1954: Nikos Ploumpidis, Greek Communist

Singing the Internationale, Greek Communist Nikos Ploumpidis was shot by on this date in 1954.

A left-wing teacher who became a full-time cadre of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in the 1930s, Ploumpidis (English Wikipedia entry | the much more detailed Greek) spent the war years in resistance to the Nazi occupation, of course.

Postwar, Stalin abandoned Greece to the West and the reds lost a late-1940s civil war. Many Communists fled the country, but Ploumpidis stayed and transitioned to the administration of a new party, the United Democratic Left — which was essentially a cutout for the banned KKE.

He was still underground in 1952 at the time of the sensational trial of fellow-traveller Nikos Beloyannis, and produced a sensational intervention in that case when he sent the press an open letter (fingerprints enclosed to prove its authenticity) claiming responsibility for the illegal radios and forbidden Communist coordination for which Beloyannis had been death-sentenced.

This did not save Beloyannis but the intensified manhunt brought Ploumpidis into custody by the end of the year — suffering from an advanced case of the tuberculosis that had dogged him for many years. On Moscow’s insistence the KKE renounced him as a British agent, even going so far as to charge that his execution had been faked, and he’d been relocated to America “where he filled his days and pockets with the bitter price of betrayal.” This stuff was withdrawn and the man rehabilitated in 1958.

His son, Dimitrios Ploumpidis, is a University of Athens psychiatrist who has been active with the left-wing Syriza party.

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1952: Nikos Beloyannis, the man with the carnation

Before dawn on this date in 1952, four Greek Communists were shot outside Athens for treason.

Nikos (Nicholas) Beloyannis (or Mpeloyannis), the most prominent among them, spent a goodly portion of his adult life in prison for his subversive opinions — first at the hands of the interwar Greek nationalist government, then the Nazi occupation, then the British.

His many years’ service to communism was, unbeknownst to him, even then being horse-traded away as Stalin and Churchill carved up post-World War II spheres of influence.

Uncle Joe ceded Greece to the West — so the reds were left dangling during the Greek Civil War, and guys like Nikos got fitted for left martyrology.


The Execution of Beloyannis, by Peter de Francia.

“The man with the carnation” — it was his signature prop at the mass show trial where he drew a death sentence for “conspiring to overthrow by force the present regime in Greece.”

The trial, and the outcry that greeted its swift and questionable resolution, helped establish an enduring international reputation among fellow-travelers.

(From The Man With The Carnation, released after the fall of the Papadapoulos dictatorship.)

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