Ploutis Servas was a Cypriot former politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

, reporter, and author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

. Servas was born Ploutarhos Loizou Savvidis (Πλούταρχος Λοΐζου Σαββίδης) and changed his surname to Servas while still a student in secondary education.

Servas was born in Limassol

Limassol

Limassol is the second-largest city in Cyprus, with a population of 228,000 . It is the largest city in geographical size, and the biggest municipality on the island. The city is located on Akrotiri Bay, on the island's southern coast and it is the capital of Limassol District.Limassol is the...

, Cyprus

Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

 in 1907. He studied social sciences in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. He returned to Cyprus in the 1930s and had to sign a declaration saying he would not be involved in politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

 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 (1941–1945). 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

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 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

Elections in Cyprus

Elections in Cyprus gives information on election and election results in Cyprus.Cyprus elects on national level a head of state - the president - and a legislature. The election of the President is direct, by universal suffrage and secret ballot. Voting is compulsory and every citizen over the...

, 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 (1936), The Labour Issue (1936), AKEL and Local Issues (1942), Portraits of Palmer's Era (1946), Corea (1949), Prague Spring (1973), How Did We Manage to Get to Zero; The Cypriot Tragedy (1975), Old and New China (1977), Responsibilities (first volume 1980, second volume 1984, third volume 1985).

His death on the 14 February 2001 caused controversy in Cyprus as in his will he had asked to be cremated. There were no crematoria in Cyprus and there was a heated debate between those supporting the availability of cremation as an alternative and those (mainly religious Orthodox Christians

Eastern Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Church, officially called the Orthodox Catholic Church and commonly referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church, is the second largest Christian denomination in the world, with an estimated 300 million adherents mainly in the countries of Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece,...

) who disapproved of it.