The Socialist camp, the USSR, and the Greek Political Refugees. An unsettled historical issue

One of the most controversial issues in contemporary Greek history has been the Greek Civil War and its consequences. The two sides at conflict were the Democratic Army of Greece (DSE) headed by the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and backed by the Socialist countries and the Greek National Army, headed by the Greek government and backed by Great Britain and later the United States. The war caused approximately 45,000 casualties (Margaritis: 51-52, 2002) and 130,000 refugees (Triandafyllidou and Maroufof: 8, 2009). Up until the 1990s, the majority of Greek scholars who dealt with the topic had a strong politically influenced approach. In fact, a right-wing literature production dominated the Greek academic world until the dictatorship of the Colonels was overthrown (1974), while a left-wing approach emerged when the parties of the left came to power in the 1980s. Strongly politicized the Greek Civil War was recognized as such only in 1989. Until that moment it was considered a war between patriots and bandits, as the Communists were then named by the Greek government, or war between partisans and occupiers, as referred to by the KKE, hence a second resistance.
Although much research has been carried out with regards to the Civil War by both Greek and international scholars, little interest has been given to the consequences of such a war, particularly to the thousands of refugees that emerged as a result of this war. One hundred thirty thousand refugees, as previously mentioned, were forced to flee from Greece, and out of these approximately 56,000 fled to the Socialist Republics and the USSR. This latter group of refugees was constituted mostly of fighters of the Democratic Army of Greece, or its supporters who, having lost a war, were forced to leave their country to avoid being imprisoned, interned or sentenced to death. In 1949, according to directives given by the USSR, the refugees sheltered in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Eastern Germany, Poland, and in the Uzbek SSR.
My thesis focuses principally on the history of the refugees who were sheltered in Tashkent, the then capital of the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan.This aspect of the Civil War consequences is largely unexplored by scholars in Greece, Russia and at the international level. Indeed, this thesis is only the second academic work to explore this particular topic, and it is the first for non Greek-speakers, on a scientific and systematic level. Therefore, the focus of my research has had to rely mainly on the research that I conducted in Greece and Russia from September 2011 to April 2012, which consists of interviews to the former refugees and consultation of archival documents. The aim of my work is to contribute in filling the gap in knowledge about this fragment of Greek modern history focusing principally on three groups of refugees: the Greeks in Tashkent, the refugee children, and the Slavo-Macedonian political refugees. To deal with these issues and to explore the important points in detail whilst having to stay within thesis requirements is indeed a great challenge. Therefore, what I hope to have achieved in this work is a general introduction to the topic, which also highlights individual arguments that can be open to further analysis and exploration.