18/02/2026
50 years since the 1st Congress of KNE:“Communism Is the Youth of the World — KNE Is Our Organization!”
A big event titled “Communism Is the Youth of the World — KNE Is Our Organisation!” was held on Sunday evening by the Central Council of KNE, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Organisation’s 1st Congress, which took place in February 1976.
Statements
The event featured a speech by Thodoris Kotsantis, Secretary of the Central Council of KNE, while a greetings speech was delivered by Dimitris Gontikas, member of the Central Committee of the KKE and Secretary of the Central Council of KNE in the period 1972–1979.
Also present at the event was Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE.
A number of delegates to KNE’s 1st Congress also took part.
With reference to the establishment of the dictatorship and the decision to found KNE one year later, the event opened with a video featuring documentary material and footage from those first years of the Organization—covering the anti-dictatorship struggle and its culmination in the Polytechnic uprising. Articles from Odigitis about the rich pre-congress process, about the 1st KNE Festival that signaled the 1st Congress followed one after another on the screen and in the voice-over.
Shivers of emotion and warm applause were stirred by excerpts from speeches by Harilaos Florakis and Dimitris Gontikas from the 1st Congress itself, accompanied by footage from inside the Sporting venue and from the event held to mark its completion at the Panionios Stadium.
In the musical tribute that followed, political and internationalist songs that left their mark on the anti-dictatorship struggle were performed—some of them first heard at the KNE–Odigitis Festivals—and they continue to set hearts alight to this day.
“Forward for a stronger and more mass KNE, deeply rooted wherever the new generation lives, works and studies.”
On Sunday, 22 February 1976, the above slogan echoed throughout the Panionios Stadium in Athens, where a mass political rally was held following the completion of the 1st Congress of KNE, which took place on 18, 19, 20 and 21 February.
The experience accumulated by KNE over these years of struggle alongside the KKE is invaluable. Looking back at the course from the founding of KNE to the present day, important conclusions emerge that are particularly relevant for today’s struggles and for the storms that lie ahead.
“We draw our strength from the centuries”
KNE was founded in 1968, during the dark years of the military dictatorship, by decision of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the KKE. The KKE had been outlawed since 1947, and with the imposition of the dictatorship in 1967, persecutions and torture of communists intensified; thousands were once again imprisoned or exiled to barren islands.
From its very foundation, KNE was called upon to act under particularly complex and difficult conditions. Already in the period leading up to its 1st Congress, KNE had managed to leave its distinct mark on developments, imbuing the struggles of youth, pupils and university students with the revolutionary ideas of the KKE.
This was achieved through the development of illegal revolutionary activity right under the enemy's nose, the illegal printing and circulation of its magazine “Odigitis”, and by outmanoeuvring the repressive mechanisms through strict rules of conspiratorial work and iron discipline among its members and cadres. In this way, KNE acquired prestige, influence and organizational strength, forging strong ties with working-class youth.
A decisive contribution to this process was the organization of the struggle against the military dictatorship, in which KNE played a leading role. However, the decisive factor that enabled KNE to stand out and consolidate itself was the fact that it constitutes the Youth Organization of the KKE, that it is fully politically guided by the KKE, armed with the revolutionary theory of Marxism–Leninism, and that from the outset it acquired the characteristics of a communist revolutionary Organization.
In 1958, the Party took the erroneous decision to dissolve its Party Organizations; earlier, in 1943, it had proceeded with the dissolution of OKNE (Federation of Communist Youth of Greece), founded in 1922, which constituted the first Communist Youth Organization in Greece. As a result, for a long period, until the establishment of KNE in 1968, there was no unified Communist Youth Organization alongside the KKE.
Life itself and the course of the revolutionary struggle ultimately proved that the existence of a revolutionary Youth Organization is absolutely indispensable. How could the Party specialise its work and intervention among the youth without such an Organization at its side? How could the revolutionary programme of the KKE penetrate schools, universities and training institutions without KNE? How could the school and university student movement acquire a correct orientation, against compromise and entrapment within the confines of the capitalist system, without KNE?
These tasks belong organically to the revolutionary youth of the KKE, together with one more crucial task: the preparation of KNE members, under the political guidance of the Party, to constitute tomorrow’s new generation of Party members and cadres, cadres of the workers’ movement. No other Youth Organization can replace KNE.
From this standpoint, the 1st Congress of KNE constituted a historic milestone for its course and for the Party’s intervention among working-class youth, as well as a significant event for the broader militant regroupment of the youth movement in Greece.
As stated in the Resolution of the 1st Congress:
“The founding of KNE, following the decision of the Political Bureau of the CC of the KKE (…) marked the beginning of a higher stage of the youth movement in Greece. It constituted an important milestone for the overall development of the revolutionary movement in our country.”
The bond of KNE with the communist movement and its political guidance by the KKE has been and remains its primary source of strength. As stated in the Statute of our Organization:
“It is a revolutionary Organization of volunteers, fully politically guided by the KKE, fighting for the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialist–communist society, where all exploitation of man by man and all forms of private ownership of the means of production will be abolished, ensuring a higher level of life and rights for the people.”
KNE: a school for the formation of young communists
Of course, no one is born a communist. Young people from different backgrounds and paths join KNE. What they share is this: they are children of working-class and popular families, not of shipowners and industrialists.
They grow up in a system that systematically cultivates rotten values and ideals, glorifying individualism and the so-called “individual path”, while undermining collective struggle and organized action. It promotes competition against collectivity, commodifies every aspect of human life, from healthcare and education to human relationships, motherhood and love.
The immense productive capabilities of our era are strangled by the criterion of profit, with corresponding degradation of social relations. Irrationalism and anti-scientific theories are reproduced, distorting objective reality and undermining class criteria and reflexes.
Under these conditions, it is far from easy—yet absolutely necessary—for working-class youth not to remain trapped in the ideological shackles imposed by the system.
KNE has accumulated significant experience in liberating young consciousness, educating the children of workers and other popular strata with the values and ideals of class struggle, integrating them into the struggle for the great cause of social liberation – socialism–communism.
Everything points to one choice: the struggle for socialism
Under today’s conditions, the strengthening of KNE is more crucial than ever.
In a world that is burning, the escalation of imperialist war exposes the historic dead ends of capitalism. KNE does not choose between imperialist camps; it chooses the side of the peoples- the right side of history.
It exposes the timeless policy of bourgeois governments, which sacrifice peoples and youth for the interests of monopolies and shipowners. It unmasks the imperialist character of war, highlighting the only real way out: the overthrow of bourgeois power and the construction of socialism–communism.
KNE stands at the forefront of the struggle in workplaces, schools and universities, confronting anti-people policies implemented with the consent of all bourgeois parties and in line with the directives of the European Union.
Through daily struggle, it educates thousands of young people in collective and organised struggle, solidarity and comradeship, cultivating courage, militancy and fearlessness in confrontation with the bourgeois state and its mechanisms.
KNE has written its own heroic pages of sacrifice and struggle in the class struggle in Greece.
On this path we continue today with pride, confidence and resilience, fighting for a strong and mass KNE.
