This book analyzes the events
that impacted the structure and competitive processes of the two dominant
Cypriot political factions while under the watchful eye of British rule. Based
on new archival research, Alecou addresses the social and political environment
in which the Cypriot Communists and Nationalists fought each other while at the
same time had to fight the British Empire. The differences between communists
and nationalists brought the two sides to a frontal collision in the wake of
the events of the Greek civil war. The class conflict within Cypriot society
would at some point inevitably lead, in one way or another, to a clash between
the two factions. The civil war in Greece constituted another field of conflict
between Left and Right, accelerating the formation of a bipolar party system in
which the vertical division of the Greek community in Cyprus eventually
expressed itself.