Under Stalin's Shadow

Under Stalin's Shadow examines the history of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) from 1918 to 1956, showing how closely national Communism was related to international developments. The history of the KKE reveals the role of Moscow in the various Communist parties of Southeastern Europe, as Nikos Marantzidis shows that Communism's international institutions (Moscow Center, Comintern, Balkan Communist Federation, Cominform, and sister parties in the Balkans) were not merely external factors influencing orientation and policy choices.

Based on research from published and unpublished archival documents located in Greece, Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, and the Balkan countries, Under Stalin's Shadow traces the KKE movement's interactions with fraternal parties in neighboring states and with their acknowledged supreme mentors in Stalin's Soviet Russia. Marantzidis reveals how, because the boundaries between the national and international in the Communist world were not clearly drawn, international institutions, geopolitical soviet interests, and sister parties' strategies shaped in fundamental ways the KKE's leadership, its character and decision making as a party, and the way of life of its followers over the years.

Nikos Marantzidis is Professor of Political Science in the Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies Department at the University of Macedonia and Visiting Professor at Charles University in Prague. He has published extensively on Greek and European Communism and Greek civil war history.

Nikos Marantzidis's new book on the history of the Greek Communist Party (Kommounistiko Komma Ellados, KKE) is a much-needed addition to the often self-centered historiography of Greek communism. The stated ambition of the book is not simply to tell the story of a national communist party but rather to provide "a history of international Communism from the perspective of its periphery in southeastern Europe" (p. 12) through the case study of the KKE. It does so successfully.

Based on a rich multiarchival and multilingual source pool from Greece, eastern Europe, and western Europe, Marantzidis succeeds in presenting a fascinating story of a rather tragic nature in which ideology, dreams, ambitions, and ideals clashed with harsh realities, power dynamics, and more than often shrewd expediency.

Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of Maryland, author of The Devil in History:

This book adds significantly to our understanding of the political, social, and psychological implications of the early years in the history of the Soviet Bloc. The reader sees clearly the connections among the Moscow Center, the Belgrade sub-center, and the other East European people's democracies.

Stathis Kalyvas, University of Oxford, author of Modern Greece:

An ambitious and wide-ranging history of the Greek Communist Party, masterfully weaving domestic and international dimensions, Under Stalin's Shadow will quickly become the key reference on Greek Communism.