Charilaos Florakis

Charilaos Florakis

Charilaos Florakis ( Greek Χαρίλαος Φλωράκης ; * July 20, 1914 in Rachoula, Thessaly ; † May 22, 2005 in Athens ) was a Greek communist politician and longtime general secretary of the Communist Party.

Time until World War II

Florakis was born the fourth child in a family of six later. At the age of 15 he read Marxist literature and, despite the communist persecution by the Venizelist government, joined the youth of the Communist Party of Greece OKNE. Florakis resisted the fascist dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas , which had come to power through a coup in 1936, in the TTT union. After the attack of fascist Italy on Greece, he participated as a soldier in the successful counter-offensive of the Greek army, which led to the collapse of the Italian front in Albania.

Resistance to the German occupation

When he became a member of the illegal Communist Party of Greece in 1941, his path for the next few years was mapped out. In April 1942, Florakis was one of the main initiators of the first strike of the occupation. One day after its founding, Florakis joined the National Liberation Front (EAM), a socialist resistance movement under the leadership of KKE, which in the following months and years was to achieve extensive hegemony over the Greek resistance and was the only major resistance organization never to stand Guilty of collaboration. When the EAM decided to armed resistance and Aris Velouchiotis founded its militant arm ELAS , Florakis went to the mountains as a partisan. Under the code name "Kapetan Jotis" he operated from there as the commander of a partisan battalion.

From the civil war to the general secretary election

When the left continued to resist the new British occupation after the Germans had withdrawn, Florakis took part in the “Dekembriana”, the bloody battle for Athens . In the civil war that began after the Varkiza Agreement , he commanded the 1st Division of the Democratic Army of Greece and was major general towards the end of the war. After the defeat of the Communists in 1949, Florakis was elected to the Central Committee of the party that was in exile in the Eastern Bloc. However, he was arrested in Greece and served a total of 12 years in prison and 6 years in the islands of exile.

The climax and the end of his résumé

In 1972, at the time of the military junta , Charilaos Florakis was elected General Secretary of the party at the 17th General Assembly of the Central Committee. He replaced Kostas Kolijannis in this position and held it until 1989; Aleka Papariga was her successor . During this time he was awarded numerous awards and medals, including the Lenin Order , which he received on September 18, 1984 from the Central Committee of the CPSU . On May 22, 2005, Charilaos Florakis died as one of the most popular communists in Greek history. Representatives from both the other major parties and the Orthodox Church attended his funeral, which was by no means a given.

literature

• Charilaos Florakis , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/1991 from October 28, 1991, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)