People's Civil Guard

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

The People's Civil Guard, founded in 1947, was the security force of the Communist Party of Greece during the Greek Civil War (1946–49). It served as the police side of the Democratic Army of Greece, the party’s military group. It followed the National Civil Guard, which followed the Organization for the Protection of the People's Struggle (OPLA). Members were volunteers, both men and women, who supported the Communist Party. Unlike the DSE, they did not use forced recruitment.

In June 1948, the KKE published a booklet called Lessons of the Popular Civil Guard to explain its role: a “new type” security force meant to serve the people, different from the government’s Gendarmerie and City Police.

The first commander was Stephanos Papayannis, a former Greek Army captain who joined the Communists after World War II. Later the command changed to Vasilis Bartziotas. In northern Greece the group was also known as Close Self-Defense.