Native name	Ελληνική Δημοκρατία''Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía''
Conventional long name	Hellenic Republic
Common name	Greece
Image coat	Coat of arms of Greece.svg
Symbol type	National emblem
Image coat caption	National emblem
Map caption
National anthem	"''Ýmnos is tin Eleftherían''Hymn to Liberty"
National motto	Eleftheria i Thanatos, (Greek: "Ελευθερία ή Θάνατος", ''"Laziness or Death"'') (traditional)
Official languages	Greek
Demonym	Greek (Officially: Hellenic)
Capital	Athens
Largest city	Athens
Government type	Unitary parliamentary republic
Leader title1	President
Leader name1	Karolos Papoulias
Leader title2	Prime Minister
Leader name2	George Papandreou MP
Legislature	Parliament
Sovereignty type	Independence
Established event1	Declared
Established date1	1 January 1822, at the First National Assembly
Established event2	Recognized
Established date2	3 February 1830, in the London Protocol
Established event3	Current constitution
Established date3	11 June 1975,Third Hellenic Republic
Accessioneudate	1 January 1981
Euseats	24
Area rank	96th
Area magnitude	1 E11
Area km2	131,990
Area sq mi	50,944
Percent water	0.8669
Population estimate	11,305,118
Population estimate rank	74th
Population estimate year	2010
Population census	10,787,690
Population census year	2011 (preliminary data)
Population density km2	85.3
Population density sq mi	221.0
Population density rank	88th
gdp ppp	$318.082 billion
Gdp ppp rank	37th
Gdp ppp year	2010
Gdp ppp per capita	$28,434
Gdp ppp per capita rank	29th
Gdp nominal	$305.415 billion
Gdp nominal rank	32nd
Gdp nominal year	2010
Gdp nominal per capita	$27,302
Gdp nominal per capita rank	29th
Hdi	0.855
Hdi rank	22nd
Hdi year	2010|HDI_category very high
Gini	33
Gini year	2005
Currency	Euro (€)2
Currency code	EUR
Time zone	EET
Utc offset	+2
Time zone dst	EEST
Utc offset dst	+3
Ethnic groups	94% Greek,4% Albanian,2% others
Drives on	right
Cctld	.gr3
Calling code	30
Footnote1	Also the national anthem of Cyprus.
Footnote2	Before 2001, the Greek drachma.
Footnote3	The .eu domain is also used, as in other European Union member states. }}

Greece (, ''Elláda'', ), also known as Hellas (, ''Hellás'', ) and officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, ''Ellīnikī́ Dīmokratía'', ), is a country in southeastern Europe.

Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the twelfth longest coastline in the world at in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at .

Modern Greece traces its roots to the civilization of ancient Greece, generally considered the cradle of Western civilization. As such, it is the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, the Olympic Games, Western literature and historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, university education, coinage, and Western drama, including both tragedy and comedy. This legacy is partly reflected in the seventeen UNESCO World Heritage Sites located in Greece, ranking Greece 7th in Europe and 13th in the world. The modern Greek state was established in 1830, following the Greek War of Independence.

A developed country with an advanced, high-income economy and very high standards of living (including the 22nd highest Human Development Index in the world ), Greece has been a member of what is now the European Union since 1981 and the eurozone since 2001, NATO since 1952, and the European Space Agency since 2005. It is also a founding member of the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.

Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus, Greece's most significant port).

Name

The name of Greece differs in Greece in comparison with the names used for the country in other languages and cultures, just like the names of the Greeks. Although the Greeks call the country ''Hellas'' or ''Ellada'' () and its official name is Hellenic Republic, in English the country is called Greece, which comes from Latin ''Graecia'' as used by the Romans and literally means 'the land of the Greeks'; however, the name ''Hellas'' is sometimes used in English too.

History

While the area around Attica was inhabited during the Upper Paleolithic period (30000 –10000 BCE), archaeological evidence suggests that the small caves around the Acropolis rock and the Klepsythra spring were in use during the Neolithic Period (3000–2800 BCE). Greece was the first area in Europe where advanced early civilizations emerged, beginning with the Cycladic civilization of the Aegean Sea, the Minoan civilization in Crete and then the Mycenaean civilization on the mainland. Later, various Greek kingdoms and city-states emerged across the Greek peninsula and spread to the shores of the Black Sea, South Italy and Asia Minor, reaching great levels of prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece, expressed in architecture, drama, science and philosophy, and nurtured in Athens under a democratic environment.

Athens and Sparta led the way in repelling the Persian Empire in a series of battles. Both were later overshadowed by Thebes and eventually Macedonia, with the latter under the guidance of Alexander the Great uniting and leading the Greek world to victory over the Persians.

The Hellenistic period was brought only partially to a close two centuries later with the establishment of Roman rule over Greek lands in 146 BC. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucia and the many other new Hellenistic cities in Asia and Africa founded in Alexander's wake.

The subsequent mixture of Roman and Hellenic cultures took form in the establishment of the Byzantine Empire in 330 AD around Constantinople. Byzantium remained a major cultural and military power for the next 1,123 years, until the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. On the eve of the Ottoman conquest, much of the Greek intelligentsia migrated to Italy and other parts of Europe not under Ottoman rule, playing a significant role in the Renaissance through the transmission of ancient Greek works to Western Europe. Nevertheless, the Ottoman millet system contributed to the cohesion of the Orthodox Greeks by segregating the various peoples within the empire based on religion, as the latter played an integral role in the formation of modern Greek identity.

After the Greek War of Independence, successfully waged against the Ottoman Empire from 1821 to 1829, the nascent Greek state was finally recognized under the London Protocol in 1830. In 1827, Ioannis Kapodistrias, from Corfu, was chosen as the first governor of the new Republic. However, following his assassination in 1831, the Great Powers installed a monarchy under Otto, of the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach. In 1843, an uprising forced the king to grant a constitution and a representative assembly.

Due to his unimpaired authoritarian rule, he was eventually dethroned in 1863 and replaced by Prince Wilhelm (William) of Denmark, who took the name George I and brought with him the Ionian Islands as a coronation gift from Britain. In 1877, Charilaos Trikoupis, who is credited with significant improvement of the country's infrastructure, curbed the power of the monarchy to interfere in the assembly by issuing the rule of vote of confidence to any potential prime minister.

20th century onwards

As a result of the Balkan Wars, Greece increased the extent of its territory and population. In the following years, the struggle between King Constantine I and charismatic Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos over the country's foreign policy on the eve of World War I dominated the country's political scene, and divided the country into two opposing groups.

In the aftermath of WWI, Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, a war which resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countries under the Treaty of Lausanne. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Pontic Greeks died during this period. Instability and successive ''coups d'état'' marked the following era, which was overshadowed by the massive task of incorporating 1.5 million Greek refugees from Turkey into Greek society. The Greek population in Istanbul dropped from 300,000 at the turn of the century to around 3,000 in the city today.

On 28 October 1940, Fascist Italy demanded the surrender of Greece, but Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas refused and in the following Greco-Italian War, Greece repelled Italian forces into Albania, giving the Allies their first victory over Axis forces on land. The country would eventually fall to urgently dispatched German forces during the Battle of Greece. The German occupiers nevertheless met serious challenges from the Greek Resistance. Over 100,000 civilians died from starvation during the winter of 1941–42, and the great majority of Greek Jews were deported to Nazi extermination camps.

After liberation, Greece experienced a bitter civil war between communist and anticommunist forces, which led to economic devastation and severe social tensions between rightists and largely communist leftists for the next thirty years. The next twenty years were characterized by marginalisation of the left in the political and social spheres but also by rapid economic growth, propelled in part by the Marshall Plan.

King Constantine's dismissal of George Papandreou's centrist government in July 1965 prompted a prolonged period of political turbulence which culminated in a ''coup d'état'' on 21 April 1967 by the United States-backed Regime of the Colonels. The brutal suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising on 17 November 1973 sent shockwaves through the regime, and a counter-coup established Brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis as dictator. On 20 July 1974, as Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus, the regime collapsed.

Former premier Konstantinos Karamanlis was invited back from Paris where he had lived in self-exile since 1963, marking the beginning of the Metapolitefsi era. On 14 August 1974, Greek forces withdrew from the integrated military structure of NATO in protest at the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. The first multiparty elections since 1964 were held on the first anniversary of the Polytechnic uprising. A democratic and republican constitution was promulgated on 11 June 1975 following a referendum which abolished the monarchy.

Meanwhile, Andreas Papandreou founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in response to Karamanlis's conservative New Democracy party, with the two political formations alternating in government ever since. Greece rejoined NATO in 1980. Traditionally strained relations with neighbouring Turkey improved when successive earthquakes hit both nations in 1999, leading to the lifting of the Greek veto against Turkey's bid for EU membership.

Greece became the tenth member of the European Communities (subsequently subsumed by the European Union) on 1 January 1981, ushering in a period of remarkable and sustained economic growth. Widespread investments in industrial enterprises and heavy infrastructure, as well as funds from the European Union and growing revenues from tourism, shipping and a fast-growing service sector have raised the country's standard of living to unprecedented levels. The country adopted the euro in 2001 and successfully hosted the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. More recently, it has been hit hard by the late-2000s recession and central to the related European sovereign debt crisis. The Greek economic crisis and resultant, sometimes violent protests have roiled domestic politics and regularly threatened European and world financial-market stability in 2010-11.

Geography

{| style="float:right; margin:10px" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="1" |- | |}

Greece consists of a mountainous, peninsular mainland jutting out into the sea at the southern end of the Balkans, ending at the Peloponnese peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth). Due to its highly indented coastline and numerous islands, Greece has the twelfth-longest coastline in the world with; its land boundary is . The country lies approximately between latitudes 34° and 42° N, and longitudes 19° and 30° E.

Greece features a vast number of islands, between 1,200 and 6,000, depending on the definition, 227 of which are inhabited. Crete is the largest and most populous island; Euboea, separated from the mainland by the 60m-wide Euripus Strait, is the second largest, followed by Rhodes and Lesbos.

The Greek islands are traditionally grouped into the following clusters: The Argo-Saronic Islands in the Saronic gulf near Athens, the Cyclades, a large but dense collection occupying the central part of the Aegean Sea, the North Aegean islands, a loose grouping off the west coast of Turkey, the Dodecanese, another loose collection in the southeast between Crete and Turkey, the Sporades, a small tight group off the coast of Euboea, and the Ionian Islands, located to the west of the mainland in the Ionian Sea.

Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains or hills, making the country one of the most mountainous in Europe. Mount Olympus, the mythical abode of the Greek Gods, culminates at Mytikas peak , the highest in the country. Western Greece contains a number of lakes and wetlands and is dominated by the Pindus mountain range. The Pindus, a continuation of the Dinaric Alps, reaches a maximum elevation of at Mt. Smolikas (the second-highest in Greece) and historically has been a significant barrier to east-west travel.

The Pindus range continues through the central Peloponnese, crosses the islands of Kythera and Antikythera and find its way into southwestern Aegean, in the island of Crete where it eventually ends. The islands of the Aegean are peaks of underwater mountains that once constituted an extension of the mainland. Pindus is characterized by its high, steep peaks, often dissected by numerous canyons and a variety of other karstic landscapes. The spectacular Vikos Gorge, part of the Vikos-Aoos National Park in the Pindus range, is listed by the Guinness book of World Records as the deepest gorge in the world. Another notable formation are the Meteora rock pillars, atop which have been built medieval Greek Orthodox monasteries.

Northeastern Greece features another high-altitude mountain range, the Rhodope range, spreading across the periphery of East Macedonia and Thrace; this area is covered with vast, thick, ancient forests, including the famous Dadia forest in the Evros Prefecture, in the far northeast of the country.

Expansive plains are primarily located in the prefectures of Thessaly, Central Macedonia and Thrace. They constitute key economic regions as they are among the few arable places in the country. Rare marine species such as the Pinniped Seals and the Loggerhead Sea Turtle live in the seas surrounding mainland Greece, while its dense forests are home to the endangered brown bear, the lynx, the Roe Deer and the Wild Goat.

Phytogeographically, Greece belongs to the Boreal Kingdom and is shared between the East Mediterranean province of the Mediterranean Region and the Illyrian province of the Circumboreal Region. According to the World Wide Fund for Nature and the European Environment Agency, the territory of Greece can be subdivided into six ecoregions: the Illyrian deciduous forests, Pindus Mountains mixed forests, Balkan mixed forests, Rhodope montane mixed forests, Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests and Crete Mediterranean forests.

Climate

Greece primarily has a Mediterranean climate, featuring mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. This climate occurs at all coastal locations, including Athens, the Cyclades, the Dodecanese, Crete, the Peloponnese and parts of the Sterea Ellada (Central Continental Grece) region. The Pindus mountain range strongly affects the climate of the country, as areas to the west of the range are considerably wetter on average (due to greater exposure to south-westerly systems bringing in moisture) than the areas lying to the east of the range (due to a rain shadow effect).

The mountainous areas of Northwestern Greece (parts of Epirus, Central Greece, Thessaly, Western Macedonia) as well as in the mountainous central parts of Peloponnese – including parts of the prefectures of Achaia, Arcadia and Laconia – feature an Alpine climate with heavy snowfalls. The inland parts of northern Greece, in Central Macedonia and East Macedonia and Thrace feature a temperate climate with cold, damp winters and hot, dry summers with frequent thunderstorms. Snowfalls occur every year in the mountains and northern areas, and brief snowfalls are not unknown even in low-lying southern areas, such as Athens.

Politics

Greece is a parliamentary republic. The nominal head of state is the President of the Republic, who is elected by the Parliament for a five-year term. Women's suffrage was guaranteed with a 1952 Constitutional amendment.

According to the Constitution, executive power is exercised by the President of the Republic and the Government. The position of Prime Minister, Greece's head of government, belongs to the current leader of the political party that can obtain a vote of confidence by the Parliament. The President of the Republic formally appoints the Prime Minister and, on his recommendation, appoints and dismisses the other members of the Cabinet. Other significant parties include the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS). In 2010, two new parties split off from ND and SYRIZA, the centrist-liberal Democratic Alliance (DS) and the moderate leftist Democratic Left (DA). The current prime minister is George Papandreou, president of PASOK, who on 4 October 2009, won with a majority in the Parliament of 160 out of 300 seats. A new government was sworn in on 20 June 2011, and received a marginal vote of confidence on 22 June, with 155 votes for, 143 against, and two MPs absent. , PASOK holds a majority of 153 seats in parliament, following a series of resignations by party members over austerity plans.

Since the 2010 economic crisis, the two major parties, New Democracy and PASOK, have seen a sharp decline in the share of votes in polls conducted, with predictions allocating just over 60% of eligible votes to them. Additionally, only 11% of the population agree with the policies of the governing party, PASOK, while only 6% with the main opposition, New Democracy.

Administrative divisions

Since the Kallikratis programme reform entered into effect on 1 January 2011, Greece consists of thirteen peripheries subdivided into a total of 325municipalities. The 54 old prefectures and prefecture-level administrations have been largely retained as ''sub-units'' of the peripheries. Seven decentralized administrations group one to three peripheries for administrative purposes on a regional basis. There is also one autonomous area, Mount Athos (, "Holy Mountain"), which borders the periphery of Central Macedonia.

{| |- |valign="middle"| ||

!Number!AthensCentral Greece (periphery)Central MacedoniaCreteEast Macedonia and ThraceEpirus (periphery)Ionian Islands PeripheryNorth AegeanPeloponnese (periphery)South AegeanThessalyWest GreeceWest Macedonia !Number !Karyes (Athos)

Peripheries of Greece	Peripheries!! Capital!! Area (km²)!! Area (sq. mi.)!!Population
1	Attica Periphery>Attica	|	3,808	1,470	3,812,330
2	Central Greece ||	Lamia (city)>Lamia	15,549	6,004	546,870
3	|	Thessaloniki	18,811	7,263	1,874,590
4	|	Heraklion	8,259	3,189	621,340
5	|	Komotini	14,157	5,466	606,170
6	Epirus ||	Ioannina	9,203	3,553	336,650
7	Ionian Islands ||	Corfu (city)>Corfu	2,307	891	206,470
8	|	Mytilene	3,836	1,481	197,810
9	Peloponnese ||	Tripoli, Greece>Tripoli	15,490	5,981	581,980
10	|	Ermoupoli	5,286	2,041	308,610
11	|	Larissa	14,037	5,420	730,730
12	|	Patras	11,350	4,382	680,190
13	|	Kozani	9,451	3,649	282,120
Autonomous state !! Capital !! Area (km²)!! Area (sq. mi.)!!Population
(14)	Mount Athos	Karyes ||	390	151	1,830

|}

Foreign relations

Prominent issues in Greek foreign policy include the enduring Cyprus dispute, the Aegean dispute with Turkey over the Aegean Sea and the Macedonia naming dispute with the Republic of Macedonia, which Greece refers to internationally by the provisional reference "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia". Also the British government in 1816 purchased the Parthenon Marbles, forming a part of the collection known as the Elgin Marbles and placed on display in the British Museum, where they stand now on view in the purpose-built Duveen Gallery. The debate continues as to whether the Marbles should remain in the British Museum or be returned to Athens.

Military

{| class="toccolours" style="float:right; margin:0 0 1em 1em;" | style="background:#ddd; text-align:center;"| |- | |} The Hellenic Armed Forces are overseen by the Hellenic National Defense General Staff(Γενικό Επιτελείο Εθνικής Άμυνας – ΓΕΕΘΑ) and consists of three branches:

Hellenic Army

Hellenic Navy

Hellenic Air Force

The civilian authority for the Greek military is the Ministry of National Defence. Furthermore, Greece maintains the Hellenic Coast Guard for law enforcement in the sea and for search and rescue.

Greece has universal compulsory military service for males, while females (who may serve in the military) are exempted from conscription. , Greece has mandatory military service of nine months for male citizens between the ages of 19 and 45. However, as the armed forces had been gearing towards a complete professional army system, the government had promised that the mandatory military service would be cut or even abolished completely.

Greek males between the age of 18 and 60 who live in strategically sensitive areas may be required to serve part-time in the National Guard. Service in the Guard is paid. As a member of NATO, the Greek military participates in exercises and deployments under the auspices of the alliance.

Economy

The Greek economy (that is gross domestic product, GDP) expanded at an average annual rate of 4% from 2004– 2007 and 2% during 2008 (at constant prices of 2000), one of the highest rates in the Eurozone. However, in 2009 GDP decreased by −1.9%. In 2010, a decrease of GDP by −2.5% to −4% is estimated, due to the current economic crisis.

The tourism industry is a major source of foreign exchange earnings and revenue accounting for 15% of Greece's total GDP and employing, directly or indirectly, 16.5% of the total workforce.

The Greek labour force totals 4.9 million, and it is the second-most-industrious among OECD countries, after South Korea. The Groningen Growth & Development Centre published a poll revealing that between 1995 and 2005, Greece ranked third in the "working hours per year ranking" among European nations; Greeks worked an average of 1,811 hours per year. In 2007, the average worker produced around 20 dollars per hour, similar to Spain and slightly more than half of average U.S. worker's hourly output. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, occupied in mainly agricultural and construction work.

Greece's purchasing power-adjusted GDP per capita is the world's 25th highest. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it had an estimated average per capita income of $29,882 for the year 2009, a figure slightly higher than that of Italy and Spain. According to Eurostat data, Greek PPS GDP per capita stood at 95 per cent of the EU average in 2009. According to a survey by ''The Economist'', the cost of living in Athens is close to 90% of the costs in New York City; in rural regions it is lower.

In Greece, the euro was introduced in 2002. As a preparation for this date, the minting of the new euro coins started as early as 2001, however all Greek euro coins introduced in 2002 have this year on it; unlike some other countries of the Eurozone where mint year is minted in the coin. Eight different designs, one per face value, were selected for the Greek coins. In 2007, in order to adopt the new common map like the rest of the Eurozone countries, Greece changed the common side of their coins. Before adopting the euro in 2002, Greece had maintained use of the Greek drachma from 1832.

In 2009, Greece had the EU's second-lowest Index of Economic Freedom (after Poland), ranking 81st in the world. The country suffers from high levels of political and economic corruption and low global competitiveness relative to its EU partners. The Greek economy faces significant problems, including rising unemployment levels and an inefficient government bureaucracy.

Although remaining above the euro area average, economic growth turned negative in 2009 for the first time since 1993. An indication of the trend of over-lending in recent years is the fact that the ratio of loans to savings exceeded 100% during the first half of the year.

2010–2011 economic crisis

By the end of 2009, as a result of a combination of international and local factors (respectively, the world financial crisis and uncontrolled government spending), the Greek economy faced its most-severe crisis since the restoration of democracy in 1974 as the Greek government revised its deficit from an estimated 6% to 12.7% of gross domestic product (GDP).

In early 2010, it was revealed that successive Greek governments had been found to have consistently and deliberately misreported the country's official economic statistics to keep within the monetary union guidelines. This had enabled Greek governments to spend beyond their means, while hiding the actual deficit from the EU overseers. In May 2010, the Greek government deficit was again revised and estimated to be 13.6% which was one of the highest in the world relative to GDP and public debt was forecast, according to some estimates, to hit 120% of GDP during 2010, one of the highest rates in the world.

As a consequence, there was a crisis in international confidence in Greece's ability to repay its sovereign debt. In order to avert such a default, in May 2010 the other Eurozone countries, and the IMF, agreed to a rescue package which involved giving Greece an immediate € in bail-out loans, with more funds to follow, totaling €. In order to secure the funding, Greece was required to adopt harsh austerity measures to bring its deficit under control. Their implementation will be monitored and evaluated by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF.

On 15 November 2010, the EU's statistics body Eurostat revised the public finance and debt figure for Greece following an excessive deficit procedure methodological mission in Athens, and put Greece's 2009 government deficit at 15.4% of GDP and public debt at 126.8% of GDP making it the biggest deficit (as a percentage of GDP) amongst the EU member nations (although some have speculated that Ireland's in 2010 may prove to be worse).

The financial crisis – particularly the austerity package put forth by the EU and the IMF – has been met with anger by the Greek public, leading to riots and social unrest.

Maritime industry

The shipping industry is a key element of Greek economic activity dating back to ancient times. Today, shipping is one of the country's most important industries. It accounts for 4.5% of GDP, employs about 160,000 people (4% of the workforce), and represents 1/3 of the country's trade deficit.

During the 1960s, the size of the Greek fleet nearly doubled, primarily through the investment undertaken by the shipping magnates, Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. The basis of the modern Greek maritime industry was formed after World War II when Greek shipping businessmen were able to amass surplus ships sold to them by the U.S. government through the Ship Sales Act of the 1940s.

According to a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report in 2010, the Greek merchant navy is the largest in the world at 15.96% of the world's total capacity. This is a drop from the equivalent number in 2006, which was 18.2%. The total tonnage of the country's merchant fleet is 186 million dwt, ranked 1st in the world. In terms of total number of ships, the Greek Merchant Navy stands at 4th worldwide, with 3,150 ships (741 of which are registered in Greece whereas the rest 2,409 in other ports). In terms of ship categories, Greece ranks first in both tankers and dry bulk carriers, fourth in the number of containers, and fourth in other ships. However, today's fleet roster is smaller than an all-time high of 5,000 ships in the late 1970s. Additionally, the total number of ships flying a Greek flag (includes non-Greek fleets) is 1,517, or 5.3% of the world's dwt (ranked 5th).

Tourism

An important percentage of Greece's national income comes from tourism. According to Eurostat statistics, Greece welcomed over 19.5 million tourists in 2009, which is an increase from the 17.7 million tourists it welcomed in 2007. The vast majority of visitors in Greece in 2007 came from the European continent, numbering 12.7 million, while the most visitors from a single nationality were those from the United Kingdom, (2.6 million), followed closely by those from Germany (2.3 million). In 2010, the most visited periphery of Greece was that of Central Macedonia, with 18% of the country's total tourist flow (amounting to 3.6 million tourists), followed by Attica with 2.6 million and the Peloponnese with 1.8 million.Northern Greece is the country's most-visited geographical region, with 6.5 million tourists, while Central Greece is second with 6.3 million.

In 2010, Lonely Planet ranked Greece's northern and second-largest city of Thessaloniki as the world's fifth-best party town worldwide, comparable to other cities such as Dubai and Montreal. In 2011, Santorini was voted as "The World's Best Island" in ''Travel + Leisure''. Its neighboring island Mykonos, came in fifth in the European category.

Transport

Since the 1980s, the road and rail network of Greece has been significantly modernized. Important works include the Egnatia Odos that connects northwestern Greece (Igoumenitsa) with northern and northeastern Greece (Kipoi). The Rio–Antirrio bridge, the longest suspension cable bridge in Europe, (2250 m or 7382 ft long) connects the western Peloponnese from Rio(7 km or 4 mi from Patras) with Antirrio in Central Greece.

An expansion of the Patras-Athens motorway towards Pyrgos in the western Peloponnese is scheduled to be completed by 2014. Most of the motorway connection from Athens to Thessaloniki has also been upgraded.

The Athens Metropolitan Area includes state of the art infrastructure such as the Athens International Airport, the privately run motorway Attiki Odos and the expanded Athens Metro system. Most of the Greek islands and many main cities of Greece are connected by air mainly from the two major Greek airlines, Olympic Air and Aegean Airlines. Maritime connections have been improved with modern high-speed craft, including hydrofoils and catamarans.

Railway connections play a somewhat lesser role than in many other European countries, but they too have also been expanded, with new suburban/commuter rail connections, serviced by Proastiakos around Athens, towards its airport, Kiato and Chalkida; and around Thessaloniki, towards the cities of Larissa and Edessa. A modern intercity rail connection between Athens and Thessaloniki has also been established, while an upgrade to double lines in many parts of the network is underway. International railway lines connect Greek cities with the rest of Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, although they have been suspended, due to the financial crisis.

Communications

Broadband internet availability is widespread in Greece; there were a total of 2,252,653 broadband connections . This translates to 20% broadband penetration

Internet cafés that provide net access, office applications and multiplayer gaming are also a common sight in the country, while mobile internet on 3G cellphone networks and Wi-Fi connections can be found almost everywhere.

Science and technology

The General Secretariat for Research and Technology of the Ministry of Development is responsible for designing, implementing and supervising national research and technological policy. In 2003, public spending on research and development (R&D;) was 456.37 million euros (12.6% increase from 2002). Total R&D; spending (both public and private) as a percentage of GDP had increased considerably since the beginning of the past decade, from 0.38% in 1989, to 0.65% in 2001. R&D; spending in Greece remained lower than the EU average of 1.93%, but, according to Research DC, based on OECD and Eurostat data, between 1990 and 1998, total R&D; expenditure in Greece enjoyed the third-highest increase in Europe, after Finland and Ireland. Because of its strategic location, qualified workforce and political and economic stability, many multinational companies such as Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola and Coca-Cola have their regional research and development headquarters in Greece.

Greece's technology parks with incubator facilities include the Science and Technology Park of Crete (Heraklion), the Thessaloniki Technology Park, the Lavrio Technology Park and the Patras Science Park.Greece has been a member of the European Space Agency (ESA) since 2005. Cooperation between ESA and the Hellenic National Space Committee began in the early 1990s. In 1994, Greece and ESA signed their first cooperation agreement. Having formally applied for full membership in 2003, Greece became the ESA's sixteenth member on 16 March 2005. As member of the ESA, Greece participates in the agency's telecommunication and technology activities, and the Global Monitoring for Environment and SecurityInitiative.

Demographics

The official statistical body of Greece is the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT). According to the ELSTAT, Greece's total population in 2001 was 10,964,020. That figure is divided into 5,427,682 males and 5,536,338 females. The preliminary results of the 2011 census show a decrease in the country's population to 10,787,690, a drop of 1.6%. As statistics from 1971, 1981, and 2001 show, the Greek population has been aging the past several decades.

The birth rate in 2003 stood 9.5 per 1,000 inhabitants (14.5 per 1,000 in 1981). At the same time the mortality rate increased slightly from 8.9 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1981 to 9.6 per 1,000 inhabitants in 2003. In 2001, 16.71% of the population were 65 years old and older, 68.12% between the ages of 15 and 64 years old, and 15.18% were 14 years old and younger.

Greek society has also rapidly changed with the passage of time. Marriage rates kept falling from almost 71 per 1,000 inhabitants in 1981 until 2002, only to increase slightly in 2003 to 61 per 1,000 and then fall again to 51 in 2004. Divorce rates on the other hand, have seen an increase – from 191.2 per 1,000 marriages in 1991 to 239.5 per 1,000 marriages in 2004.

Cities

Almost two-thirds of the Greek people live in urban areas. Greece's largest metropolitan centres and most influential urban areas, are those of Athens and Thessaloniki, with metropolitan populations of approximately 4 million and 1 million inhabitants respectively. A number of cities that also form influential urban centres around the country include those of Patras, Heraklion, Larissa, Volos, Rhodes, Ioannina, Chania and Chalcis with urban populations above 100,000 inhabitants.

The table below lists the largest cities in Greece, by population contained in their respective contiguous built up urban areas; which are either made up of many municipalities, evident in the cases of Athens and Thessaloniki, or are contained within a larger single municipality, case evident in most of the smaller cities of the country. The results come from the population census that took place in Greece in May 2011.

Migration

Throughout the 20th century, millions of Greeks migrated to the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Germany, creating a thriving Greek diaspora. Net migration started to show positive numbers from the 1970s but until the beginning of the 1990s the main influx was that of return migrants.

In 1986, legal and unauthorized immigrants totaled approximately 90,000. A study from the mmo.gr Mediterranean Migration Observatory maintains that the 2001 census recorded 762,191 persons residing in Greece without Greek citizenship, constituting around 7% of total population. Of the non-citizen residents, 48,560 were EU or European Free Trade Association nationals and 17,426 were Cypriots with privileged status. The majority come from Eastern European countries: Albania (56%), Bulgaria (5%) and Romania (3%), while migrants from the former Soviet Union (Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, etc.) comprise 10% of the total. The greatest cluster of non-EU immigrant population are the urban centers, especially the Municipality of Athens with 132,000 immigrants, at 17% of the local population and then Thessaloniki, with 27,000, reaching 7% of the local population. There is also a considerable number of co-ethnics that came from the Greek communities of Albania and the former Soviet Union.

Greece, together with Italy and Spain, faces a flood of illegal immigrants trying to enter the EU. The Cabinet has approved a draft law that would allow children born in Greece to parents who are immigrants, one of whom must have been living in the country legally for at least five consecutive years to apply for Greek citizenship. The government, despite strong objections from oppositions, is determined to pass the bill. The main objective is to facilitate the smooth integration of legal immigrants and their children in the Greek social reality. The basic criteria remain the legality of residence and children's participation in Greek culture. For the same reason, moreover, long-term residents, political refugees and expatriates will be allowed to participate in local elections.

Religion

The Greek Constitution recognizes the Orthodox faith as the "prevailing" faith of the country, while guaranteeing freedom of religious belief for all. In a Eurostat – Eurobarometer 2005 poll, 81% of Greek citizens responded that they "believe there is a God", which was the third highest percentage among EU members behind only Malta and Cyprus. According to other sources, 15.8% of Greeks describe themselves as "very religious", which is the highest among all European countries. The survey also found that just 3.5% never attend a church, compared to 4.9% in Poland and 59.1% in the Czech Republic.

Estimates of the recognized Greek Muslim minority, which is mostly located in Thrace, range from 98,000 to 140,000, (between 0.9% and 1.2%) while the immigrant Muslim community numbers between 200,000 and 300,000. Albanian immigrants to Greece are usually associated with the Muslim religion, although most are secular in orientation. Following the 1919–1922 Greco-Turkish War and the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, Greece and Turkey agreed to a population transfer based on cultural and religious identity. About 500,000 Muslims from Greece, predominantly Turks, but also other Muslims, were exchanged with approximately 1,500,000 Greeks from Asia Minor (now Turkey).

Athens is the only EU capital without a purpose-built place of worship for its Muslim population.

Judaism has existed in Greece for more than 2,000 years. Sephardi Jews used to have a large presence in the city of Thessaloniki (by 1900, some 80,000, or more than half of the population, were Jews), but nowadays the Greek-Jewish community who survived German occupation and the Holocaust, during World War II, is estimated to number around 5,500 people.

Greek members of Roman Catholic faith are estimated at 50,000 with the Roman Catholic immigrant community approximating 200,000. Old Calendarists account for 500,000 followers. Protestants, including Greek Evangelical Church and Free Evangelical Churches, stand at about 30,000. Assemblies of God, International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and other Pentecostal churches of the Greek Synod of Apostolic Church has 12,000 members. Independent Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost is the biggest Protestant denomination in Greece with 120 churches. There are not official statistics about Free Apostolic Church of Pentecost, but the Orthodox Church estimates the followers as 20,000. The Jehovah's Witnesses report having 28,859 active members.

Languages

The first concrete evidence of the Greek language dates back to 15th century BC and the Linear B script which is associated with the Mycenaean Civilization. Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and beyond during Classical Antiquity, and would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire. During the 19th and 20th centuries there was a major dispute known as Greek language question, on whether the official language of Greece should be the archaic Katharevousa, created in the 19th century and used as the state and scholarly language, or the Dimotiki, the form of the Greek language which evolved naturally from Byzantine Greek and was the language of the people. The dispute was finally resolved in 1976, when Dimotiki was made the only official variation of the Greek language, and Katharevousa fell to disuse.

Greece is today relatively homogeneous in linguistic terms, with a large majority of the native population using Greek as their first or only language. Among the Greek-speaking population, speakers of the distinctive Pontic dialect came to Greece from Asia Minor after the Greek genocide and constitute a sizable group.

The Muslim minority in Thrace, which amounts to approximately 0.95% of the total population, consists of speakers of Turkish, Bulgarian (Pomaks) and Romani. Romani is also spoken by Christian Roma in other parts of the country. Further minority languages have traditionally been spoken by regional population groups in various parts of the country. Their use has decreased radically in the course of the 20th century through assimilation with the Greek-speaking majority. Today they are only maintained by the older generations and are on the verge of extinction. This goes for the Arvanites, an Albanian-speaking group mostly located in the rural areas around the capital Athens, and for the Aromanians and Moglenites, also known as Vlachs, whose language is closely related to Romanian and who used to live scattered across several areas of mountaneous central Greece. Members of these groups ethnically identify as Greeks and are today all at least bilingual in Greek.

Near the northern Greek borders there are also some Slavic or locally known as ''Slavomacedonian''-speaking groups, whose members identify ethnically as Greeks in their majority. Their dialects can be linguistically classified as forms of eitherMacedonian Slavic or Bulgarian. It is estimated that in the aftermath of the population exchanges of 1923 there were somewhere between 200,000 and 400,000 Slavic speakers in Greek Macedonia. The Jewish community in Greece traditionally spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), today maintained only by a small group of a few thousand speakers.

Education

Compulsory education in Greece comprises primary schools (Δημοτικό Σχολείο, ''Dimotikó Scholeio'') and gymnasium (Γυμνάσιο). Nursery schools (Παιδικός σταθμός, ''Paidikós Stathmós'') are popular but not compulsory. Kindergartens (Νηπιαγωγείο, ''Nipiagogeío'') are now compulsory for any child above 4 years of age. Children start primary school aged 6 and remain there for six years. Attendance at gymnasia starts at age 12 and last for three years.

Greece's post-compulsory secondary education consists of two school types: unified upper secondary schools (Ενιαίο Λύκειο, ''Eniaia Lykeia'') and technical–vocational educational schools (Τεχνικά και Επαγγελματικά Εκπαιδευτήρια, "TEE"). Post-compulsory secondary education also includes vocational training institutes (Ινστιτούτα Επαγγελματικής Κατάρτισης, "IEK") which provide a formal but unclassified level of education. As they can accept both ''Gymnasio'' (lower secondary school) and ''Lykeio'' (upper secondary school) graduates, these institutes are not classified as offering a particular level of education.

Public higher education is divided into universities, "Highest Educational Institutions" (Ανώτατα Εκπαιδευτικά Ιδρύματα, ''Anótata Ekpaideytiká Idrýmata'', "ΑΕΙ") and "Highest Technological Educational Institutions" (Ανώτατα Τεχνολογικά Εκπαιδευτικά Ιδρύματα,''Anótata Technologiká Ekpaideytiká Idrýmata'', "ATEI"). Students are admitted to these Institutes according to their performance at national level examinations taking place after completion of the third grade of ''Lykeio''. Additionally, students over twenty-two years old may be admitted to the Hellenic Open University through a form of lottery. The Capodistrian university of Athens is the oldest university in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Greek education system also provides special kindergartens, primary and secondary schools for people with special needs or difficulties in learning. Specialist gymnasia and high schools offering musical, theological and physical education also exist.

Health

The Greek healthcare system is universal and is ranked as one of the best in the world. In a 2000 World Health Organization report it was ranked 14th in the overall assessment and 11th at quality of service, surpassing countries such as the United Kingdom (18th) and Germany (25th). In 2010, there were 138 hospitals with 31,000 beds in the country, but on 1 July 2011, the Ministry for Health and Social Solidarity announced its plans to shorten the number to 77 hospitals with 36,035 beds, as a necessary reform to reduce expenses and further enchance healthacare standards. Greece's healthcare expenditures as a percentage of GDP were 9.6% in 2007 according to a 2011 OECD report, just above the OECD average of 9.5%. The country has the largest number of doctors-to-population ratio of any OECD country.

Life expectancy in Greece is 80.3 years, above the OECD average of 79.5. and among the highest in the world. The same OECD report showed that Greece had the largest percentage of adult daily smokers of any of the 34 OECD members. The country's obesity rate is 18.1%, which is above the OECD average of 15.1% but considerably below the American rate of 27.7%. In 2008, Greece had the highest rate of perceived good health in the OECD, at 98.5%. Infant mortality is one of the lowest in the developed world with a rate of 3.1 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Culture

The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, with its beginnings in the Mycenaean and Minoan Civilizations, continuing most notably into Classical Greece, the Hellenistic Period, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its Greek Eastern successor the Byzantine Empire. The Ottoman Empire too had a significant influence on Greek culture, but the Greek War of Independence is credited with revitalizing Greece and giving birth to a single entity of its multi-faceted culture throughout the ages.

Philosophy

Most western philosophical traditions began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BC.The first philosophers are called "Presocratics" which designates that they came before Socrates. The Presocratics were from the western or the eastern colonies of Greece and only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive, in some cases merely a single sentence.

A new period of philosophy started with Socrates. Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting-point. Aspects of Socrates were first united from Plato, who also combined with them many of the principles established by earlier philosophers, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive system.

Aristotle of Stagira, the most important disciple of Plato, shared with his teacher the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity but while Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Except from these three most significant Greek philosophers other known schools of Greek philosophy from other founders during ancient times were Stoicism, epicureanism, Skepticism and Neoplatonism.

Literature

The timeline of the Greek literature can be separated into three big periods: the ancient, the Byzantine and the modern Greek literature.

At the beginning of Greek literature stand the two monumental works of Homer: the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''. Though dates of composition vary, these works were fixed around 800 BC or after. In the classical period many of the genres of western literature became more prominent. Lyrical poetry, odes, pastorals, elegies, epigrams; dramatic presentations of comedy and tragedy;historiography, rhetorical treatises, philosophical dialectics, and philosophical treatises all arose in this period.The two major lyrical poets were Sappho and Pindar. The Classical era also saw the dawn of drama.

Of the hundreds of tragedies written and performed during the classical age, only a limited number of plays by three authors have survived: those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The surviving plays by Aristophanes are also a treasure trove of comic presentation, while Herodotus and Thucydides are two of the most influential historians in this period. The greatest prose achievement of the 4th century was in philosophy with the works of the three great philosophers.

Byzantine literature refers to literature of the Byzantine Empire written in Atticizing, Medieval and early Modern Greek, and it is the expression of the intellectual life of the Byzantine Greeks during the Christian Middle Ages.

Modern Greek literature refers to literature written in common Modern Greek, emerging from late Byzantine times in the 11th century AD. The Cretan Renaissance poem''Erotokritos'' is undoubtedly the masterpiece of this period of Greek literature. It is a verse romance written around 1600 by Vitsentzos Kornaros(1553–1613). Later, during the period of Greek enlightenment (Diafotismos), writers such as Adamantios Korais and Rigas Feraios will prepare with their works the Greek Revolution (1821–1830).

Contemporary Greek literature is representated by many writers, poets and novelists:Dionysios Solomos, Andreas Kalvos, Angelos Sikelianos, Emmanuel Rhoides, Kostis Palamas, Penelope Delta, Yannis Ritsos, Alexandros Papadiamantis, Nikos Kazantzakis, Andreas Embeirikos, Kostas Karyotakis, Gregorios Xenopoulos, Constantine P. Cavafy, Demetrius Vikelas, while George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Cuisine

Greek cuisine is as an example of the healthy Mediterranean diet (Cretan diet). Greek cuisine incorporates fresh ingredients into a variety of local dishes such as moussaka, stifado, Greek Salad, spanakopita and the world famous Souvlaki. Some dishes can be traced back to ancient Greece likeskordalia (a thick purée of potatoes, walnuts, almonds, crushed garlic and olive oil), lentil soup, retsina (white or rosé wine sealed with pine resin) and pasteli (candy bar with sesame seeds baked with honey). Throughout Greece people often enjoy eating from small dishes such as meze with various dips such as tzatziki, grilled octopus and small fish, feta cheese, dolmades(rice, currants and pine kernels wrapped in vine leaves), various pulses, olives and cheese. Olive oil is added to almost every dish.

Sweet desserts such as galaktoboureko, and drinks such as ouzo, metaxa and a variety of wines including retsina. Greek cuisine differs widely from different parts of the mainland and from island to island. It uses some flavorings more often than other Mediterranean cuisines: oregano, mint, garlic, onion, dill and bay laurel leaves. Other common herbs and spices include basil, thyme and fennelseed. Many Greek recipes, especially in the northern parts of the country, use "sweet" spices in combination with meat, for example cinnamon and cloves in stews.

Music

Greek vocal music extends far back into Ancient times where mixed-gender choruses performed for entertainment, celebration and spiritual reasons. Instruments during that period included the double-reed aulos and the plucked string instrument, the lyre, especially the special kind called a kithara. Music played an important role in the education system during ancient times. Boys were taught music from the age of six. Later influences from the Roman Empire, Eastern Europe, and the Byzantine Empire changed Greek music.

While the new technique of polyphony was developing in the West, the Eastern Orthodox Church resisted any type of change. Therefore, Byzantine music remained monophonic and without any form of instrumental accompaniment. As a result, and despite certain attempts by certain Greek chanters (such as Manouel Gazis, Ioannis Plousiadinos or the Cypriot Ieronimos o Tragodistis) Byzantine music was deprived of elements of which in the West encouraged an unimpeded development of art. However, the isolation of Byzantium after 1453, which kept music away from polyphony, along with centuries of continuous culture, enabled monophonic music to develop to the greatest heights of perfection. Byzantium presented the monophonic Byzantine chant; a melodic treasury of inestimable value for its rhythmical variety and expressive power.

Along with the Byzantine chant, the Greek people also cultivated the Greek folk song which is divided into two cycles, the akritic and klephtic. The akritic was created between the 9th and 10th centuries A.D. and expressed the life and struggles of the akrites (frontier guards) of the Byzantine empire, the most well known being the stories associated with Digenes Akritas. The klephtic cycle came into being between the late Byzantine period and the start of the Greek War of Independence struggle in 1821. The klephtic cycle, together with historical songs, ''paraloghes'' (narrative song or ballad), love songs, wedding songs, songs of exile and dirges express the life of the Greeks. There is a unity between the Greek people's struggles for freedom, their joys and sorrow and attitudes towards love and death.

The Second World War, German occupation of Greece and the Greek Civil War decisively influenced the Greek folk song. After the first World War and the 1922 débâcle, the trend towards urban living focused on Athens where popular musicians congregated and, in 1928, founded their own professional society: the Athens and Piraeus Musicians Society. Until the early years of this century, musical tradition was preserved in the villages where there was little contact with the outside world. The events and social changes of the 20th century changed Greek folk song. Once the seat of folk song was the village, now the reverse applies. The commercialised folk song spreads in all directions to the remotest villages. The authentic songs and dances have been replaced by the stylised modern "folk songs" written by contemporary musicians which they write new lyrics to authentic folk tunes, changing them enough to ensure copyright protection.

Sports

Greece is the birth place of the Olympic Games. The Panathenian stadium in Athens hosted the Olympic Games in 1896. It had also hosted Olympic Games in 1870 and 1875 (see Evangelis Zappas). The Panathenian stadium also hosted the Games in 1906 and was used to host events at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

The Greek national football team, ranked 12th in the world in 2009, won the UEFA Euro 2004 in one of the biggest surprises in the history of the sport. The Greek Super League is the highest professional football league in the country comprising sixteen teams. The most successful are Olympiacos, Panathinaikos, Aris, PAOK and AEK Athens.

The Greek national basketball team has a decades-long tradition of excellence in the sport. In August 2008, it ranked 4th in the world. They have won the European Championship twice in 1987 and 2005, and have reached the final four in three of the last four FIBA World Championships, taking second place in 2006. In 2009, Greece beat France in the under-20 European Basketball championship. The domestic top basketball league, A1 Ethniki, is composed of fourteen teams. The most successful Greek teams are Panathinaikos, Olympiacos, Aris Thessaloniki and PAOK. Water polo and volleyball are also practiced widely in Greece whilecricket and handball are relatively popular in Corfu and Veroia respectively.

Mythology

The numerous gods of the ancient Greek religion as well as the mythical heroes and events of the ancient Greek epics (''The Odyssey'' and ''The Iliad'') and other pieces of art and literature from the time make up what is nowadays colloquially referred to as Greek mythology. Apart from serving a religious function, the mythology of the ancient Greek world also served a cosmological role as it was meant to try to explain how the world was formed and operated.

The principal gods of the ancient Greek religion were the Dodekatheon, or the ''Twelve Gods'', who lived on the top of Mount Olympus. The most important of all ancient Greek gods was Zeus, the king of the gods, who was married to Hera, who was also Zeus' sister. The other Greek gods that made up the Twelve Olympians were Demeter, Hades, Ares, Poseidon, Athena, Dionysus, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hephaestus and Hermes. Apart from these twelve gods, Greeks also had a variety of other mystical beliefs, such as nymphs and other magical creatures.

See also

Name days in Greece

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References

;Bibliography .

Kalaitzidis, Akis (2010). ''Europe's Greece: A Giant in the Making'' (Palgrave Macmillan) 219 pages; $85. the impact of European Union membership on Greek politics, economics, and society.

"Minorities in Greece – Historical Issues and New Perspectives". ''History and Culture of South Eastern Europe''. An Annual Journal. München (Slavica) 2003.

External links

; Government

President of the Hellenic Republic

Minister of the Hellenic Republic

Greek National Tourism Organisation

missions in Greece

Greek missions abroad (embassies, consulates, representations)

Greek News Agenda Newsletter

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

of State and Cabinet Members

; General information

Greece at Encyclopaedia Britannica

Greece at National Geographic

Greece at ''UCB Libraries GovPubs''

Greek Council for Refugees

Hellenic History

Hellenism.Net – Everything about Greece

History of Greece: Primary Documents

The Greek Heritage

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Country	Greece
Colorcode
Party name	Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας ''Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas'' Communist Party of Greece
Party logo
Leader	Aleka Papariga
Foundation
Headquarters	145 Leof. Irakliou,142 31 Athens (Nea Ionia)
Youth wing	Communist Youth of Greece
Newspaper	Rizospastis
Ideology	Communism,Marxism-Leninism
position	Left-wing
International	Formerly Comintern, Now participates in the International Conference of Communist and Workers' Parties.
European	''None''
Europarl	European United Left–Nordic Green Left
Colours	Red
Website	http://www.kke.gr/
Seats1 title	Parliament
Seats1
Seats2 title	European Parliament
Seats2
Seats3 title	Peripheries
Seats3	}}

Founded in 1918, the Communist Party of Greece (, ''Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas''), better known by its acronym, ΚΚΕ (usually pronounced ''"koo-koo-eh"'' or ''"kappa-kappa-epsilon"''), is the oldest party on the Greek political scene.

History

Foundation

The October Revolution of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917 gave impetus for the foundation of Communist parties in many countries all over the globe. ΚΚΕ was founded on 4 November 1918 as the Socialist Labour Party of Greece (Acronym: SEKE, Greek: Σοσιαλιστικό Εργατικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας, Sosialistiko Ergatiko Komma Elladas) by Avraam Benaroya, a Sephardic Jewish teacher and Socialist Workers' Federation leader in Thessaloniki. The party was run by a five-member central committee which consisted of Nikos Dimitratos, D. Ligdopoulos, M. Sideris, A. Arvanitis and S. Kokkinos.

The background of KKE has roots in more than 60 years of small socialist, anarchist and communist groups, mainly in industrialized areas. These groups, following the example of the Paris Commune and the 1892 Chicago workers' movement for the 8 hour day, had as immediate political goals the unification of Greek workers into trade unions, the implementation of an 8 hour working day in Greece, and better salaries for workers. Inspired by the Paris Commune and the Communist revolutionary efforts in the US, Germany and Russia at the beginning of the century, and the destruction that almost 20 years of wars had brought upon the Greek workers, a unified Social-Communist party was founded in Greece.

At the Second Congress of the SEKE in April 1920, the party decided to affiliate with Comintern, an international Communist organisation founded in Moscow in 1919. It changed its name to the ''Socialist Labour Party of Greece-Communist'' (''SEKE-K''). A new central committee was elected, which included Nikos and Panaghis Dimitratos, Yannis Kordatos, G. Doumas and M. Sideris. At the Third Extraordinary Congress of the SEKE-K in November 1924, the party was renamed the ''Communist Party of Greece'' and adopted the principles of Marxism-Leninism. Pandelis Pouliopoulos was elected as general-secretary. Ever since, the party has functioned on the basis of democratic centralism.

KKE and the Macedonian issue

After the Balkan Wars in 1912-1916, World War I in 1916-1919, and the disastrous Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, there were diplomatic approaches from the superpowers of that era regarding the re-drawing of Greek borders, given the fact that the new state in Turkey and Bulgaria were pressing for more territory in order to improve their trade routes with the British Empire. The ruling parties were simultaneously trying to move parts of Northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace) to Turkey and Bulgaria, and to win the return of islands in the Aegean and parts of Macedonian territory to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This policy was reiterated several times throughout the pre-war era.

The main impetus for their demand was the ethnic and religious minorities currently living inside Greek borders in Northern Greece. KKE opposed any geo-strategic game in the area which would use minorities to start a new imperialistic war in the region. At its Third Party Congress in 1924, KKE announced its policy for the self -determination of minorities, pointing out the minorities in Macedonia. Its policy was dictated by each Marxist- Leninist theory, that stated any minorities should be self-determined under a common Socialist State, and it had its roots in the example of the newly founded Soviet Union.

In 1934, KKE expressed its intent to "fight for the national self-determination, under a People's Republic where all nations will found their self-determination and will build the common state of the workers...". As a result of this, KKE was seen by many as a party whose policy was "the detachment of large areas of northern Greece", and that "this was dictated by Comintern and hurt the popularity of Communism at the time". Nikos Zachariadis, General Secretary of the party, officially renounced KKE's policy of secession in 1945. Anti-KKE propaganda up-to-day, added on this quote the will to collaborate for this goal with the Bulgarian organizations of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and the Thracian Revolutionary Organisation. This is not mentioned on any of KKE official documents. The quote is referenced as KKE's policy for "giving Greek soil to the Northern Enemies of the Country", a fact that can't be crossed referenced with any of KKE referenced literature of that era.

In 1949, during the Fifth Congress of the Central Committee of KKE, it was stated that "...The Greek and the Macedonian people will win this struggle only united...". This position prompted the government in Athens, together with the British government, to begin a propaganda campaign against KKE and the party's military wing, the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE), blaming them for secession plans in northern Greece. In order for KKE to clear up its position on the Macedonian subject, the 6th Congress of its Central Committee was called a few months later, during which was clearly stated that KKE was fighting for a free Greece and for a common future for Greeks, Slavs, and Macedonians under the same state.

The issue was ended by Central Committee in 1954 with the withdrawal of the position of self-determination of minorities in the North. In 1988, the General Secretary of KKE, Charilaos Florakis, once again presented KKE's political position on the matter in a speech to the Greek Parliament.

KKE between the two World Wars

KKE strongly opposed Greece's involvement in the Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, which it considered an imperialistic scheme to control the market of Asia Minor given the new political situation after the Ottoman Empire's collapse. KKE members propagated this position both on the front - which provoked accusations of treason from the Greek government - as well as in the mainland. KKE collaborated with the Soviet ambassador to persuade Venizelos' administration to withdraw its troops from Asia Minor, and to persuade the Soviet Union to exert political pressure on Kemal Ataturk to allow autonomy for Greek cities in Asia Minor.

KKE played a prominent role in strikes, anti-war demonstrations, foundation of trade unions and worker associations. KKE and other leftist political forces fostered the creation of labor unions in all sectors, including the General Greek Workers Confederation (ΓΣΕΕ), which shared common goals with KKE.

These activities met by opposition from the Mid-War governments; in 1929 George Papandreou, as minister of Education, passed legislation against organised communist teachers, known as Idionymon. Such legislation was often used to prosecute KKE members and other leftist activists. Under the Idionymon all members of the Communist Party of Greece, being considered dangers to the state, were to be removed from public service or put in exile.

The first prison camps for left wing citizens and communists were founded in that era. KKE and its organisations, although small in numbers, continue operating in all Greek major cities, especially industrial areas such as Athens, Piraeus, Patra, Thessaly and Volos, Thessaloniki, Kavala and elsewhere.

KKE collaborated with other newly founded Communist Parties to oppose the rise of the Fascist movement in Europe. In 1932, the Commitern decreed that anti-Fascist fronts be formed internationally. KKE responded by creating the ''People's Front'', which was the largest Marxist anti-Fascist organisation in Greece prior to the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas.

The party was banned in 1936 by the dictatorial 4th of August Regime of Metaxas. Many KKE members were imprisoned or exiled on isolated Aegean islands.

KKE members volunteered to fight on the side of the socialist government of Spain during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939; about 440 Greeks joined the ranks of the International Brigade, many of whom were high-ranking KKE members.

KKE during the Second World War

1940

By 1940, KKE had almost collapsed. Metaxas' dictatorship had imprisoned many of the leadership and members. By October half of KKE's 2,000 members were in prison or in exile. The most prominent prisons were the Acronauplia, Anafi, Ikaria, Kefalonia and the Central Athens Prison ("Averof"). A large number of prisoners were shot in retaliation to attacks of National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) partisans throughout the German occupation from 1941 to 1944, but some escaped to join the National Liberation Front-ELAS forces.

By 1940, the Security police had proved extremely successful in dismantling the KKE organisation; not only had it imprisoned the leadership, but it created a fake series of ''Rizospastis'', the Central Committee newspaper. This generated confusion among the remaining scattered underground members.

Around this time a small group of old party officials formed the "Old Central Committee". Two of them were elected by the 6th Conference. In his memoirs for the Greek Civil war, C.M. Woodhouse (the British liaison with Greek resistance groups during WWII) wrote: "The 'Old Central Committee' interpreted a directive issued by Comintern as indicating collaboration with the German and Italian dictatorships, given the Hitler-Stalin alliance.". On the other hand, Woodhouse argues, Georgios Siantos, who had escaped from prison, and Nikos Zachariadis, who was still incarcerated, took the opposite view that KKE must support Metaxas in his fight against Mussolini. also address the confusion between different KKE cadres; the "Old Committee" interpreted the politics of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy as part of the "imperialistic game between the Axis forces and the British." This faction of KKE felt that the Metaxas regime was a "pawn of British imperialism in the region," and, therefore, the "Old Committee" viewed any war between the Axis forces and the British as an "...imperialistic war that the people of any of the countries involved should not participate in...". According to KKE's account, this position was criticised by Comintern in 1939 (a few months after the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact), which had instructed KKE to fight against Italy in the event of an invasion of Greece.

Nikos Zachariadis, KKE General Secretary, wrote from prison on 2 November 1940: "''Today the Greek people are waging a war of national liberation against Mussolini's fascism. In this war we must follow the Metaxas government and turn every city, every village and every house of Greece into a stronghold of the National Liberation Fight... On this war conducted by Metaxas government all of us should give all our forces without reservation. The working people's and the crowning achievement for today's fight should be and shall be a new Greece based on work, freedom, and liberated from any foreign imperialist dependence, with a truly pan-popular culture."

Several party members, including Nikos Ploumpidis of the "Old Central Committee", denounced this letter as a forgery produced by the Metaxas regime. Zachariadis was even accused of writing it to win the favour of K. Maniadakis, the Minister for Public Order, to win his release from prison. According to one source when drafting this letter Zachariadis was unaware of the Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact, and was castigated by the Comintern for an anti-Soviet stance.

According to KKE's archives, the "Old Central Committee" had been denounced for its stance on the war issue; today KKE claims that the majority of the party membership had not followed the decision of being neutral in case of an invasion. On 16 November 1940, Zachariadis repudiated the line of his first letter in a second letter where he accused the Greek Army of waging a "fascist" and "imperialistic war" and appealed to the USSR for peaceful intervention, thus aligning his position with that of the "Old Central Committee".

Zachariadis may have issued a third letter on 17 January 1941, in which he explained the motives for his first letter and wrote: ''"Metaxas remains the principal enemy of the people and the country. His overthrowing is in the most immediate and vital interest of our people ... the peoples and soldiers of Greece and Italy are not enemies but brothers, and their solidarity will stop the war waged by capitalist exploiters." ''

According to KKE archives, Zachariadis had issued no further letters, and the third letter may have been in fact the statement of the "Old Central Committee" on 18 March 1941. In any case, Zachariadis himself referred in his public statements after liberation almost exclusively to his first letter as proof of the patriotic character of KKE and its role as an inspiration to the Greek resistance movement during the war.

On 22 June 1941, the very same day that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, KKE ordered its militants to organize "the struggle to defend the Soviet Union and the overthrow of the foreign fascist yoke".

A large number of KKE members were already in prison before the Nazi invasion. The pro-Nazi occupation government handed some of them over to the Nazis fearing that they - following the pro-Soviet party line - would resort to sabotage in Greece following Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. There were many occasions that police officers released communist prisoners, especially the ones that they were in exile in Aegean islands. In 1941, several KKE members managed to escape prison. One of the many stories includes the twenty Communists held as political prisoners in Heraklion, Crete. They demanded to be released to fight against the invading Germans. The Greek government, which had left mainland Greece by then and was en route to Egypt, had no power to release them. They eventually escaped after their jail was damaged by German bombs and joined the British and Greek forces defending the Heraklion harbor. After the fall of Crete, many officers of the Greek Army joined forces with ELAS and became commanders in ELAS's partisan units. Corp.

On the other side of the political fence, KKE was accused for not participating "full throttle" in the anti-invasion preparations. C.M Woodhouse, a British Intelligence officer, head of the British military delegation stationed by the Allies in Greece during WWII, wrote that on 18 March, when the Germans were moving unopposed into Bulgaria, KKE advised Greeks to follow the example of "the heroic fraternal people of Bulgaria" This has not been historically proven since to date no evidence of such collaboration has been found. To the contrary, when the Allied command ordered Greek resistance groups not to attack the retreating Nazi forces, ELAS never obeyed the order. Yet, even the issue of the Communist Political prisoners was used by right-wing propaganda: According to Woodhouse "...communist prisoners were released by the German occupation forces from the jail on the Acronauplia, at the request of the Bulgarian embassy in Athens". Neverteheless there were reports that communists had been used as a human shield by the Germans to prevent ELAS attacks against them. The fact is however, that it became German policy - especially after it became obvious to them that they were losing the war- to execute civilians in retaliation for attacks against them by communist or non-communist partisans. Approximately two hundred communists and Greek patriots delivered to the Germans by the falling METAXA regime on 1941, were executed at the Kaisariani Shooting Range on May 1, 1944.

Although KKE was suffering from a lack of central political leadership, since its leader Nikos Zachariades had been taken by the Germans to the Dachau concentration camp, its members succeeded in maintaining communication with each other. The 6th Meeting of KKE Central Committee was held in Athens from 1–3 July 1941, which decided on strategy for an armed liberation struggle against the Nazi invaders. At the same time, the "Old Central Committee" submitted to the authority of the new Central Committee. The first united resistance organization was founded in the regions of Macedonia and Thrace on 15 May 1941. In Thessaloniki, the Macedonian Bureau of KKE established the ''Eleftheri'' (Liberty) Organization, along with the Socialist Party, the Agrarian Party, the Democratic Union and Colonel Dimitrios Psarros.

The Macedonian Bureau of KKE organised the first two partisan units at the end of June 1941. The first was based in Kilkis and was named ''"Athanasios Diakos"'', the second was based in Nigrita and was named ''"Odysseas Androutsos"''. These small partisan units blew up bridges, attacked police stations, and eventually organized into larger combat units of more than 300 men each. In several other places and in major cities, small armed groups of KKE members and non-communists began to emerge, protecting people from looters, the Germans, or collaborators. On 27 September 1941, Greek communists together with five other Centrist and Leftist parties formed the National Liberation Front (EAM), in Kallithea, Athens, and began forming partisan militia units.

1942 to liberation

On 16 February 1942, the National People's Liberation Army (ELAS) was founded in a small kiosk in Fthiotida, and by 1943 it consisted of 50,000 members, both men and women, with 30,000 as reserve units in major cities. The KKE played a prominent role in the organisation. By the end of the war, some 200,000 Greek citizens, both workers and peasants, had joined the ranks of KKE. KKE maintained its alliances with the EAM. Its main stated aim at this time was to form a united government with all parties that wanted to see Greece liberated from foreign powers.

Nikos Zachariadis was imprisoned in Dachau; he was released in 1945 and returned to Greece as the elected general secretary of the KKE. During his imprisonment Andreas Tsipas and Georgios Siantos served as party general secretaries.

KKE and the Greek Civil War

At the end of the war, fighting broke out between EAM and the Greek government,formed under British support, and returned from Egypt "exile". Backed by KKE, EAM refused to disarm ELAS and ELAN while right-wing militias and the police -mostly manned by anticommunists- were assigned by the legitimate government to keep order in the land. Six ministers of the EAM, most of whom were KKE members, resigned from their positions in the government in November 1944. Fighting broke out in Athens on 3 December 1944 during a demonstration, organised by EAM, involving more than 100,000 people. According to some accounts, the police, covered by British troops, opened fire on the crowd. More than 28 people were killed and 148 injured. According to other accounts, it is uncertain if the first shots were fired by the police or the demonstrators. The ''Dekembriana'', as this incident is known, was the beginning of the 37-day Battle of Athens. Following a ceasefire agreement called the Treaty of Varkiza, ELAS laid down the majority of its weapons and dissolved all of its units. Right-wing groups, including elements which had collaborated with the Germans, seized this opportunity to persecute leftists, including many KKE members.

The Civil War involved two sides. On the one side was the internationally recognised Greek Government, led by Konstantinos Tsaldaris and, later, Themistoklis Sophoulis, which was elected in the 1946 elections which the KKE boycotted. On the other side was the Democratic Army of Greece, of which the KKE was the only major political force.

According to EAM figures, in the few months after the Treaty of Varkiza, the anti-communist violence on the Greek mainland had resulted in the imprisonment or exile of 100,000 ELAS partisans and EAM members, the deaths of 3,000 EAM officials and members, the rape of between 200 and 500 women, the burning of houses, and other acts of violence. The KKE Central Committee issued a directive to all party forces not to engage in any armed conflict but to try to prevent attacks by other means. This caused confusion among the majority of its supporters, and served to weaken the party organisation across the country.

Large groups had returned to their partisan hideouts in the mountains and gradually formed smaller partisan units. As most of the ELAS armoury had been surrendered under the terms of the Varkiza treaty, these units armed themselves with weapons seized from attacks on militia units that had been provided arms by the police, as well as attacking police stations. By mid 1946 these units forced the KKE leadership to change its neutral position and to plan the formation a partisan army with the officers and fighters that were still free. On 26 October 1946, KKE militia units attacked the police station in Litochoro, armed their forces and founded the Central Greece Command of the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE). After this successful operation, the remaining scattered groups reorganized the pre-Varkiza Treaty ELAS formations all over the country. KKE's political influence and organization structure helped form units in the Aegean Islands of as Mytilene, Chios, Ikaria, Samos, and Crete.

In 1947, KKE and its allies that participated in the Civil War formed the Provisional Democratic Governmentunder the premiership of Markos Vafiadis. As well as issues regarding the war effort, the Provisional Government had to deal with issues regarding the "People's Law" in the territories controlled by the DSE. These had to do with the judicial, financial, and political systems. As the Provisional Government was based on political forces which aimed to establish a socialist state, its decisions were driven by this political agenda. The self-determination of national minorities living in Greece was one priority. The Provisional Government and the KKE intended to establish a People's Republic of Greece in which all nationalities would work together in a Socialist state. An article written by Nikos Zachariadis expressed the KKE's strategy after the envisioned victory of the Democratic Army of Greece regarding what was then known as the "Macedonian Issue": "The Macedonian people will acquire an independent, united state with a coequal position within the family of free peoples’ republics within the Balkans, within the family of Peoples’ Republics to which the Greek people will belong. The Macedonian people are today fighting for this independent united state with a coequal position and is helping the DSE with all its soul ...". The policy of self-determination for Macedonia within a People's Republic was reiterated during the 5th KKE Central Committee meeting held in January 1949, which declared that the "Macedonian people participating in the liberation struggle would find their full national re-establishment as they want giving their blood for this acquisition ... Macedonian Communists should pay great attentions to foreign chauvinist and counteractive elements that want to break the unity between the Greek and Macedonian people. This will only serve the monarcho-fascists and British imperialism ...”. This declaration of the 5th KKE Central Committee had an adverse effect on the future of the KKE in Greece.

29 January 1949 the Greek National Army appointed General Alexander Papagos Commander-in-Chief. In August 1949, Papagos launched a major counter-offensive against DSE forces in northern Greece, code-named "Operation Torch". The plan was for the Greek National Army to gain control of the border with Albania in order to surround and defeat the DSE forces, numbering 8,500 fighters. The DSE suffered heavy losses from the operation, but managed to retreat its units to Albania.

Charilaos Florakis, whose ''nom-de-guerre'' was Kapetan Yiotis, was a DSE-appointed ''Brigadier General'' during this battle. Florakis was ordered by the DSE High Command to re-enter Greece with his battalion via the Gramos Mountains and try to establish connection with all the DSE forces that remained within Greece. The battalion indeed reached small DSE units south of Gramos down to Evritania, and retreated thereafter back to Albania. Floriakis later served as General Secretary of KKE from 1972 to 1989.

On 28 August 1949 the Civil War in Greece ended with the DSE forces defeated militarily and politically and KKE entered a new phase in its history.

In 1989, the political consequences of the Civil War were finally lifted: DSE was recognized as an equal Greek army to the National Army, and DSE fighters were named "DSE fighters" instead of "Communist Gangfighters" ("κουμουνιστοσυμμορίτες"). The war was named "The Civil War of Greece" instead of "The War against the gangs and thieves" ("συμμοριτοπόλεμος") that was the official state name for that era up until that point.

Post-War Era

After the Civil War, the KKE was outlawed and most of its prominent members had to flee Greece, go underground, or provide a signed declaration that they renounced Communism to avoid prosecution under Law 504, issued in 1948, A large number of KKE members were either prosecuted, jailed or exiled. Prominent members of the KKE were tried and executed, including Nikos Beloyannis in 1952 and Nikos Ploumpidis in 1954. The execution of Ploumpidis was the last such execution by the post-Civil War governments. The fear of widespread reaction from left-wing citizens curbed further executions and eventually led to the gradual release of most political prisoners. In 1955 there were 4,498 political prisoners and 898 exiles; in 1962 there were 1,359 prisoners and 296 exiles. But under the prevailing anti-communist rules, communists and KKE sympathizers were barred from the public sector and lived under a repressive anticommunist surveillance system. Such discrimination against communists was partially relieved with the legalization of KKE in 1974, and the discrimination ended in the 1980s. During this period of illegality, the KKE supported the United Democratic Left (EDA) Party.

Former King Constantine II claims that in 1964 he proposed to George Papandreou (senior) that the KKE be legalized. According to the former monarch, Papandreou refused to comply so as not to lose his party's left-wing supporters. This allegation cannot be verified, as it was expressed after Papandreou's death. Moreover, Constantine's public statements regarding communism during the 1960s renders the veracity of this allegation questionable.

During the Junta

On 21 April 1967, a group of right-wing Greek Army colonels led by Georgios Papadopoulos successfully carried out a coup d'état on the pretext of imminent "communist threat", establishing what became known as the Regime of the Colonels. All political parties, including EDA, were dissolved, and civil liberties were suppressed for all Greek citizens. KKE members were persecuted along with other opponents of the junta.

In 1968, a crisis escalated between KKE's two main factions. The crisis was already festering during the 12th plenum of the party's central committee held in Budapest between 5 and 15 February 1968 in which three members of the politbureau (M. Partsalidis, Z. Zografos & P. Dimitriu) were expelled for fractionist activity and was further triggered by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. This event led a number of Greek communists who were ideologically leaning with the so-called opportunist faction to break with KKE that was loyal to the Socialist Republic's policy and to follow the nascent Eurocommunist line, which favored a more pluralistic approach to socialism. A relatively large group split from KKE, forming what became the Communist Party of Greece (Interior). The spin-off party forged bonds with Eurocommunist parties such as the Italian Communist Party and with Nicolae Ceauşescu's Romanian Communist Party. Its supporters referred to KKE as the KKE (Exterior) ("ΚΚΕ εξωτερικού"), inferring that KKE's policies were dictated by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Despite the difficulties resulting from the split, KKE continued its opposition to the Greek Junta throughout the next 6 years. Its political fighting against the regime took the form of labour disruptions and strikes and small demonstrations all over the country. Its power was rising inside the Universities where the newly founded Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) began working underground. KKE underground forces continued to work closely with other political groups of the center and left within Greece and abroad. In many European capitals anti-Junta committees were founded to support the struggle in Greece.

Legalisation

After the restoration of parliamentary democracy in 1974, Constantine Karamanlis legalised the KKE hoping to reclaim "a vital part of national memory". In the 1974 elections the KKE participated with the KKE Interior and the EDA under the name of the United Left, receiving 9.36 per cent of the vote. In the elections from 1977 to 1989, the KKE participated on its own (see results below).

Participation in government

In 1944, KKE participated in the national unity government of George Papandreou, holding the positions of Minister of Finance, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Labor, Minister of National Economy and Public Works, and Deputy Minister of Finance.

In 1988, KKE and Greek Left (Greek EAP; the former KKE Interior), along with other left and center parties and organisations, formed the Coalition of the Left and Progress (Synaspismos). In the June 1989 elections Synaspismos gained 13.1 per cent of votes and joined a coalition with New Democracy to form a short-lived government amidst a political spectrum shaken by accusations of economic scandals against the previous administration of Andreas Papandreou's Panhellenic Socialist Movement. In November of the same year Synaspismos participated in the "Universal Government" with New Democracy and Panhellenic Socialist Movement which appointed Xenophon Zolotas as Prime Minister for 3 months. In 1991, KKE withdrew from Synaspismos. Some of its members left the party and remained in Synaspismos, which evolved into a separate left-wing party that is now an alliance of Synaspismos with other leftist groups called the (Coalition of the Radical Left).

KKE is a force in the Greek political scene, rallying a significant amount of support within the organized working-class movement. KKE is currently trying to mold a loose and rather disorganised international communist movement along a purely Marxist-Leninist line; since its 18th Congress (February 2009) KKE has opened up a discussion within the ranks and more broadly within the Greek left-leaning community on the future evolution of communism in the 21st century, with a particular emphasis on examining the causes of the collapse of the Socialist system in the former Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe.

Splits and alliances

There have been a series of splits throughout the party's history, the earliest one being the Trotskyist Organisation of Internationalist Communists of Greece.

In 1956, after the 20th Conference of the Communist Party of the USSR, a faction created the Group of Marxist-Leninists of Greece (OMLE), which split from party in 1964, becoming the Organisation of Marxists-Leninists of Greece.

In 1968, amidst the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, a relatively big group split from KKE, forming KKE Interior.

In 1988 KKE and Greek Left (the former KKE Interior), along with other left parties and organisations, formed the Coalition of the Left and Progress.

Also in 1988, the vast majority of members and officials from Communist Youth of Greece (KNE), the KKE's youth wing, split to form the New Left Current (NAR), drawing mainly youth in major cities, especially in Thessaloniki.

In the early 2000s, a small group of major party officials such as Mitsos Kostopoulos left the party and formed the Movement for the United in Action Left (KEDA), which in the 2007 legislative election participated in the Coalition of the Radical Left.

Youth organisation

KKE's youth organization is the Communist Youth of Greece, KNE, which closely supports KKE's goals and strategic targets.

Current activities

The KKE stands in elections and has representatives in the Greek Parliament, local government, and the European Parliament, where its two MEPs sit with the European United Left - Nordic Green Left.

It publishes the daily newspaper ''Rizospastis''. It also publishes the political and theoretical journal ''Komounistiki Epitheorisi'' (Communist Review) every two months and a journal covering educational issues, ''Themata Paideias''.

List of First Secretaries and General Secretaries

#Nikolaos Dimitratos (November 1918-). Expelled from the party on charges of "suspect behavior." #Yannis Kordatos (February 1922-). Expelled from the party on charges of "distorting Marxism." #Nikolaos Sargologos (November 1922-). Expelled from the party on charges of "espionage." #Thomas Apostolidis (September 1923-). Expelled from the party on charges of "opportunism". #Pandelis Pouliopoulos (December 1924-). Expelled from the party on charges of being a "provocateur". #Eleutherios Stavridis (1924–1926). Expelled from the party on charges of pro-bourgeoisie political position. #Pastias Giatsopoulos (September 1926-). Expelled from the party on charges of "liquidarism". #Andronikos Haitas (March 1927-). Expelled from the party and executed in the USSR in 1935. #Nikolaos Zachariadis (1931–1936). #Andreas Tsipas (July 1941-September 1941). Expelled from the party on charges of "adventurism." #Georgios Siantos (January 1942-1945). Expelled from the party on charges of being an "agent provocateur." #Nikolaos Zachariadis (1945–1956). Expelled from the party;committed suicide after years in exile in Siberia. #Apostolos Grozos (1956) #Konstantinos Koligiannis (1956–1972). #Charilaos Florakis (1972–1989). #Grigoris Farakos (1989–1991). Resigned from the party to join Synaspismos. #Aleka Papariga (1991–present)

Party's electoral results

Results since 1926(year links to election page)
Year	Type of Election	Votes	%	Seats
Greek legislative election, 1926>1926	Parliament	41,982	4.37%	10
Greek legislative election, 1928>1928	Parliament		1.4%	0
Greek Senate election, 1929>1929	Senate	↔	1.7%	0
Greek legislative election, 1932>1932	Parliament	58,223	4.97%	10
Greek Senate election, 1932>1932	Senate	↔	3.91	0
Greek legislative election, 1933>1933	Parliament		4.5%	0
Greek legislative election, 1935>1935	Parliament		9.59%‡	0
Greek legislative election, 1936>1936	Parliament		5.8%‡	15
Greek legislative election, 1974>1974	Parliament	''464,787''†	''9.47%''	''8''
Greek legislative election, 1977>1977	Parliament	480,272	9.36%	11
Greek legislative election, 1981>1981	Parliament	620,302	10.93%	13
European Parliament election, 1981 (Greece)>1981	European Parliament	729,052	12.84	3
European Parliament election, 1984 (Greece)>1984	European Parliament	693,304	11.64	3
Greek legislative election, 1985>1985	Parliament	629,525	9.1%	12
Greek legislative election, June 1989>June 1989	Parliament	''855,944''††	''13.1%''	''28''
European Parliament election, 1989 (Greece)>June 1989	European	''936,175''††	''14.30%''	''4''
Greek legislative election, November 1989>November 1989	Parliament	''734,611''††	''11.0%''	''21''
Greek legislative election, 1990>1990	Parliament	''677,059''††	''10.3%''	''19''
Greek legislative election, 1993>1993	Parliament	313,087	4.5%	9
European Parliament election, 1994>1994	European	410,741	6.29%	2
Greek legislative election, 1996>1996	Parliament	380,167	5.61%	11
European Parliament election, 1999 (Greece)>1999	European	557,365	8.67%	3
Greek legislative election, 2000>2000	Parliament	379,517	5.53%	11
Greek legislative election, 2004>2004	Parliament	436,573	5.9%	12
European Parliament election, 2004 (Greece)>2004	European Parliament	580,396	9.48%	3
Greek legislative election, 2007>2007	Parliament	583,815	8.15%	22
European Parliament election, 2009 (Greece)>2009	European Parliament	425,963	8.35%	2
Greek legislative election, 2009>2009	Parliament	517,154	7.54%	21

:Notes: :^‡With other parties. :^↔As part of the United Front. :^†As part of the United Left coalition. :^††As part of the Coalition of the Left and Progress.

Party membership

Membership 1918-1948
Year	Number of members
1918	1,000
1920	1,320
1924	2,200
1926	2,500
1928	2,000
1930	1,500
1933	4,416
1934	6,000 (est.)
1936 (start)	17,500
1936 (mid)	<10,000 (est.)
1941	200 (est.) free + 2,000 in prison
1942 (December)	15,000
1944 (June)	250,000
1944 (October)	420,000–450,000
1945 (October)	45,000
1946 (February)	<100,000
1948	<50,000

See also

All Workers Militant Front (PAME)

List of participants at International Conference of Communist & Workers' Parties 1998-2005

References

External links

KKE's Website

Dangerous Citizens Online, the online version of Neni Panourgiá's ''Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State'' (ISBN 978-0823229680)

Category:Political parties established in 1918 Category:Comintern sections Category:1918 establishments in Greece

bg:Гръцка комунистическа партия ca:Partit Comunista de Grècia de:Kommunistische Partei Griechenlands el:Κομμουνιστικό Κόμμα Ελλάδας es:Partido Comunista de Grecia fr:Parti communiste de Grèce hr:Grčka komunistička stranka it:Partito Comunista Greco mk:Комунистичка партија на Грција nl:Communistische Partij van Griekenland ja:ギリシャ共産党 pl:Komunistyczna Partia Grecji ru:Коммунистическая партия Греции fi:Kreikan kommunistinen puolue sv:Greklands kommunistiska parti tr:Yunanistan Komünist Partisi uk:Комуністична партія Греції ur:یونان کی کمیونسٹ پارٹی zh:希臘共產黨

A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government. The name originates from the 1848 tract ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

A Communist party is, at least according to Leninist theory, the vanguard party of the working class, whether ruling or non-ruling, but when such a party is in power in a specific country, the party is said to be the highest authority of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin's theories on the role of a communist party were developed as the early 20th-century Russian social democracy divided into Bolshevik (meaning "majority") and Menshevik (meaning "minority") factions.

Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, argued that a revolutionary party should be a small vanguard party with a centralized political command and a strict cadre policy; the Menshevik faction, however, argued that the party should be a broad-based mass movement. The Bolshevik party, which eventually became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, took power in Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the Communist International, the Leninist concept of party building was copied by emerging communist parties worldwide.

There currently exist hundreds of communist parties throughout the world. Their success rates vary widely: some are growing; others are in decline. In three countries, Republic of Cuba; People's Republic of China; and Socialist Republic of Vietnam, communist parties retain dominance over the state.

The Chinese Communist Party is the world's largest political party, claiming nearly 78 million members at the end of 2009 which constitutes about 5.6% of the total population of mainland China.

Mass organizations

As the membership of a communist party was to be limited to active cadres, there was a need for networks of separate organizations to mobilize mass support for the party. Typically communist parties have built up various front organizations, whose membership is often open to non-communists. In many countries the single most important front organization of the communist parties has been its youth wing. During the time of the Communist International the youth leagues were explicit communist organizations, using the name 'Young Communist League'. Later the youth league concept was broadened in many countries, and names like 'Democratic Youth League' were adopted.

Other organizations often connected to communist parties includes trade unions, student, women's, peasant's and cultural organizations. Traditionally these mass organizations were politically subordinated to the political leadership of the party. However, in many contemporary cases mass organizations founded by communists have acquired a certain degree of independence. In some cases mass organizations have outlived the communist parties in question.

At the international level, the Communist International organized various international front organizations (linking national mass organizations with each other), such as the Young Communist International, Profintern, Krestintern, International Red Aid, Sportintern, etc.. These organizations were dissolved in the process of deconstruction of the Communist International. After the Second World War new international coordination bodies were created, such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth, International Union of Students, World Federation of Trade Unions, Women's International Democratic Federation and the World Peace Council.

Historically, in countries where Communist Parties were struggling to attain state power, the formation of wartime alliances with non-communist parties and wartime groups was enacted (such as the National Liberation Front of Albania). Upon attaining state power these Fronts were often transformed into nominal (and usually electoral) "National" or "Fatherland" Fronts in which non-communist parties and organizations were given token representation (a practice known as ''Blockpartei''), the most popular examples of these being the National Front of East Germany (as a historical example) and the United Front of the People's Republic of China (as a modern-day example). Other times the formation of such Fronts were undertaken without the participation of other parties, such as the Socialist Alliance of Working People of Yugoslavia and the National Front of Afghanistan, though the purpose was the same: to promote the Communist Party line to generally non-communist audiences and to mobilize them to carry out tasks within the country under the aegis of the Front.

Naming

A uniform naming scheme for communist parties was adopted by the Communist International. All parties were required to use the name 'Communist Party of (''name of country'')'. Today, there are plenty of cases where the old sections of the Communist International have retained those names. In other cases names have been changed. Common causes for the shift in naming were either moves to avoid state repression or as measures to indicate a broader political acceptance.

A typical example of the latter was the renamings of various East European communist parties after the Second World War, as staged 'mergers' of the local Social Democratic parties occurred. New names in the post-war era included 'Socialist Party', 'Socialist Unity Party', 'Popular Party', 'Workers Party' and 'Party of Labour'.

The naming conventions of communist parties became more diverse as the international communist movement was fragmented due to the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. Those who sided with China and/or Albania in their criticism of the Soviet leadership, often added words like 'Revolutionary' or 'Marxist-Leninist' to distinguish themselves from the pro-Soviet parties.

Notes

Category:Communism Category:Political parties Category:Socialist parties

an:Partito Comunista ast:Partíu Comunista bn:কমিউনিস্ট পার্টি zh-min-nan:Kiōng-sán Tóng bg:Комунистическа партия ca:Partit comunista cs:Komunistická strana de:Kommunistische Partei et:Kommunistlik partei el:Κομμουνιστικό κόμμα es:Partido Comunista eo:Komunista partio fr:Parti communiste gan:共產黨 ko:공산당 id:Partai komunis it:Partito comunista sw:Chama cha kikomunisti mr:कम्युनिस्ट पक्ष nl:Communistische Partij ja:共産党 pl:Partia komunistyczna pt:Partido Comunista ro:Partid comunist ru:Коммунистическая партия sk:Komunistická strana sh:Komunistička partija fi:Kommunistiset puolueet th:พรรคคอมมิวนิสต์ tr:Komünist parti uk:Комуністична партія vi:Đảng cộng sản yo:Ẹgbẹ́ kọ́múnístì zh-yue:共產黨 zh:共产党

Garyfallia (Liana) Kanelli (in Greek Γαρυφαλλιά (Λιάνα) Κανέλλη), commonly known as Liana Kanelli (born 20 March 1954, in Athens), is a Greek journalist and politician.

She studied law at the University of Athens.

In 1975, starting her career in journalism, she was acclaimed by Prime Minister Constantine Karamanlis as the "kid of New Democracy", a designation she herself denied a while later.

In the next decades Kanelli worked as daily columnist, reporter at home and on missions abroad, news anchor, broadcaster, television presenter and interviewer to evolve by time into a kind of a Greek "Barbara Walters". Often played the role of media polemicist, she is noted for her forthright, irreverent, incisive and arrogant style of talking criticised or applauded by either party of the viewers.

Liana Kanelli was a publisher and chief editor of the ethnocentric and anti-US monthly ''Nemesis''. In this journal she unveiled a series of private e-mails of Margaret Papandreou in her backdoor efforts to booster her son's, George Papandreou, bid for premiership over his in-the-party rivals. The issue of privacy has brought to public the debate of ethics in journalism, with Kanelli apparently obtaining the emails through the technique of computer hacking. Mrs Papandreou brought suit on grounds of violation of Article 19 of the Greek Constitution. The origins of this rule, ironically came into being as a consequence of the wiretapping of ministerial private conversations by the Hellenic National Intelligence Service during the Dictatorship years.

In 1999, Kanelli announced from the podium of a rally protesting the Kosovo War and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia that she would run as a candidate for the Communist Party of Greece for the European Parliament. In the 2000 national election she was firstly elected as Member of the Hellenic Parliament for Athens' first electoral district, and has secured a seat in all the next elections of 2004, 2007 and 2009.

References

External links

*Biography on Greek Parliament website

Article documenting Mrs Kanelli's change of party

Kanelli member of the Council of Europe

On Kanelli's Defence of Milosevic

Media History of Liana Kanelli

EU commission on journalism

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:People from Athens Category:Communist Party of Greece politicians Category:Greek journalists Category:Greek MPs 2000–2004 Category:Greek MPs 2004–2007 Category:Greek MPs 2007–2009 Category:Greek women in politics Category:Greek MPs 2009–

el:Λιάνα Κανέλλη

Party name	Communist Party of China中国共产党''Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng''
Party logo	190px|The emblem of the Communist Party of China.The emblem of the Communist Party of China.
Leader1 title	General Secretary
Leader1 name	Hu Jintao
Leader2 title	Standing Committee
Leader2 name	Hu Jintao,Wu Bangguo,Wen JiabaoJia Qinglin,Li ChangchunXi Jinping,Li KeqiangHe Guoqiang,Zhou Yongkang
Foundation	July, 1921 (1st Party Congress)August 1920 (de facto)
Ideology	Marxism-Leninism,Socialism with Chinese characteristics
Headquarters	Zhongnanhai, Beijing
Youth wing	Communist Youth League of China
Membership	80,269,000
Membership year	2010
Flag
Website	News on CPC
Country	the People's Republic of China
Colorcode	}}

The Communist Party of China (CPC), also known as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Although nominally it exists alongside the United Front, in practice, the CPC is the only party of the PRC, maintaining a unitary government centralizing the state, military, and media. The legal power of the Communist Party is guaranteed by the PRC constitution.

The party was founded in July, 1921 in Shanghai. After a lengthy civil war, the party defeated its primary rival, the Kuomintang (KMT), and expanded into all of mainland China by 1949. The Kuomintang retreated to the island of Taiwan, which it still retains to this day.

The party has fluctuated between periods of reform and political conservatism throughout its history. In the modern party, the topic of reform and liberalisation remains a contentious issue heavily debated among top officials. On one side, Wu Bangguo, the head of the National People's Congress, has said that: "We will never simply copy the system of Western countries or introduce a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation." On the other, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has stressed the need of reform, stating that: "Without the safeguard of political reform, the fruits of economic reform would be lost and the goal of modernization would not materialize."

The CPC is the world's largest political party, claiming over 80 million members at the end of 2010 which constitutes about 6.0% of the total population of mainland China. The Party marked its 90th birthday with celebrations all over China and the release of a film ''The Beginning of the Great Revival'' (Jiandang weiye 建党伟业).

Organization

The party's organizational structure was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and rebuilt afterwards by Deng Xiaoping, who subsequently initiated "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and brought all state apparatuses back under the rule of the CPC.

Theoretically, the party's highest body is the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which meets at least once every five years. The primary organs of power in the Communist Party which is detailed in the party constitution include:

Central Committee, which includes:

* The General Secretary, which is the highest ranking official within the Party and usually the Chinese paramount leader.

* The Politburo, consisting of 24 full members (including the members of the Politburo Standing Committee) and one alternate; see current members of the Politburo for a complete list.

* The Politburo Standing Committee, which currently consists of nine members; see current members of the Politburo Standing Committee for a complete list.

* The Secretariat, the principal administrative mechanism of the CPC, headed by the General Secretary of the Central Committee;

* The Central Military Commission (a parallel organization of the government institution of the same name);

The Central Discipline Inspection Commission, which is directly under the National Congress and on the same level with the Central Committee, charged with rooting out corruption and malfeasance among party cadres.

Organizations under the CPC Central Committee

Other central organizations directly under the Party Central Committee include: General Office

Central Organization Department;

Central Propaganda Department

Central International Liaison Department;

Central United Front Department;

Central Policy Research Office;

Central Taiwan Work Office;

Central External Propaganda Office;

Central Security Office;

Central Party School;

''People's Daily'';

''Seeking Truth From Facts'';

Party History Research Centre;

Party Research Centre;

Central Compilation and Translation Bureau.

In addition, there are numerous commissions and leading groups. Usually those commissions and leading groups have jurisdiction on both Party and State apparatus, and include ranking leaders up to the President of the People's Republic of China and the Premier of the State Council. The most important of them are:

Central Political and Legislative Affairs Commission;

Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilization;

Central Commission for Comprehensive Management of Social Order;

State Commission for Public Sector Reform;

Central Leading Group for Financial Work;

Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs;

Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs;

Central Leading Group for Foreign Affairs;

Central National Security Leading Group;

Central Leading Group for Rural Work;

Central Leading Group for Party Building;

Central Leading Group for Propaganda and Ideological Work;

Central Leading Group for Combating Pornography and Illegal Publications;

Central Leading Group for Cult Issue (related to Falun Gong);

Central Leading Group for Preserving Stability;

Central Leading Group for Cultural System Reform;

Central Leading Group for Hong Kong and Macao Affairs;

Central Leading Group for Combating Bribery;

Central Leading Group for Protection of Party Secrets;

Central Leading Group for Advancing Grass-roots Party Organization and Training Party Members;

Central Leading Group for Tibet Work;

Central Leading Group for Xinjiang Work;

Central Anti-Corruption Guidance Group.

Every five years, the Communist Party of China holds a National Congress. The latest happened on October 19, 2007. Formally, the Congress serves two functions: to approve changes to the Party constitution regarding policy and to elect a Central Committee, about 300 strong. The Central Committee in turn elects the Politburo. In practice, positions within the Central Committee and Politburo are determined before a Party Congress, and the main purpose of the Congress is to announce the party policies and vision for the direction of China in the following few years.

The party's central focus of power is the Politburo Standing Committee. The process for selecting Standing Committee members, as well as Politburo members, occurs behind the scenes in a process parallel to the National Congress. The new power structure is announced obliquely through the positioning of portraits in the ''People's Daily'', the official newspaper of the Party. The number of Standing Committee members varies and has tended to increase over time. The Committee was expanded to nine at the 16th Party National Congress in 2009.

There are two other key organs of political power in the People's Republic of China: the formal government and the People's Liberation Army. The Party's main bodies to oversee the PLA are the Central Military Commission and the General Political Department.

There are, in addition to decision-making roles, advisory committees, including the People's Political Consultative Conference. During the 1980s and 1990s there was a Central Advisory Commission established by Deng Xiaoping which consisted of senior retired leaders, but with their passing this has been abolished since 1992.

Factions

Political scientists have identified two groupings within the Communist Party leading to a structure which has been called "one party, two factions". The first is the "elitist coalition" or ''Shanghai clique'' which contains mainly officials who have risen from the more prosperous provinces. The second is the "populist coalition", the core of which are the ''tuanpai'', or the "Youth League faction" which consists mainly of officials who have risen from the rural interior, through the Communist Youth League. Minor informal groupings include the reformist Qinghua clique, and the derogatorily-termed Crown Prince Party of officials benefiting from nepotism. The interaction between the two main factions is largely complementary with each faction possessing a particular expertise and both committed to the continued rule of the Communist Party and not allowing intra-party factional politics threaten party unity. It has been noted that party and government positions have been assigned to create a very careful balance between these two groupings.

Within his "one party, two factions" model, Li Chen has noted that one should avoid labelling these two groupings with simplistic ideological labels, and that these two groupings do not act in a zero-sum, winner take all fashion. Neither group has the ability or will to dominate the other completely.

Membership

The party was small at first, but grew intermittently through the 1920s. Twelve voting delegates were seated at the 1st National Congress in 1921, as well as at the 2nd (in 1922), when they represented 195 party members. By 1923, the 420 members were represented by 30 delegates. The 1925 4th Congress had 20 delegates representing 994 members; then real growth kicked in. The 5th Congress (held in April–May 1927 as the KMT was cracking down on communists) comprised 80 voting delegates representing 57,968 members.

It was on October 3, 1928 6th Congress that the now-familiar ‘full’ and ‘alternate’ structure originated, with 84 and 34 delegates, respectively. Membership was estimated at 40,000. In 1945, the 7th Congress had 547 full and 208 alternate delegates representing 1.21 million members, a ratio of one representative per 1,600 members as compared to 1:725 in 1927.

After the Party defeated the Nationalists, participation at National Party Congresses became much less representative. Each of the 1026 full and 107 alternate members represented 9,470 party members (10.73 million in total) at the 1956 8th Congress. Subsequent congresses held the number of participants down despite membership growing to more than 60 million by 2000.

History

The CPC has its origins in the May Fourth Movement of 1919, where radical political systems like anarchism and Communism gained traction among Chinese intellectuals. Stalin opposed the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang because he wanted to expand Soviet influence in the province. The CPC's ideologies have significantly evolved since its founding and establishing political power in 1949. Mao's revolution that founded the PRC was nominally based on Marxism-Leninism with a rural focus based on China's social situations at the time. During the 1960s and 1970s, the CPC experienced a significant ideological breakdown with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev, and later, Leonid Brezhnev. Since then Mao's peasant revolutionary vision and so-called "continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat" stipulated that class enemies continued to exist even though the socialist revolution seemed to be complete, giving way to the ''Cultural Revolution''. This fusion of ideas became known officially as "Mao Zedong Thought", or Maoism outside of China. It represented a powerful branch of communism that existed in opposition to the Soviet Union's "Marxist revisionism".

Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, however, the CPC under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping moved towards ''Socialism with Chinese characteristics'' and instituted Chinese economic reform. In reversing some of Mao's "extreme-leftist" policies, Deng argued that a socialist country and the market economy model were not mutually exclusive. While asserting the political power of the Party itself, the change in policy generated significant economic growth. The ideology itself, however, came into conflict on both sides of the spectrum with Maoists as well as progressive liberals, culminating with other social factors to cause the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. Deng's vision for economic success and a new socialist market model became entrenched in the Party constitution in 1997 as ''Deng Xiaoping Theory''.

The "third generation" of leadership under Jiang Zemin, Zhu Rongji, and associates largely continued Deng's progressive economic vision while overseeing the re-emergence of Chinese nationalism in the 1990s. Nationalist sentiment has seemingly also evolved to become informally the part of the Party's guiding doctrine. As part of Jiang's nominal legacy, the CPC ratified the ''Three Represents'' into the 2003 revision of the Party Constitution as a "guiding ideology", encouraging the Party to represent "advanced productive forces, the progressive course of China's culture, and the fundamental interests of the people." There are various interpretations of the ''Three Represents''. Most notably, the theory has legitimized the entry of private business owners and quasi-"bourgeoisie" elements into the party.

The insistent road of focusing almost exclusively on economic growth has led to a wide range of serious social problems. The CPC's "fourth generation" of leadership under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, after taking power in 2003, attempted reversing such a trend by bringing forth an integrated ideology that tackled both social and economic concerns. This new ideology was known as the creation of a Harmonious Society using the Scientific Development Concept.

The degree of power the Party had on the state has gradually decreased as economic liberalizations progressed. The evolution of CPC ideology has gone through a number of defining changes that it no longer bears much resemblance to its founding principles. Some believe that the large amount of economic liberalization starting from the late 1970s to present, indicates that the CPC has transitioned to endorse economic neoliberalism. The CPC's current policies are fiercely rejected as capitalist by most communists, especially anti-revisionists, and by adherents of the Chinese New Left from within the PRC.

The Communist Party of China comprises a single-party state form of government; however, there are parties other than the CPC within China, which report to the United Front Department of the Communist Party of China and do not act as opposition or independent parties. Since the 1980s, as its commitment to Marxist ideology has appeared to wane, the party has begun to increasingly invoke Chinese nationalism as a legitimizing principle as opposed to the socialist construction for which the party was originally created. The change from socialism to nationalism has pleased the CPC's former enemy, the Kuomintang (KMT), which has warmed its relations with the CPC since 2003.

Political ideology and stances

Regional corruption and reform

The leaders of the Communist Party of China are aware that there are serious problems with political corruption within China and with maintaining the trust of the Chinese people because of it. However, attempts made in closed-door sessions at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th Communist Party of China's Central Committee in September 2009 to grapple with these problems produced inconclusive results, although a directive which requires disclosure of investments and property holdings by party and governmental officials was passed.

Relationship with competing ideologies

Trotskyists argue that the party was doomed to its present character, that of petty-bourgeois nationalism in the 1920s, because of the near-annihilation of the workers' movement in the KMT betrayal of 1927, which was made possible by Stalin's order that the Communists join with the KMT in a centrist coalition, effectively disarming it, which opportunity the KMT swiftly exploited to defeat the communist revolution. This slaughter forced the tiny surviving Party to switch from a workers' union- to a peasant, guerilla-based organization, and to seek the aid of the most heterodox sources: from "patriotic capitalists" to the dreaded KMT itself, with which it openly sought to participate in a coalition government, even after the Japanese general surrender in 1945. Chinese Trotskyists from Chen Duxiu onward have called for a political revolution against what they see as an opportunist, capitalist leadership of the CPC.

Marxists also existed in the Kuomintang party. They viewed the Chinese revolution in different terms than the Communists, claiming that China already went past its feudal stage and in a stagnation period rather than in another mode of production. These Marxists in the Kuomintang opposed the Chinese communist party ideology.

Maoists and other 'anti-revisionists' viciously attack the changes after Mao Zedong's death, calling them the precise "capitalist road" Mao had pledged to fight during the early existence of the PRC. They do not hold any allegiance to the CPC. An example of a well-known group, until recently armed, that looks to Mao's principles is the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) who the current CPC has publicly opposed. Also, some Maoist groupings attack even some of the shifts and changes that occurred while Mao was still alive and in leadership, like his 1972 welcoming of Richard Nixon (see ''lesser evil'' for more on this event). The Chinese New Left, which encompasses these Maoists and other postmodernists is a current within China that seeks to "revert China to the socialist road" – i.e., to return China to the socialist system that existed before Deng Xiaoping's reforms.

Some of the opponents of the Party within the Chinese democracy movement have tended not to argue that a strong Chinese state is inherently bad, but rather that the Communist leadership is corrupt. The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 represented a controversial point in criticism of the Chinese Communist Party by Chinese students within China.

Another school of thought argues that the worst of the abuses took place decades ago, and that the current leaders were not only unconnected with them, but were actually victims of that era. They have also argued that, while the modern Communist Party may be flawed, it is comparatively better than previous regimes, with respect to improving the general standard of living, than any other government that has governed China in the past century and can be seen in a more favourable light compared with most governments of the developing nations. As a result, the CPC has recently taken sweeping measures to regain support from the countryside, with limited success.

In addition, some scholars contend that China has never operated under a decentralized democratic regime in its several thousand years of history, and therefore it can be argued that the present political structure, albeit not up to Western moral or political standards, is the best possible option when compared to the alternatives. A sudden transition to democracy, these experts contend, would result in the economic and political upheaval that occurred in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, and that by focusing on economic growth, China is setting the stage for a more gradual but sustainable transition to a more politically liberal system. This group sees mainland China as being similar to Franco's Spain in the 1960s, and South Korea during the 1970s when South Korea was run by corrupt, authoritarian regimes. This school of thought also brings together some unlikely political allies. Not only do most intellectuals within the Chinese government follow this school of thinking, but it is also the common belief held amongst pro-free trade liberals in the West.

Many observers from both within and outside of China have argued that the CPC has taken gradual steps towards democracy and transparency, hence arguing that it is best to give it time and room to evolve into a better government that is more responsive to its people rather than forcing an abrupt change with all the deleterious effects such a loss of stability might entail. However, other observers (like Minxin Pei) question whether these steps are genuine efforts towards democratic reform or disingenuous measures by the CPC to retain power.

Religion

The CPC is officially atheist and promotes atheism; however, in recent times it has become more open towards certain religions with a historical role in Chinese society and has eased off the outward suppression of certain religious practices but maintains a hardline in regards to many others .

Current leadership

The Members of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China are: # Hu Jintao: General Secretary of the CPC, President of the PRC, Chairman of the Central Military Commission. # Wu Bangguo: Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress # Wen Jiabao: Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China # Jia Qinglin: Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference # Li Changchun: "Propaganda Chief" # Xi Jinping: Top-ranked Secretary of CPC Secretariat, Vice President of the People's Republic of China, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission # Li Keqiang: First-ranked Vice Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China # He Guoqiang: Secretary of Central Commission for Discipline Inspection # Zhou Yongkang: Secretary of Political and Legislative Affairs Committee

Members of the Politburo of the CPC Central committee:

Wang Lequan, Wang Zhaoguo, Hui Liangyu, Liu Qi, Liu Yunshan, Li Changchun, Wu Yi, Wu Bangguo, Wu Guanzheng, Zhang Lichang, Zhang Dejiang, Luo Gan, Zhou Yongkang, Hu Jintao, Yu Zhengsheng, He Guoqiang, Jia Qinglin, Guo Boxiong, Cao Gangchuan, Zeng Qinghong, Zeng Peiyan, Wen Jiabao.

Alternate member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee: Wang Gang

Members of Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee: Zeng Qinghong, Liu Yunshan, Zhou Yongkang, He Guoqiang, Wang Gang, Xu Caihou, He Yong.

Historical leaders

Between 1921 and 1943 the Communist Party of China was headed by the General Secretary:

Chen Duxiu, General Secretary 1921–1922 and 1925–1927

Qu Qiubai, General Secretary 1927–1928

Xiang Zhongfa, General Secretary 1928–1931

Li Lisan, acting General Secretary 1929–1930

Wang Ming, acting General Secretary 1931

Bo Gu, a.k.a. Qin Bangxian, acting General Secretary 1932–1935

Zhang Wentian a.k.a. Luo Fu, acting General Secretary 1935–1943

In 1943 the position of Chairman of the Communist Party of China was created.

Mao Zedong, Chairman 1943–1976

Hua Guofeng, Chairman 1976–1981

Hu Yaobang, Chairman 1981–1982

In 1982, the post of Chairman was abolished, and the General Secretary, at this time held by the same man as the post of Chairman, once again became the supreme office of the Party.

Hu Yaobang, General Secretary 1982–1987

Zhao Ziyang, General Secretary 1987–1989

Jiang Zemin, General Secretary 1989–2002

Hu Jintao, General Secretary since 2002

See also

Tuidang movement

Anarchism in China

Chinese intelligence operations in the United States

Chinese Socialist Democracy

Communist Party of the Republic of China

Government of the People's Republic of China

Factions: Tuanpai, Crown Prince Party, Shanghai clique, Tsinghua clique

Taiwanese Communist Party

Taiwan Communist Party

Khmer Rouge - Sino-Vietnamese War

Nanking Massacre （For Imperial Japanese Army）

Central Tibetan Administration

July 2009 Ürümqi riots

General:

Maoism

Marxism

Lists:

List of political parties in the PRC

References

External links

Official News of the Communist Party of China

Official newspaper

Ninety years since the founding of the CCP - a Trotskyist apraisal

Join the Party - slideshow by ''The First Post''

The Communist Party of China—Council on Foreign Relations

"A Struggle Within the Chinese Communist Party"—''Monthly Review'' article from May 2002

Partying With Communists in China — slideshow by ''Life magazine''

* Category:Ruling Communist parties Category:Political parties established in 1921 Category:Political parties in the Republic of China Category:Chinese Civil War Category:Maoist organizations Category:Government of the People's Republic of China Category:1921 establishments in China

ar:الحزب الشيوعي الصيني az:Çin Kommunist Partiyası bn:চীনের কমিউনিস্ট পার্টি zh-min-nan:Tiong-kok Kiōng-sán Tóng bg:Китайска комунистическа партия ca:Partit Comunista Xinès cs:Komunistická strana Číny da:Kinas kommunistiske parti de:Kommunistische Partei Chinas es:Partido Comunista de China eo:Komunista Partio de Ĉinio eu:Txinako Alderdi Komunista fa:حزب کمونیست چین fr:Parti communiste chinois gl:Partido Comunista de China gan:中國共產黨 ko:중국 공산당 id:Partai Komunis Cina it:Partito comunista cinese he:המפלגה הקומוניסטית של סין ka:ჩინეთის კომუნისტური პარტია ky:Кытай Коммунистик Партиясы ku:Partiya Komunîst a Çînê lt:Kinijos komunistų partija hu:Kínai Kommunista Párt ms:Parti Komunis China nl:Communistische Partij van China ja:中国共産党 no:Det kinesiske kommunistiske parti nn:Kinas kommunistiske parti pl:Komunistyczna Partia Chin pt:Partido Comunista da China ro:Partidul Comunist Chinez ru:Коммунистическая партия Китая simple:Communist Party of China sk:Komunistická strana Číny sl:Komunistična partija Kitajske sr:Комунистичка партија Кине fi:Kiinan kommunistinen puolue sv:Kinas kommunistiska parti tl:Partido Komunista ng Tsina ta:சீனப் பொதுவுடமைக் கட்சி th:พรรคคอมมิวนิสต์จีน tr:Çin Komünist Partisi uk:Комуністична партія Китаю za:Cunghgoz Gungcanjdangj vi:Đảng Cộng sản Trung Quốc zh-classical:中國共產黨 zh-yue:中國共產黨 zh:中国共产党