Introduction

Abstract

This book is a study of the policies and strategies of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) during the period 1941–7, with particular emphasis on the period 1945–7. It examines the policy of the KKE during the Resistance and the immediate post-liberation period with the purpose of offering a post-revisionist interpretation of the causes of the Greek Civil War. In what follows we have tried to deconstruct a number of right-wing orthodox and left-wing revisionist myths and polemics attempting to offer an account of events that remains as far as possible detached. Naturally, we do not wish to pretend that this study is free of value judgements. A study of this kind that did not derive from moral and political premises of some kind would be impossible, and if it were possible, it would be sterile. What is important in an academic inquiry into politics and the nature and manifestations of power is not to exclude value judgements, but to subject these judgements to thorough investigation and criticism, to treat the moral issues that arise as an integral part of the inquiry.