ABSTRACT
The Progressive Party of the Working People (AKEL) was founded in 1941. It is the successor to the Cypriot Communist party, founded in 1926, declared illegal in 1933. AKEL’s foreign policy, like its domestic policy, can be termed refusal of the double Enosis--neither union with Greece nor with the West. AKEL was offered the chance to confirm its national legitimacy in increasingly close cooperation with the national-liberal bourgeoisie and win strong support in the population as a socially progressive anti-imperialist party. With fifteen thousand party members, an equal number in its youth organization EDON, and a voting strength varying from thirty to thirty-five percent, the exclusively Greek AKEL is the strongest political group in the country. After Cyprus became independent in 1960, the Communists were rapidly able to lose any stigma of “national betrayal.” However, the Communists exerted considerable indirect influence on it through a committee of AKEL and DIKO leaders.
