Political Activity in Greece
In 1923, he was sent back to Greece to organise the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). Imprisoned, he subsequently fled to the Soviet Union. In 1931, he was sent back to Greece to restore order in the highly factionalised KKE and in the same year (other accounts claim 1935), he was appointed, by order of Joseph Stalin and the Comintern, General Secretary of KKE.
In August 1936, he was arrested by the State Security of the Ioannis Metaxas regime and imprisoned. From prison, he issued a letter urging all Greeks to resist the Italian invasion of October 1940 and transform the war into an anti-fascist war. According to KKE, which considered the war to be a feud between imperialist opponents, this letter was fabricated by the Metaxas regime. Zachariadis was even accused of releasing it to win the favor of Konstantinos Maniadakis and be released from prison.
On November 16, 1940, a second letter was released by Zachariadis which accused the Greek army of waging a "fascist" and "imperialistic war" and appealed to the USSR to act against the Metaxas regime. In a third letter (January, 1941), Zachariadis reiterated this position, and reasserted KKE’s position for the secession of Greek Macedonia from Greece.
KKE's anti-war position was definitively reversed when Germany surprise-attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941. KKE then called upon the Greek people to resist the fascist and Nazi invaders, and the resistance group National Liberation Front-Greek People's Liberation Army (EAM-ELAS) were formed.
After the German invasion of Greece, in 1941 the Nazi Germans transferred him to the Dachau concentration camp, from where he was released in May 1945. Returning to Greece, he re-assumed the leadership of the KKE from Georgios Siantos, acting general secretary of the KKE since January 1942.
Read more about this topic: Nikos Zachariadis
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