Nikos Zachariadis

Nikos Zachariadis
A photo of Zachariadis, from the 30 May 1945 edition of Rizospastis.
Born	(1903-04-27)27 April 1903 Adrianople, Ottoman Empire
Died	1 August 1973(1973-08-01) (aged 70) Surgut, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Resting place	Athens

Nikos Zachariadis (Greek: Νίκος Ζαχαριάδης; 27 April 1903 – 1 August 1973) was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1931 to 1956, and one of the most important personalities in the Greek Civil War.

Nikos Zachariadis was born in Edirne, Adrianople Vilayet, Ottoman Empire, in 1903, to an ethnic Greek family. His father, Panagiotis Zachariadis, was of petit-bourgeois origin, and worked as an expert in the Regie company, a French firm possessing the tobacco monopoly in Turkey. In 1919, Nikos Zachariadis moved to Constantinople, where he worked in various jobs, including as a soldier. It was there that he carried out his first organized work in the working-class movement. After the defeat of Greece in the Greco-Turkish War and the population exchange between the two countries, the Zachariadis family was forcibly relocated to Greece and fell into poverty. In 1922-23 he traveled to the Soviet Union, where he became a member of the Komsomol. He studied at various political and military institutions of the Soviet Government and of the Comintern, including the International Lenin School.

In 1923, he was sent back to Greece to organize the Young Communist League of Greece (OKNE). Imprisoned, he subsequently fled to the Soviet Union. In 1931, he was sent back to Greece to restore order in the highly factionalised KKE and in the same year, he was elected General Secretary of KKE. In 1935, during the 7th Congress of the Communist International, he was elected to its Executive Committee. In the years until 1936, Zachariadis was a successful leader of the KKE, tripling the number of its members, gaining seats in the Greek Parliament, and even acquiring control of some labor unions.