“So that life may triumph”: Communist Feminism and Realpolitik in Civil-War Greece

The prominence of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in the arena of postwar international peace and gender politics is now established. This article focuses on the shifting trajectory of the WIDF’s Greek chapter, the Panhellenic Democratic Women’s Union (PDEG), as Greece slid from a precarious peace after liberation to a full scale civil war (1946–1949). The PDEG witnessed a dramatic transition from its role as umbrella organization for the mass women’s movement spawned by wartime antifascist resistance in Greece, to a vital support apparatus of the communist war effort, especially concerned with the plight of its ever-swelling female ranks. This article argues that the Greek chapter was far less of a “front” organization than a guardian of an increasingly endangered democratization agenda mobilized during the earlier resistance phase, which linked national political regeneration with women’s active participation in the nation.