Georgios Karadzos

“Dad came home and said: ‘Well, I have to tell you something now, and make your mind up. [...] The people at the central committee want to send you to the faculty in Athens (I was in my second or third year at the time), to work undercover for the communist party, but they’ll secure you a spot to study at the medical university in Athens.’ I said: ‘Me? Me with my face? Goodness, they’d shoot me at the first opportunity. Me work undercover for the communist party - why? What, how did they help me, that I should sacrifice myself for them?’ He said: ‘I just told you, that’s all. If you want to, you can, I don’t endorse it.’ ”

“It was interesting that the members who were for Zachariadis, as it seemed in the situation, it seemed almost everyone was for. Then when it came to light what sort of person he really was, they were against him. [...] But agitators from the central committee heaped so much information on them, that they were for [him] again. [...] So the people who were basically illiterate, some had education, some didn’t - they grew up in the school of life - they began to believe in someone who came along anew. So it was all so messed up in such a huge way, that it ended up with a crash.”

“Old communists [...] were dead serious about communism and so on, that everyone would be well off, but those were the old ones, who were convinced that everyone had to do well. But not those up the top. Because even our chairman of the communist party who was in command at the time, he had his own rules he followed. And he - Zachariadis - only followed his own rules.”