Ploutis Servas

Who was Ploutis Servas?

Ploutis Servas, was a Cypriot former politician, reporter, and author. Servas was born Ploutarhos Loizou Savvidis and changed his surname to Servas while still a student in secondary education.

Servas was born in Limassol, Cyprus in 1907. He studied social sciences in Moscow. He returned to Cyprus in the 1930s and had to sign a declaration saying he would not be involved in politics in order to be allowed to set foot in the country. He became the general secretary of the illegal Communist party of Cyprus and founder and first general secretary of AKEL. He was also the first elected Mayor of Limassol 1943–1946 and 1946–1949. As a mayor he participated in the consultative assembly and advocated accepting the British plan of self government for Cyprus in 1948. For that opinion he became isolated within his party and was expelled in 1952.

He supported Ioannis Clerides in the 1960 elections, but wasn't an active politician again himself. He worked mainly as a reporter and a writer. He wrote books such as: Spain on Fire, The Labour Issue, AKEL and Local Issues, Portraits of Palmer's Era, Corea, Prague Spring, How Did We Manage to Get to Zero; The Cypriot Tragedy, Old and New China, Responsibilities.