Communist Party of Greece (Interior)
그리스 공산당 (국내파)
A Greek Eurocommunist party formed by the split of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in February 1968. It was founded by the "Bureau of the Interior" that worked clandestinely inside Greece under the junta, together with dissenters from the exiled leadership; it broke with the ideological supervision of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and drew close to parties such as the Italian Communist Party. After its fourth congress in May 1986 it split in 1987 into the Greek Left (EAR) and the KKE Interior–Renewing Left.
In depth
At the 12th enlarged plenum of the KKE Central Committee, held in Budapest on 5–15 February 1968, the Politburo members Mitsos Partsalidis, Zisis Zografos and Panos Dimitriou and several members of the Central Committee opposed the majority on questions such as alliance policy and the role of the Soviet Union, and walked out. They represented a current that resented the party’s total dependence on the choices of the Soviet leadership and watched the Prague Spring with interest. Leaders of the “Bureau of the Interior”, the part of the leadership working clandestinely inside Greece — Babis Drakopoulos, Nikos Karras, Antonis Brillakis and others — sided with them, and so the KKE Interior was formed; its cadres called the part that followed the exiled leadership the “KKE Exterior”. The party broke with the ideological supervision of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, established ties with parties such as the Italian Communist Party, and adopted Eurocommunism.
Under the Regime of the Colonels (1967–1974) the party took part in the resistance through the Panhellenic Antidictatorial Front (PAM) and its youth organisation Rigas Feraios, and after the fall of the junta in 1974 it relaunched the newspaper Avgi as the organ of its Central Committee. In the first post-junta election it joined the KKE in the United Left, which won eight seats; in 1977 it ran in a separate Alliance of Progressive and Left Forces, which won two seats, its only deputy being Leonidas Kyrkos. In the 1981 parliamentary election it won just 1.34% and no seats, but in the European election the same year it won 5.3% and sent Kyrkos to the European Parliament. The political theorist Nicos Poulantzas was an active member and took part in its debates on the democratic road to socialism.
At the fourth congress in May 1986 the proposals of Kyrkos’s current to turn the party into a new, non-communist party of the left prevailed. In January 1987 twenty-nine members of the Central Committee who refused to take part formed the KKE Interior–Renewing Left, and in April 1987 the rest founded the Greek Left (EAR) with Kyrkos as secretary. By different routes both later became part of the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA).