Organizer of a mass partisan war against occupation
In Domnista in 1942, he led a small mountain guerrilla band and proclaimed the emergence of ELAS.
Born Athanasios Klaras, Aris Velouchiotis was a Greek communist activist who became the key organizer linking the National Liberation Front, EAM, with its military arm, ELAS, during the occupation. In 1942 he formed a small guerrilla force in the mountains of Roumeli and built its early base by combining strict discipline with mass politics. Joint actions such as the destruction of the Gorgopotamos viaduct demonstrated the potential of armed resistance, while EAM-ELAS’s growing dominance also sharpened conflict with rival resistance groups and Britain. After the Varkiza Agreement he rejected demobilization, broke with the party leadership, and died isolated in 1945; the communist movement later restored his standing.
Also known as: Athanasios Klaras · Thanasis Klaras
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1920sJoined left-wing and anti-militarist activity and the Communist Party of Greece
- early 1930sWorked on the editorial staff of the communist newspaper Rizospastis
- 1936–1941Imprisoned under the Metaxas dictatorship and forced to sign a renunciation
- 1942.01Sent by the KKE to prepare guerrilla warfare in Roumeli
- 1942.06Announced ELAS and began mountain guerrilla operations at Domnista
- 1942.11Participated in the Gorgopotamos viaduct sabotage
- 1944.10Commanded ELAS operations in central Greece and the Peloponnese after liberation
- 1945Continued armed struggle after Varkiza and died in the mountains
Related historical events
- 1939–1945Axis-occupied Europe: collaboration and resistanceCommunist who launched ELASWas authorised by EAM in February 1942 to prepare armed resistance, which became ELAS.
- 1941–1945Greek Resistance and the DekemvrianaFounder and early commander of ELASHe led the early armed organization in the mountains and founded ELAS in 1942.
The 1944-1945 endgame: the destruction of the 5/42 Regiment and the road to Varkiza and after
When the Varkiza Agreement was signed, Velouchiotis signed the full demobilization of ELAS together with Sarafis. He then refused to comply, calling the agreement a betrayal of the guerrillas, and on 24 March 1945 he wrote to the KKE Central Committee that explaining the Varkiza line to the people and to party members was "literally ridiculous" and that no party member believed it. In March 1945 he returned to the mountains of central Greece and founded the National Independence Front (MEA) and a new ELAS, declaring the resumption of armed struggle against the British, the new government and the paramilitary bands operating in the countryside. He was joined by close associates and ELAS kapetanioi such as Pelopidas, Thanos, Chrysiotis and Nestoras, and by some of the Mavroskoufides.
The party leadership called him a traitor and a "suspicious and adventurous element" and expelled him. On the day of his death, 15 June 1945, Rizospastis published the Central Committee decision calling his "adventurist and suspect activity" useful only to the enemy. The unit that was about eighty strong when the pursuit began had shrunk to thirty-five men by the time it was encircled in the Agrafa mountains. Government forces together with British soldiers hunted him; he tried to leave for Albania but was not permitted to do so.
According to the Greek general staff records, on the evening of 15 June 1945, after his unit was surrounded from two sides in the Fagos gorge by the Acheloos, near Mesounta, Velouchiotis died beside his men. The cause of death is not settled. Suicide was the explanation adopted at the time and is supported by eyewitness testimony, but accounts that he was shot by the pursuing troops, or executed after capture, have also been put forward. The Greek Wikipedia infobox and many media accounts give 16 June as the date of death, and the source itself records both the evening of 15 June and the following morning. His body and that of his second in command Tzavellas were decapitated and displayed in Trikala; when British MPs protested the barbarity, the reply was that it followed an "ancient Greek war custom".
His posthumous standing long remained bound to party decisions. In July 2011 the KKE national conference granted him political rehabilitation on the grounds that his assessment of the Varkiza Agreement had been right, but refused to restore his party membership because he had violated party discipline. In June 2018 a national conference went further, concluding that the collective functioning of the wartime party leadership had been inadequate and that the signing of Varkiza and the treatment of Velouchiotis followed from that inadequacy, and restored his party membership posthumously. That judgement continued a criticism of the leadership's functioning already present in official KKE texts from 1988.