Alexandros Svolos - Political Activity During and After The Second World War

Political Activity During and After The Second World War

After the German invasion in April 1941, Greece was occupied by the Axis, and divided into German, Italian and Bulgarian zones. Svolos, at the head of a Committee of Macedonians and Thracians, sent repeated protests to the German authorities protesting the Bulgarians' open annexation of Greek territory and their maltreatment of the local Greek population.

In the meantime, the Resistance movement had been growing, and by early 1944, a large part of the Greek mainland was free, under the control of the Resistance. In March, the leftist EAM/ELAS movement set up a government of its own, the Political Committee of National Liberation (PEEA), rivaling both the collaborationist one in Athens and the King's government in exile in Cairo. In April 1944, Svolos agreed to become its president, while Evripidis Bakirtzis, his predecessor, became its vice-president.

In this role, Svolos participated in the Lebanon conference in May 1944, when the establishment of a government of national unity under George Papandreou was decided. However, the PEEA continued to exercise its authority in Greece until liberation, in October 1944, with Svolos as its head. In the Papandreou government he held the portfolio of the Finance Ministry, where his measures to restore the Greek economy made him unpopular. He finally resigned from the Papandreou government along with the other EAMist ministers on December 2, in the lead-up to the Dekemvriana. After EAM's defeat in the Dekemvriana, he was again dismissed from his teaching post at the University.

Svolos then became president of the small Socialist ELD party until 1953, when it was merged with the Democratic Party, forming the Democratic Party of the Working People, which he also headed together with Georgios Kartalis until his death in 1956. He was elected to Parliament for Thessaloniki in 1950 and 1956, but died three days after the latter.