Charilaos Florakis: "Notes of Ire", 1991

Charilaos Florakis, Democratic Army of Greece, right

Shameless lackeys of imperialism! The leaders of the CPSU have suddenly proclaimed the party of Lenin and Stalin, the party of the wretched of all the earth, illegal! And they have auctioned its property! This is a world first. This is the provocation and deceit of centuries. And they put us to sleep, all these years, with their "Perestroika" and "Glasnost" and their other deceptive proclamations. How the hell did they unnerve the people so as to grab from its hands the reins, its present and future, without a single nose bleeding?

August-September 1991

I remember Diamantis, Agathi, Beloyannis and countless other fighters -- all buried in the dirt. If they could rise, they would ask us: "Comrades, is this why we gave our lives for socialism? So it could be surrendered to traitors?" What would we answer, so as to make them peaceful again in their graves? That the proclamation that the Bolshevik party is illegal is its...reconstruction? That the dissolution of the Soviet State took place for the sake of improving actually existing socialism? That unemployment, hunger, immiseration and criminality are a necessary stage for the rebuilding of socialism? That the "new order" is the quintessence of socialism? What would we answer them?

October, 1991

What I had, I' ve given to the Party. The objects in my house should stay with the Party as well. The Communist Party of Greece of course! Because if the devil has it so --I don't want to believe this-- that it has the fate of other parties, whether by changing its name or its program, then I say categorically, I ask that all contracts regarding my inheritance be revoked and that everything goes to the "Home of the Partisan". I want to be categorical about this. Because I' m leaving my belongings to KKE, not to some other, ersatz Party. I repeat, if there are changes (I don't believe so -- there's much one cannot believe that does happen -- who would have ever thought the CPSU would self-dissolve and become illegal) everything should go to the Home of the Partisan. I don't care what political stance they' ll have as long as they are fighters.

December 1991

Charilaos Florakis was the GS of KKE from 1972 to 1989. He was active in KKE since 1941 and fought for ELAS and the Democratic Army of Greece. He spent 12 years in prison and 6 in exile. He died in 2005. The title "Notes of Ire" is given to his diary of the period by his biographer, Christos Theoharatos, from whose second volume of Florakis's biography the present have been translated.