Foreign Language Federations (1890s - 1930) - Greek

 GREEK ORGANIZATIONSEarly Greek Socialist Organization in America

Immigrants from Greece to America were part of the so-called "second wave" of immigration which took place at the end of the 19th Century. Due to poor economic conditions in the old country and active recruiting of (low cost) immigrant labor by labor brokers called padrones, several hundred thousand people had left Greece for America by 1920. The first radicals among this community saw themselves as an offshoot of the Greek Socialist movement rather than the anglophonic American. During the period 1910-1912, several branches of the League of Greek Workers and the Greek Socialist Party were established.
In 1912, a group of Greek workers in San Francisco established the Socialist Working Organization. The initial group consisted of 17 people, but this number is said to have soon doubled. The group shortly thereafter affiliated with the League of Greek Workers. In addition to the centers of San Francisco and New York, there seems to have been a significant Greek organization in the vicinity of Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Greek workers participated in a major strike at Grays Harbor, Washington in 1912. A public meeting of more than 300 was held.
There was a Greek socialist newspaper called The Voice of the Worker published in the United States during the 1920s, a publication which the Greek press of the Socialist Labor Party polemicized against repeatedly.

[fn. Kostis Karpozilos, M.A. thesis, 2004].

The Greek Socialist Union in America
A Greek Federation of the Socialist Party of America was not established until 1917. In that year a "Greek Socialist Study Club" was formed, with activities being extended under the name "Greek Socialist Union."


1. First Annual Convention --- New York? --- Dec. XX-XX, 1920
The 1st Annual Convention of the Greek Socialist Union, held in 1920, repudiated the 2nd International and followed "with admiration the trememdous work now being accomplished by the 3rd International to organize the world proletariat on a purely revolutionary program, in order to efffectively put down the hundred-handed international capitalism." The resolution of the Convention stated that "it is the duty of every class-conscious Greek worker to organize on the basis of the principles of the 3rd International as it is the only one to conduct with efficiency the hard struggle of the classes to the final victory for the abolition of the captialist regime and the establishment of the Communist Society of the World."
D.E. Valakos was Chairman of the Greek Socialist Union in America at the time of the 1st Convention and C.A. Soutso was Secretary.
The federation maintained its office at 793 -- 2nd Avenue, New York.

[fn. Comintern Archive, f. 515, op. 1, d. 37, l. 7.]


Greek Organization in the Socialist Labor Party
The Socialist Labor Party of America did not have a formal Greek Federation, but it did publishe a Greek-language newspaper beginning in August 1917, Organosis [Organization]. The periodical was published at various intervals during its existence with an average press run in the general vicinity of 1,300 copies. The paper originate in Cincinnati before moving to Detroit and finally, from 1920, to New York, where it was published in the Divry print shop with an office maintained in Brooklyn.
The chief individual behind Organosis was Peter Tsistinas, a self-educated worker who had lived for an extended period in Serbia, entering the revolutionary movement there, before emigrating to the United States. Tsistinas was a member of the South Slavonic Federation of the SLP since that organization never had a sufficient number of Greek adherents to establish a formal Greek Federation.
The SLP did have active Greek branches in the early 1920s, however, including groups in Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, and Youngstown, Ohio. Other Greek activists lived in scattered other communities.


1. "Congress of the Greek Branches of the SLP" -- Youngstown, OH -- Dec. 1923.
A gathering of representatives of the Greek branches of the SLP was held in Youngstown, Ohio, during the last days of 1923. It was attended by six delegates representing five local branches (Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Youngstown, and Zeigler, OH), with the delegates chosen on the basis of a for each 15 members of the organization.

[fn: Kostis Karpozilos, M.A. thesis, 2004]

A number of other pamphlets and leaflets were produced by the SLP in Greek during the decade of the 1920s, including DeLeon's The Socialist Reconstruction of Society, Reform or Revolution?, What Means This Strike?, and Industrial Unionism, as well as material by others including The Communist Manifesto, Manifesto of the SLP, The Future Society, The Proletarian Through the Ages, and Eugene Sue's The Silver Cross.

[fn: S. Kacogiannis: "Greek Organization" in 16th National Convention, Socialist Labor Party, May 10-13, 1924: Minutes, Reports, Resolutions, Platform, Etc., pp. 90-92.]




Greek Organization in the Communist Labor Party

R. Hasson of Chicago made the initial effort to organize a Greek Federation for the Communist Labor Party in the Fall of 1919.
Greek-American radicalism was centered in New York, where a group published a series of Communist-oriented newspapers which began with the monthly Phone tou Ergatou ["Voice of the Worker"] in 1918.

Greek Organization in the United Communist Party Party
In December of 1920 none of the 673 primary party units of the United Communist Party spoke Greek.

2 -- "Second Annual Convention" -- (city?) -- May 7-8, 1922.

Phone tou Ergatou ["Voice of the Worker"] went to weekly status in 1922, before changing its name to become Embros ["Forward"] in 1923. The paper continued to be issued with a series of other names until the early 1950s.

[fn: Dan Georgakas, "Greek Americans," in Buhle, et al (eds.), Encyclopedia of the American Left (First Edition), pg. 278; Comintern Archive, f. 515, op, 1, d. 146, l. 131.]