In the third phase ( 1946 – 1949 ), guerrilla forces controlled by the Greek Communist Party ( KKE ) fought against the internationally recognized Greek government which was formed after 1946 elections boycotted by the KKE.

KKE was founded on 4 November 1918 as the Socialist Labour Party of Greece.

The Macedonian people are today fighting for this independent united state with a coequal position and is helping the DSE with all its soul ..." The policy of self-determination for Macedonia within a People's Republic was reiterated during the 5th KKE Central Committee meeting held in January 1949, which declared that the " Macedonian people participating in the liberation struggle would find their full national re-establishment as they want giving their blood for this acquisition ... Macedonian Communists should pay great attentions to foreign chauvinist and counteractive elements that want to break the unity between the Greek and Macedonian people.

In order for KKE to clear up its position on the " Macedonian subject ", the 6th Congress of its Central Committee was called a few months later, during which was clearly stated that KKE was fighting for a free Greece and for a common future for Greeks and Macedonians under the same state.

Such legislation was often used to prosecute KKE members and other leftist activists.

KKE responded by creating the People's Front, which was the largest Marxist anti-Fascist organisation in Greece prior to the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas.

On the other hand, Woodhouse argues, Georgios Siantos, who had escaped from prison, and Nikos Zachariadis, who was still incarcerated, took the opposite view that KKE must support Metaxas in his fight against Mussolini.

" This faction of KKE felt that the Metaxas regime was a " pawn of British imperialism in the region ," and, therefore, the " Old Committee " viewed any war between the Axis forces and the British as an "... imperialistic war that the people of any of the countries involved should not participate in ...".

According to KKE's account, this position was criticised by Comintern in 1939 ( a few months after the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact ), which had instructed KKE to fight against Italy in the event of an invasion of Greece.

In his memoirs, KKE leader Ioannis Ioannidis wrote about a regional Communist cadre who proclaimed the following as Greece was being bombed by the axis: " The Germans will not bomb us.

On the other side of the political fence, KKE was accused for not participating " full throttle " in the anti-invasion preparations.

Although KKE was suffering from a lack of central political leadership, since its leader Nikos Zachariades had been taken by the Germans to the Dachau concentration camp, its members succeeded in maintaining communication with each other.

The 6th Meeting of KKE Central Committee was held in Athens from 1 – 3 July 1941, which decided on strategy for an armed liberation struggle against the Nazi invaders.

Nikos Zachariadis was imprisoned in Dachau ; he was released in 1945 and returned to Greece as the elected general secretary of the KKE.

On the one side was the British and American backed Greek Government, led by Konstantinos Tsaldaris and, later, Themistoklis Sophoulis, which was elected in the 1946 elections which the KKE boycotted.

In the second stage of the civil war in December 1944 ( The Dekimvriana ), the British helped prevent the seizure of Athens by the leftist National Liberation Front ( EAM ), controlled effectively by the Greek Communist Party ( KKE ).

To this date, many of the islanders have remained sympathetic to communism ( KKE wins 35-40 % of the vote ), and, for this reason, Ikaria is referred to by some as the Kokkino Nisi ( Greek: Κόκκινο νησί ) ( Red Island ) or the Kokkinos Vrahos ( Greek: Κόκκινος Βράχος ) ( Red Rock ).

C. M Woodhouse, a British Intelligence officer, head of the British military delegation stationed by the Allies in Greece during WWII, wrote that on 18 March, when the Germans were moving unopposed into Bulgaria, KKE advised Greeks to follow the example of " the heroic fraternal people of Bulgaria " Moreover, according to George Papandreou, there were hints of a possible collaboration between KKE and the Germans in forming a government under occupation.

Backed by the KKE, EAM refused to disarm ELAS and ELAN.

The KKE Central Committee issued a directive to all party forces not to engage in any armed conflict but to try to prevent attacks by other means.

On the other side was the Democratic Army of Greece, of which the KKE was the only major political force, backed by the NOF Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania.

Its supporters referred to KKE as the KKE ( Exterior ) (" ΚΚΕ εξωτερικού "), inferring that KKE's policies were dictated by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The disintegration of USSR brought the Left into disunion, and the traditional majority within KKE purged all non-hardliners from the party-almost 45 % of the Central Committee members, including ex-general secretary Grigoris Farakos, and majorities in many Local Committees ( named by the KKE majority as revisionists and by the press as the renewers ), and also split from the coalition.

In the local elections of 2006 DIKKI supported many tickets led by the Communist Party of Greece ( KKE ), and numerous party members ( for the size of the party ) were elected in local councils.

KKE members volunteered to fight on the side of the republican government of Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 ; about 440 Greeks joined the ranks of the International Brigade, many of whom were high-ranking KKE members.

Right-wing groups, including elements which had collaborated with the Germans, seized this opportunity to persecute many KKE members.

OAKKE also condemns several protests in Greece, especially those which are guided by the " KKE " ( pseudoKKE in the texts of the organization ) and “ Coalition of the Left, the Movements and Ecology ”-SYN, and believes that, after 1990, many of these protests do not reflect the moods of the broad mass of workers, especially the proletariat, but mostly parts of the state bureaucracy, the worst, most corrupt and destructive ones, which are created and promoted mainly by the neo-Nazi Axis and its friends in our country, a position which also differs from the positions of other leftist parties that openly support every single action.

For many years, the suburb's mayor was Nicolaos Paximadas, supported by the KKE.

That show of brute strength led many Greek communists to break with the Moscow-oriented KKE and to join one of the factions that emerged.

The Communist Party of Greece ( KKE ) was outlawed, and many Communists either fled the country or faced persecution.

There were many indications that Papandreou's Centre Union would emerge as the largest party, but would not be able to form a single-party government and would be forced into an alliance with the United Democratic Left, which was suspected by conservatives of being a proxy for the banned KKE.

According to KKE's archives, the " Old Central Committee " had been denounced for its stance on the war issue ; today KKE claims that the majority of the party membership had not followed the decision of being neutral in case of an invasion.

She is the first woman who has taken on the office of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of KKE, being the first woman to head a major political party in Greece.

Conspiracy theories regarding 17N abound, often spread by adherents of the Communist Party of Greece ( KKE ) to discredit potential rivals to the KKE's role as revolutionary vanguard party.

The political strategy of OAKKE is the reconstruction of the old revolutionary Communist Party of Greece ( KKE ) of the period 1918-1956 ( as the currently named KKE party is considered by OAKKE as a non-communist, social-fascist party ), but under the new conditions an d enriched with the experience the last 50 years and Maoism.

The Marxist – Leninist Communist Party of Greece better known by its acronym M-L KKE (, Marxistiko-Leninistiko Kommunistiko Komma Elladas ), is a Anti-Revisionist Marxist-Leninist and Maoist, communist political party in Greece.

After the end of Joseph Stalin's era, Markos Vafiadis was restored into KKE and was elected as a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the party.

However, new disagreement with the party leadership led to his removal from office in January 1958 and to his second ousting from the KKE in June 1964.

After the party split in 1968, the so called " interior " ( εσωτερικού ) faction of KKE restored him.

The Communist Party of Greece ( Marxist – Leninist ) (, ΚΚΕ ( μ-λ ), Kommounistiko Komma Elladas ( marxistiko-leninistiko ), KKE ( m-l )), is a Maoist communist political party in Greece.

KKE ( m-l ) experienced a crisis in 1982 when the majority of its members left the party.

Florakis sided with the latter and at the 13th KKE conference in early 1991 — even before the fall of Mikhail Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union — the party officially withdrew all support from Synaspismos and Florakis was elected honorary president of the KKE.

Florakis ' body lay in state at the KKE headquarters in Perissos on May 24 – 25 where thousands of party members and sympathisers queued to pay their respects.

After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union with the initiation of Operation Barbarossa ( June 22, 1941 — with most of Greece having fallen under Axis occupation since April and the Battle of Crete having ended on June 1 — the Greek Communist Party ( KKE ) was the first communist party to call for national resistance ( documented in two letters by Nikolaos Zachariadis and Central Committee decisions ) in 1940.

Georgios Siantos (, 1890-May 20, 1947 ) was a prominent figure of the Communist Party of Greece ( Greek: Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας, Kommunistiko Komma Elladas, KKE ) who served as acting general secretary of the party and as a leader of the National Liberation Front ( EAM )/ Greek People's Liberation Army ( ELAS ) Resistance movement during the German occupation of Greece in World War II.

The same year Nikolaos Zachariadis, the General Secretary of KKE was transferred by the Germans to the Dachau concentration camp, and Siantos undertook the leadership of the party as acting Secretary General.

In official KKE accounts of the party history, Tsipas and his fate have been ignored.