Nikos Vavoudis: the activity of a transnational communist in Greece, Spain and the USSR

Twentieth Century Communism - ISSN 1758-6437
Volume 2026 Number 31

Preprint Article

Nikos Vavoudis: the activity of a transnational communist in Greece, Spain and the USSR
Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Manolis Choumerianos, Giorgos Leontiadis

Abstract

Nikos Vavoudis is a very important figure in the international communist movement, for two reasons. The first is that he is one of the few Greek communists who participated in two civil wars (the Spanish and the Greek). The second relates to his fate after the defeat of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in the Greek civil war. Although Vavoudis was a key figure in the functioning of the illegal party organisation in Athens, his death at the hands of Greek police was called into question by the KKE, who even accused him of working as a spy for the police. Several years on, Vavoudis’s memory was partially rehabilitated, but not in an effort to restore the truth but rather to legitimise the new leadership of the KKE. This paper draws on archival material from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), the ASKI (Archives of Contemporary Social History) and the KKE archive, which includes newspapers of the period, KKE publications, and personal testimonies (printed and oral). 

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To cite this article
Spyros Sakellaropoulos, Manolis Choumerianos, Giorgos Leontiadis (2026) Nikos Vavoudis: the activity of a transnational communist in Greece, Spain and the USSR, Twentieth Century Communism, 2026(31)