Markos Vafiadis

Markos Vafeiadis (also spelled as Vafiadis and Vafiades; ; – ) was a leading figure of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) during the Greek Resistance and the Greek Civil War.

Pre-war life Markos Vafeiadis in 1931, at the start of his political rise. Vafiedis was born in Tosya, Ottoman Empire in 1906 although some sources claim he was born in Şenkaya, Erzurum in present-day Turkey.

In November 1944, his forces liberated Central Macedonia and helped save thousands of Greek Jews from imminent peril from the exiting Nazi regime. In February 1946, Markos Vafeiadis disagreed with Nikos Zachariadis, the general secretary of KKE, who wanted to create a standing communist army. Vafeiadis believed that the forces of the Greek government were too strong, and the best option for the KKE was a guerrilla struggle.

However, in July 1946, Zachariadis appointed him as leader of the communist guerrilla formations. In October 1946, when the General Command of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) was founded, Vafeiadis assumed its leadership, and in December 1947 he was appointed Prime Minister and War Minister of the Provisional Democratic Government.

During the last stages of the Civil War his disagreement with Zachariadis on issues of military doctrine led to his removal from leadership (August 1948) and later from all offices (January 1949). In October 1950, he was ousted from the Communist Party, while he was in exile in the Soviet Union, where he had fled after the breakup of the DSE.

Post-Civil War After the end of Joseph Stalin's era, Markos Vafeiadis 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 "interior" (εσωτερικού) faction of the KKE restored him. In March 1983, ending his 33-year exile in the Soviet Union, he returned to Greece and the island of Chios where he later published his Memoirs. Ηe became a political supporter of Andreas Papandreou and in November 1989 and April 1990, he was honorarily elected into the Greek parliament through the nationwide list of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK). In 1984 he was awarded the rank of the General of the Hellenic army.