Intra-Party Struggles and the Making of the Cypriot Left

Unlike other countries where the Left remained electorally marginal and marked by introversion and fragmentation, the Cypriot communist party AKEL consistently dominated the Cypriot Left bloc. AKEL is here placed in context by looking the way it developed its arguably peculiar (communist) organizational and ideological identity through an inward looking emphasizing three important intra-party crises in a period extending from the early 1920s until the end of the Cold War. Notwithstanding (external) environmental influences, this article focuses on the intra-party level and the struggle amongst competing intra-party groups, identifying the main issues of controversy, the opposing actors and the outcome of each crisis. It is hereby argued that party choices were at least equally informed by the outcome of intra-party tensions.