Yanis Kordatos: A Greek Marxist Historian in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This article focuses on the life and work of Yanis Kordatos (1891–1961), the first Marxist historian in Greece, as has been established in the relevant literature. Through references to his life and work, it attempts to explore the intersection of Marxist and national historiography in Greece, as well as the way in which an intellectual becomes associated with a particular historical perspective (Marxism), appears as its main representative and is repeatedly acknowledged or contested as an authoritative voice on the subject. In that regard, the article surveys the milestones in Kordatos’ intellectual and historiographical trajectory, from the mid-1920s to the late 1950s: first, how he came to constitute a revolutionary intellectual in the 1920s, joining the nascent communist movement; then his estrangement from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and his evolution into the leading Marxist historian of his time; finally, after the 1940s, his emergence as the pre-eminent national left-wing historian in a new era for the Greek Left, after the experiences of the National Resistance (1941–1944) and the Civil War (1946–1949).