Georgios Skliros

Georgios Skliros
Γεώργιος Κωνσταντινίδης
Georgios Skliros (date unknown)
Born	Georgios Konstantinides 1878 Trebizond
Died	24 December 1919 Alexandria
Other names	Skliros «Σκληρός»

Georgios Konstantinides (1878–1919, nom de plume Skliros, Greek: Γεώργιος Κωνσταντινίδης, «Σκληρός») was an early Greek socialist intellectual and journalist. Describing contemporary reality, he based his work on the class stratification of society and, analyzing Greek society, using Marxist methods. Until his death he was considered to be “the most significant Greek Marxist”.

Biography

Skleros was born to a middle-class family of Trebizond in Ottoman Pontus, and took a typical education and cosmopolitan outlook for the city and its Greek quarter of that age, and in his younger years travelled to Odessa in Russia to work as a merchant. Later he left for Moscow, where he engaged in medical studies, in 1904, at the University of Moscow. The following year he got involved in the revolutionary movement, under the influence of Georgi Plekhanov, taking up the pseudonym of "Skliros" ("Severe"). A series of problems with the Tsarist establishment drove him to Estonia and then to Jena in Germany. There, as representative of Marxist theory he met with Dimitris Glinos in the "Filiki Prodevtiki Enosi" ("Friendly Progressive Unity"), a student society oriented in a socialist direction.

Skleros, suffering from tuberculosis, then moved to and lived in Alexandria, where he died in 1919.

Works

• Το Κοινωνικόν μας Ζήτημα (Our Common Goal, 1907)
• Η Φιλοσοφία του Πολέμου και της Ειρήνης (The Philosophy of War and of Peace)
• Σύγχρονα Προβλήματα του Ελληνισμού (Contemporary Problems in Hellenism)
• Μελέτες - παρεμβάσεις στα πολιτικά και πολιτιστικά δρώμενα (Plans - Interventions in Politics and Political Roles)