Zebgos, Giannis

(pseudonym of Giannis Talaganes). Born 1899, in the village of Dorisas, near Tripolis; died Mar. 20, 1947, in Salonika. Leader in the Greek workers’ movement; historian. Member of the Communist Party of Greece (CPG) from 1920.

At the Fifth Congress of the CPG (1934), Zebgos was elected a member of the Central Committee. From 1935 to 1938 he was head of the editorial board of the theoretical organ of the Central Committee of the CPG, the journal Kommounistike epitheorisi. From 1937 to 1945 he was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPG. Zebgos spent the years 1938–43 in prisons and in exile. In 1943–44 he was editor in chief of the central organ of the CPG, the newspaper Rizospastes, and later of the journal Kommounistike epitheorisi. From Sept. 3 through Dec. 1, 1944, Zebgos served as minister of agriculture in the Papandreou government, which he left as a sign of protest against the decision to disband the Greek National Popular Liberation Army (ELAS). From 1945 to 1947 he was a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPG. Zebgos was treacherously killed in Salonika. In his numerous articles (“Why the Revolution in Greece Is Beginning as a Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution” [1934] and “The People’s December Resistance and the Problem of New Greece” [1945]), as well as in A Brief Study of Modern Greek History (parts 1–2, 1945–46), he examines from the Marxist point of view the problems of modern and contemporary Greek history.