Nikos Marantzidis’s timely study covers a significant gap in the extant scholarship by exploring the emergence, trajectory, and political choices of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), from the onset of the Russian revolution to the death of Iosif Stalin. Despite the pertinent role of the KKE, the relevant scholarship is both fractured and overly politicized. Post-war scholarship was dominated by Cold War warriors who saw the KKE as a Moscow puppet. The restoration of democracy after the fall of the Junta led to the replacement of one orthodoxy (anti-communism) with a no less rigid narrative that idealized the party and its role. This new approach was pivoted by party members who sought to rehabilitate the KKE’s role and vindicate their personal trajectories. Expectedly, such accounts were both highly partisan and unreliable. Despite their seeming differences, both approaches shared some common characteristics: they relied on a small set of highly partisan sources and examined the role of the KKE within a limited national and chronological timeframe.

The post-Soviet period marked a shift as historians began to use new sources and methodologies to probe the role of the KKE. Marantzidis’s important study builds on and extends the scope of these studies to challenge some fundamental tenets in the scholarship of Greek communism. He does so by setting its history within a broader transnational and global context and investigating how the interactions between Soviet political expediencies, domestic political developments, and the geopolitical context of southeastern Europe shaped the culture and policies of Greek communism. Yet Marantzidis’s approach resonates well beyond the confines of Greek political history. This excellent book effectively uses the KKE as a vantage point from where to study the nature, organizational characteristics, and dynamics of international communism, particularly in southeastern Europe. The book thus offers a unique history of international communism from the perspective of its periphery.

The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter focuses on the emergence of Greek communism, setting the birth and early trajectory of the KKE within a global and southeast European context. This approach allows Marantzidis to challenge the view of the KKE as a Soviet “mole” by showing how its rise was shaped by a series of complex interactions with regional and international players. The second chapter focuses on the “National Question” in the Balkans and the impact of the competition over Macedonia in the formation and policies of the KKE and its regional counterparts.

The third chapter, which is also one of the most fascinating in the book, explores Stalinization processes within the KKE. Past studies have described this as a top-down process. Marantzidis instead shows it developed as gradually, set in motion both by Moscow’s demands and the factional struggles between different elements (refuges, blue collar workers, intellectuals) within the party. The struggle was ultimately won by a new type of activist: the graduates of the Communist University of the Workers of the East (KUTV), or kutvides. These men were exemplified in the figure of KKE’s future leader, Nikos Zahariades. They were often born outside Greece, and grew up amidst the dissolution of the great landed empires and the rise of the Soviet Union. These events created both a sense of rootlessness and a messianic faith in communism. However, they also isolated them from Greek society and imparted a distorted and partial image of Greece and the Greeks that would have fateful consequences as the next two chapters show. Chs. 5 and 6 focus on the period between the occupation and the end of the civil war (1941–49). Marantzidis probes one main question: what was the role of the KKE in the civil war? He demonstrates how the onset of the civil war was shaped by KKE’s decision to seize power, a choice that was actively supported by Moscow and aided by all socialist republics. Concomitantly, Marantzidis shows that the failure of this effort was largely due to the KKE’s strategic miscalculation and blind devotion to a Soviet-centric view, held by Zahariades. The last chapter charts the fall of the old guard in the post-Stalin era, discussing how despite these change the Stalinist culture of the KKE remained intact.

Rich in insight and expertly researched, this provocative and nuanced history will become a reference point for historians of Greek and southeast European communism for the years to come.