The case of "Furious Nikos." Former Secretary General of the Communist Party of Greece lived in the USSR with a passport in the name of Nikolai Nikolayev
This year marks the 40 years since the former secretary general of the Communist Party of Greece, Nikos Zachariadis, committed suicide in the distant Siberian city of Surgut.As you know, at a conference in Yalta in 1945, Greece was given a place in the zone of influence of the West. Despite all the requests of the “fraternal” Communist Party of Greece, I. Stalin did not violate these agreements. As a result, during the civil war in the country, government forces, supported and armed by the British and Americans, defeated the partisans. The communist rebels had to flee to Albania, then they were secretly taken to the USSR by ships sent by Stalin. There, Greek political émigrés, as former communist partisans began to be called, were settled in Tashkent ...
In 1957, the leader of the Greek Communists, Zachariadis, was removed from his post and expelled from the CC of the KPD, and then sent as a director of a leskhoz to the Novgorod region, to Borovichi, in fact, to exile ...
In 1962, Zachariadis clearly understood that temporary “imprisonment” turned out to be permanent for him. In May, he voluntarily came to Moscow, came to the Greek embassy and demanded to issue him a visa. Visa home, where he was sentenced to death in absentia. He was reminded of the sentence. “I am ready to answer before the court,” said Zachariadis. However, he was not given a visa.
When the USSR collapsed and some secret documents became public, it turned out that this unexpected act of the ex-leader of the KKE became the subject of litigation at a meeting of the CPSU Central Committee. On it, Nikita Khrushchev suggested that Zachariadis be released on all four sides so as not to escalate the situation. However, Mikhail Suslov objected: "Well, yes, just let this go, he will arrange some kind of rebellion there, and then we shall clear up the mess." And Zachariadis was sent to far Surgut. But the case of his strange death is still stored somewhere in the Lubyanka under the heading "Top Secret." What secrets are left in the Zachariadis case?
In greek stories the last century was not more popular than the head of the Communist Party of the country Nikos Zachariadis. “Furious Nikos,” as he was called, was a true idol of hundreds of thousands of Greeks. They idolized him, they composed songs about him. And the enemies hated him. He was one of those who raised the Greeks to war with the Italian fascists when Mussolini attacked Greece. Zachariadis was then in prison, and from there he turned to the people with a fiery call to fight back the fascists. All newspapers printed his message, they passed it from hand to hand.
And when he returned to 29 on May 1945, from the Dachau concentration camp, about 200 thousand people came to listen to the speech of “frantic Nikos” - as many as Greece in scale of Greece, as if a million came to Russia!
Zachariadis himself was a loyal Stalinist. He even called his two sons in the communist style: Joseph in honor of Stalin, and Kiro in honor of Kirov. He sincerely believed in communist ideas, believed that he was fighting to make all people happy. However, he himself became a victim of the communist chimera ... When, after the end of the civil war, the Greek communist partisans found themselves in the USSR and the headquarters of the KPG were in Bucharest, then in Greece itself no one needed them. Greek shipowners in London secretly offered the USSR a deal: they promised to build 200 ships so that Zachariadis would be “removed” from the leadership of the Communist Party. And in fact, he was removed: they were removed from the post of the Secretary General for “mistakes”.
Because of this, unrest broke out in Tashkent among Greek political émigrés. As a result, as already mentioned, Zakhariadis found himself first in Borovichi as a director of a forestry enterprise, and then in Surgut, where he was heavily guarded, depriving him of any contact with the outside world. He rushed home to Greece, but he was not released.
Once, back in Borovichi, Zachariadis learned. After all, he lived on the Soviet passport, as Nikolai Nikolayevich Nikolaev, and none of the locals knew that he was a Greek, and even the former General Secretary of the KPD. But someone saw his portrait in the encyclopedia. As a result, the local secretary of the city committee wrote to the Central Committee: “They report to me from the leshoz that the director general of the CPG, Zachariadis, was identified by the director there. What to do?". “Hush things up!” Was the answer from the Central Committee.
“Zachariadis was one of the few foreign communists that Stalin himself was considered to be with,” the famous Greek writer and historian Alexis Parnis told me in Athens, who wrote a book about the life of the general secretary and his friendship with him. - For example, such a case is known. After the defeat of the partisan armies of the communists in the civil war in Greece in the USSR, on the lake Riza, a secret meeting of Stalin and Zachariadis took place.
- What are the reasons for the defeat, Comrade Zachariadis? - Stalin asked him sternly.
“There are three reasons,” the Greek answered clearly, and, drawing the note to Stalin, listed them. In his opinion, they were: the betrayal of Tito, who closed the border with Greece, insufficient assistance from the USSR and the "mistakes of the Greeks themselves."
- That's right, Comrade Zachariadis! - unexpectedly agreed to Stalin.
- And if so, sign my paper! - decisively asked the Secretary General.
“That,” recalls Parnis, “was unheard of courage.” Ask the dictator to sign a paper, which said, in particular, about his, Stalin, insufficient help to the Greek communists! But Stalin signed it!
“In general,” the writer believes, “the Greek communists could well have won.” The entire population of the north of the country was with us, and even half of the government army in the south would also come over to our side if an opportunity presented itself. Moreover, even then the north of Greece was actually part of the Soviet empire. When the partisan headquarters was constantly a group of Soviet radio operators, which maintained direct communication with Moscow. I saw them myself! In those years, I worked as a front-line correspondent with the partisans, got into a car in Thessaloniki and drove straight through Belgrade to Budapest, and then to Moscow. I did not need any visas, I was driving completely free. And back came the trucks with shells and guns. However, when Stalin quarreled with Tito, this path was immediately closed. In short, if not for the betrayal of Tito and the lack of weaponsIn Greece, it could well be a situation, as with North and South Korea or two Vietnamese.
“By the way, Stalin didn’t leave the thought of revenge back,” Parnis continued. - So, the whole partisan army was taken out to the USSR. She was taken from Albania in secret, on Soviet cargo ships. The ships were huge. In the holds they built multi-tiered bunks, and people lived there. When the ships passed through the Turkish Bosphorus, they all hid in the holds. The Greeks who arrived in the USSR were settled in Tashkent. However, Stalin immediately sent two thousand people to study, and of these around 500 - to military schools and academies. By the way, the future new General Secretary of the KPD, Charilaos Florakis, also studied at the Frunze Military Academy. Imagine: five hundred officers and political workers alone!
... And what could it mean? Where were so many Greek officers needed? Not for service in the Soviet army, where foreigners were not taken.
This could mean only one thing: Stalin secretly prepared the army for the invasion of Greece. Perhaps this is the very secret that is still hidden in the archives in the top secret Zachariadis case?
“From the Russian archives, where documents related to the fate of my father are stored,” Joseph Zachariadis’s son later told me, “they don’t give me anything and don’t show anything.” Everything is strictly classified again.
“What does it mean again?” And before?
- In 1991, something could still be obtained. Then something returned. But now - no! I know that the archive of the FSB stores, for example, a letter that my father wrote to me personally before his death.
- Do not even give this letter?
- Yes, even him! I wrote to the FSB - no result! Wall - do not break through! From the Russian embassy in Athens, I received the last answer from Moscow: “There are no unclassified documents in the Zachariadis case”. They don’t give anything even from the former KGB archive in Surgut. Everything is there too - “Top Secret”. Do you know what kind of “secret” materials are stored there? For example, memoranda "tramplers", guarding the house of my father. The house was illuminated at night by a searchlight, and a guard was built nearby, where two policemen were constantly on duty, who then reported from the “station N 1”: “The object went to the 12.05 to take out the trash can”. Such are the "state secrets"!
“Before 15, I didn’t know who my father really was,” said Joseph Zachariadis. - And when I found out, it was a shock for me.
Joseph himself graduated from the Suvorov School. With living parents, he actually became an orphan. His mother - also a well-known KKE leader - Rula Kukula was in a Greek prison, while his father was in exile in Siberia. After graduating from college, Joseph entered the philological department of the university in Voronezh, and was not allowed to study in Moscow. Then three years he worked as a teacher in the local school. Only much later managed to get to Moscow. And he could only return the real name of his father in 1979 year.
“So who killed your father?”
- Of course, the Communist Party! - without thinking, answered Joseph Zachariadis. - At one time, an interview with the former “curator” of the Greek Communist Party in the CPSU Central Committee Karl Afanasyevich Shemenkov was published in the Greek newspaper “Vima”. I must say that this retired tsekovets all lies! He, for example, assures that the refusal of his wife Rula Kukula to come to Surgut was the “last straw” that pushed Zachariadis to suicide. But this is not true! Her father himself was against her arrival, because he could not forgive her for her "political treachery."
It is also not true that, in the Central Committee, the father was offered to leave Surgut, but he de "he did not want to." No, they did not let him go to Greece, but offered to choose “any other place in the USSR”, except ... Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and other major cities. Of course, the father refused this mocking offer! This is the CPSU, such figures as Suslov, like Shemenkov himself drove his father to suicide!
It is no coincidence that in the last letter he “bequeathed his skeleton” to Brezhnev and other “party comrades”!
- Even after me, then as a child, they constantly followed me, ruthlessly “shmonali”, when I went to him in Surgut. By the way, my father never used me for secret gears. He did it only once, so deftly that when I was searched at Vnukovo airport - they were stripped naked, all the children's toys were broken - they didn't find anything. They came up and said: “You look like a wanted criminal, let's go!” But his father, who was sitting in Dachau, knew how to deceive the sleuths. He deftly sewed up the paper in the panties! Deceived them!
- By the way, about the secrets of the Zahariadis case. They say that we can talk about the Greek "gold party" - the treasures that the partisans buried somewhere in the mountains of northern Greece. After all, they are diligently looking for him there until now ...
“Yes, they are looking,” Joseph smiled in response, “they even asked me to get modern mine detectors in Russia to find this gold. However, I think all this is nonsense. There was no gold, and no. When the father committed suicide, then his X-Numx rubles appeared on his passbook. What is the "gold of the party"!
“Maybe your father was killed anyway?”
“No,” Joseph shook his head. - After three hunger strikes and three failed shoots, he was preparing suicide. After all, he wrote about it in a letter, and even appointed the date himself. My mother and I were immediately informed by the Central Committee of the true cause of his death. I then gave the word to keep the secret, and kept it. By the way, I regret now ... Director of the archive at Ilyinka, where the documents of the former Central Committee of the CPSU are stored, N. Tomilina in an interview in response to a question why the Zachariadis case is still not declassified, said: there will be serious complications in relations between Russia and Greece! ”What are the complications? What is this about? This is unknown to me ...
- Do you not think today, when so many years have passed, that your father fought for a false idea? This is especially clear now after the collapse of the USSR and the disappearance of the CPSU.
- How to say ... - Joseph Zachariadis thought, - Indeed, in the USSR there has never been real socialism. If I knew my father, I firmly believe that if he were the prime minister of Greece, then everything would be different. Everything is not the same as in other socialist countries.
Back in 1947, he wrote to Stalin that “when we win,” then in Greece there will be a government of national unity, independent of both the Kremlin and London.
Write to Stalin is in those years ... However, maybe I'm just naive. After all, there is nothing dirtier in the world than politics; my father himself told me this.
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