The young Greek who arrived in Moscow in 1928 passed all the tests in applied terror and subversion at the Lenin International School. Three years later Joseph Stalin, embarked on his drive for absolute power, made Nicholas Zachariades boss of the strategic Greek Communist Party. Inside or outside Russia in the next quarter of a century there were few more devoted Stalinists.
Brawling his way to power in 1935, Zachariades (who toughened himself by bathing in freezing water after the ancient Spartan custom) knifed a policeman to death in an Athens street fight. Next...
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