Charilaos Florakis
| Charilaos Florakis | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Secretary General of the Communist Party of Greece | |
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In office 1972–1989 |
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| Preceded by | Konstantinos Koligiannis |
| Succeeded by | Grigoris Farakos |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
20 July 1914 Paliozoglopi (near Karditsa), Greece |
| Died | 22 May 2005 (aged 90) Athens, Greece |
| Political party | Communist Party of Greece |
| Religion | Greek Orthodox |
Charilaos Florakis (also Harilaos Florakis; Greek: Χαρίλαος Φλωράκης; 20 July 1914 – 22 May 2005) was a leader of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). He is best known for establishing the dominance of the KKE over other left-wing elements, and for his flexibility and forming alliances with the conservatives.
Florakis was born on 20 July 1914 in the village of Paliozoglopi, located near Agrafa in the Itamos municipality, in the Karditsa Prefecture, Greece. He joined the Communist Party of Greece in 1941. An EAM-ELAS partisan during the resistance to the Nazi occupation in World War II, Florakis was on the losing side of the Greek Civil War that followed the liberation of the country, and subsequently left the country.
On his return to Greece in 1954 he was arrested. During his life he spent 18 years in detention or jail - including being put in internal exile by the Greek colonels in the beginning of the 1967-74 military dictatorship.
First elected to parliament in 1974 after the Metapolitefsi, Florakis led KKE as its general secretary from 1972 until 1989, when, though still fit for the job, he announced his decision to step down from the party's top post and proposed Grigoris Farakos as his successor.
Florakis did not retire from politics, however. In the same year he retired from the leadership of the KKE, he was approved as the president of the newly founded Synaspismos or Coalition of the Left. Synaspismos was an attempt to reconcile Greece's two main communist factions, which arose in 1968 out of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia that crushed the Prague Spring. 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.
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