Red and Purple? Feminism and young Greek Eurocommunists in the 1970s

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of Feminism on one of the most popular left-wing youth groups in Greece, the Eurocommunist Rigas Feraios (RF), in the mid-to-late 1970s. It indicates that, rather than a shift to (depoliticised) individualisation, which scholars claim that emerged elsewhere in Western Europe during the 1970s, post-dictatorship Greece witnessed intense politicisation and experimentations in mass-mobilisation models, a facet of which was the reconfiguration of the relationship between Eurocommunist organisations and Feminism. It demonstrates that the spread of Feminist ideas in RF led to the sexualisation of feminine representations in its language. Still, it argues that Feminist activity within RF had broader repercussions: it stirred reflection on masculinities and contributed to the reshaping of the collective memory of left-wing activity in Greece endorsed by this organisation. Finally, the article shows that the Feminist members of RF formed women's committees, which functioned as a test-bed for novel conceptualisations of collective action that RF tried to develop in the mid-to-late 1970s.