International Delegation of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform visited the grave of Greek Revolutionary leader Nikos Zakariadis at the First Cemetery in Athens to have a memorial ceremony.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Nikos Zachariadis. Comrade Zachariadis served as the general secretary of the Greek Communist Party from 1931 to 1956. While imprisoned by the military dictatorship of Methaxas, he led the national liberation and the anti-fascist struggle from prison and founded the Greek Democratic Army in 1946 during the civil war. Zachariadis revolutionized the Communist Party of Greece along the lines of the Comintern.
Zachariadis and his comrades struggled against Khrushchev’s revisionist line at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. As a result, he was expelled from the party in 1957 by the revisionist leadership of the Communist Party of Greece under Khrushchev’s control. He was forced to live in exile in Central Asia and died mysteriously in Siberia in 1973. Zachariadis’s anti-revisionist struggle is recorded in the history of the international communist movement as a shining example of ideological warfare. The revisionist line of the Communist Party of Greece, which followed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, lasted from 1957 to 1991. The theory of the imperialist pyramid, published in 2001, is a counter-revolutionary theory rooted in this revisionist line.
Dimitrios Patelis the Representative of the Revolutionary Unification (Greece) gave the commemorating speech.
He emphasized, “(In the history of revolutionary struggle in Greece) The struggle of (Zachariadis’) Democratic Army of Greece against the British army was defeated by the intervention of the US army”, “Our partisans went to the Soviet Union where they received education, developed their communities, and continued struggles using all the means under the order of Zachariadis. However, after its 20th congress, the Communist Party of Soviet Union intervened in the internal affairs of the Communist Party of Greece and expelled Zachariadis from the position of general secretary and also the party”.
He pointed out, “They began to blame him for everything and the defeat of our movement even though it was very clear that the defeat was not his responsibility.” He continued, “Zachariadis tried to go back to his country, despite the army judgment, to save and liberate a thousand of communists who were tortured in Greece, but the revisionists didn’t allow him to return” and remarked, “The official document says he committed suicide, but I don’t think he did it. His death is one of the main crimes of the degradation of the communist party of Greece.”
“The current leadership of the Communist Party of Greece pretends to rehabilitate Zachariadis but, at the same time, blames him for opportunism because he supported the line of the Third Communist International of making a front against fascism and its frontal struggles. Revisionism goes back to the history. It is rewriting history according to its opportunistic approach”, he added.
With concluding, he stressed “Zachariadis was physically dead, but he never died.”
He chanted with all delegations, “Nikos Zachariadis, Athanatos (Immortal)!”
Afterwards, a wreath was laid at comrade Zachariadis’ grave by Joti Brar, Vice President of CPGB-ML and spokesperson of the Platform.
The delegation paid tribute to comrade Zachariadis, the leader of the Greek Revolution, by singing the The Internationale.
