Aristotelous Square (Πλατεία Αριστοτέλους), Thessaloniki, Greece

Nikos Zachariadis, dressed in an overcoat and holding a National Liberation Front (EAM) flag, strode up the stairs to a podium built in the center of the square. A crowd of hundreds if not thousands stretched out before him, as the leader of the Communist Party of Greece made a speech regarding the issue of the upcoming elections:

”Comrades! What is this flag? This is the flag of our movement - of our fight against fascism! It was a fight to liberate the Greek soul from occupation, to wrest our country free of the monarchofascists that have occupied us! I ask you something comrades: who was it that defeated the invaders? Who was it that fought against the traitors of Hellenic stock and the foreign occupiers? I ask you: when you think of the valiant Greeks that fought the fascists who comes to mind?”

”Is it the National Republican Greek League? And that snake Zervas? He who massacred 20,000 civilians merely for being the same ethnicity as the Albanians from where Italian troops were marching? No. What comes to mind is EAM.”

”When you think of true resistance, do you think of the movement National and Social Liberation (EKKA)? NO! Psarros killed more Greeks than he did Germans or Italians and in the end he attacked us! You do not think of EKKA, you think of EAM!”

”And the worst of all… when you think of the Greek resistance… do you think of the Panhellenic Liberation Organization who fought the fascist for only two years before they turned their rifles on us? Do you think of the Security Battalions, who massacred so many of our comrades, our wives, our children? Do you think of Perrikos’ Army of Enslaved Victors, who would have thrust us into another humiliating war against the Turks to fulfill a neo-Byzantine fantasy? Do you think of that bastard Georgios Grivas’ Organization X, who gladly worked with the fascists and British only for the cause of eradicating the color red from Greece save for the blood of their own countrymen--who fought to return a German king to our nation!! NO. YOU THINK OF EAM!”

”WE are the ones that liberated Greece from the fascists, my comrades. WE are the ones that set up food clinics and provided for those who had had their homes destroyed by the occupiers, it is WE who organized refugees to flee their ancestral homes while their own countrymen massacred them for what? For pride? For a foreign monarch? For the businessmen in Athens? For Hitler? Mussolini? For that limey scum Scobie?”

”Everything that we did, comrades, we did for the Greek people. And everything we will do; we will do for the Greek people! My comrades! How were we repaid for liberating our homeland? How did this so-called government thank the brave partisans of EAM? We were butchered. Our homes burned, our fighters imprisoned or hung, or livestock slaughtered. It was as if we were under the yoke of the fascists or of the Ottomans before them; brother killing brother, the so-called government hanging us for believing that the working men and women of Greece should hold the power in society. Since the December Events, my brothers and sisters, 2,000 of our comrades have been killed. Hundreds of our women were raped. Over 10,000 of our comrades imprisoned on the islands of the Aegean. And who presided over this, my comrades? It was that so-called ‘General’ Scobie. That man who would see Greece murdered so that his imperialist cronies can sweep in and buy our land, enslave our workers, make us another colony of their sighing deflated pseudo-empire.”

”My brothers and sisters… When did the Greeks decide their fate? This country has been occupied for decades. This iteration alone, has seen us occupied since 1935. They silenced us and forced the German king to return. Then the monarcho-fascist Metaxas murdered us en masse. In two years of his tyrannical control of the power of state, Metaxas created more communists than he killed. Then it was the Italians and the Germans who massacred us as well. The steps of the Parthenon ran red with the blood of our comrades. And it was not over for Hellas after that, my friends, because as soon as we--EAM--had defeated the fascists, we were stabbed in the back by the bourgeoisie. The knife was twisted and the auspices of Metaxas returned in a faux-democracy. The British picked up the SS’s ceremonial batons, dusted off the fascist remains, and turned it once again against the Greek people.”

”What is my point, my brothers and sisters? My point is that the time has come for us to seize the means of production! To change the world and create a workers’ state over this despotate of bourgeois sophistry! Now, as you all know there is an election upcoming. One that we are trying to get moved forward two months. No matter what happens, my comrades we will be voting in these elections. Every man that fought with us against the occupiers, every man that believes in a Socialist Hellas will vote in this election! And, my friends, once we have won this election: EVERY WOMAN WILL VOTE IN THE NEXT ONE!”

”Why do we not strike at the fascists like we did during the war? You might ask. My friends we do not strike at them because the time is not right. But we will. But not yet. We do not intend to bring about the revolution by bourgeois democracy, but we do not intend to sit by the sidelines and allow the coalition of the Venizelists and Fascists murder us eternally. We are not ultraleftists or dogmatists, my comrades, we are principled Marxist-Leninists, and Comrade Lenin described the necessity for participation in bourgeois democracy. As Comrade Lenin told us, the workingmen and women of the world: We cannot attempt to “circumvent” this difficulty by “skipping” the arduous job of utilising reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes, it is absolutely childish. You want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved in forming a good parliamentary group made up of convinced, devoted and heroic Communists, in a reactionary parliament! Is that not childish? If Karl Liebknecht in Germany and Z. Höglund in Sweden were able, even without mass support from below, to set examples of the truly revolutionary utilisation of reactionary parliaments, why should a rapidly growing revolutionary mass party, in the midst of the post-war disillusionment and embitterment of the masses, be unable to forge a communist group in the worst of parliaments? It is because, in Europe, the backward masses of the workers and—to an even greater degree—of the small peasants are much more imbued with bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices than they were in Russia because of that, it is only from within such institutions as bourgeois parliaments that Communists can (and must) wage a long and persistent struggle, undaunted by any difficulties, to expose, dispel and overcome these prejudices.”

”The Parliament Palace is only our first step comrades! Think of the situation that Comrade Lenin described; a rapidly growing revolutionary mass party, in the midst of the post-war disillusionment and embitterment of the masses. That is what we have presented before us comrades, and it is what we will utilize. My friends, we will not stop our struggle! We will win the election! And then, we will fight the great revolutionary struggle to win this country! Out with the British! Out with the collaborators! Long Live Socialism! Long Live the Communist Party of Greece! Long live Marxism-Leninism!”