How can a movement, the communist one, with high ideals, noble purposes, and a political program aiming at the socialist revolution, for the overthrow of capitalism and social liberation, transform a person? To lift him from the lumpen periphery of the underworld, to pull him back from the brink of the abyss, and, with his will, to politically and morally reshape him, to harness his abilities and sharpness, and to elevate him into a revolutionary, historical figure with international radiance?

In other words, how did Thanasis Klaras become Aris Velouchiotis? These questions are answered in the new and more complete biography of Aris Velouchiotis. Without omissions, fears, and prejudices, with a wealth of new, unpublished documents.

If there is a point in my life that I look back on with emotion and immense pride from time to time, it is exactly the time when I entered the Communist Party. I was raised class-wise, I learned my interests, I threw the capitalist culture in the faces of the thieving bourgeoisie, and I plunged with faith, with will, with heroism into the struggle for the working masses.

Since then, I have nothing on my record but imprisonments for revolutionary struggle. The facts speak, this truth speaks. Not a SINGLE STAIN. Is this against me? Is this an element against the Communist Party? IT IS A GREAT HONOR FOR ME AND EVEN GREATER HONOR FOR MY COMMUNIST PARTY THAT I escaped the corruption of conscience to which the predatory bourgeois regime was leading me and adorned Klaras, who seemed to be rushing toward the abyss, with PURE REVOLUTIONARY elements and only such.

From a headline article by Thanasis Klaras in Rizospastis, September 9, 1931.

I am not a general even if they called me one. Please do not put such a thing in the newspaper again... Just put: "Aris"! Aris Velouchiotis to Orfeas Economidis, publisher of the newspaper Roumeli, the organ of the EAM Committee of Central Greece, October 21, 1944.