Becoming Balkan Bolsheviks

This chapter focuses on the birth and the early years of Greek Communism, set in a framework of the movement's relations with the Balkan Communist parties and with Moscow. It shows that Bolshevization was not just an imposition of norms, attitudes, and policies “from above,” but a more complicated and awkward process involving almost all the Balkan Communists at the same time. The creation of the Balkan Communist Federation (BCF) signaled the first step in the Bolshevization of the Communist parties of the region, which were thought to function not as distinct national parties but first and foremost as an almost unified Balkan revolutionary entity under the Comintern's auspices. Once the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) joined the Comintern, it was integrated into a “Moscowcentric” network of structures, values, institutions, personalities, and activities. This global network shaped the organizational culture and the political identity of the Greek comrades. In this first decade of the party's existence, many internal tensions emerged as some officials fruitlessly attempted to resist the homogenizing pressure of Bolshevization. Moscow and the Comintern, however, leveraged their abundant human, material, and symbolic resources to bring the KKE under their powerful tutelage.