The celebratory reception of Andreas Papandreou at the Elliniko airport on August 16, 1974, upon his return to Greece after the fall of the military junta. [A.G. Papandreou Foundation Archive]
On August 9, 1939, the Athenian newspapers recorded yet another success of the prosecuting authorities in combating the communist threat: the arrest of a student group associated with the “banned” publication “Proletarios” (Proletarian). In one of the suspects’ homes police found a typewriter and a mimeograph – the sacred instrument of illegality. This man was Andreas Papandreou. The 20-year-old law student signed a statement of repentance, named his comrades and left for the United States. The case was archived.
However, Papandreou’s meteoric rise in Greek political life resulted in its “rediscovery.” In 1964, Konstantinos Maniadakis, a former Greek army officer and head of the internal security services during the Metaxas regime, brought out the “Papandreou dossier,” revealing both his communist past and his confession. This was not the last time his past was dug up. Two decades later, right-wing newspaper Eleftheros Typos responded to the fabricated “revelations” by populist Avriani newspaper against the then leader of New Democracy, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, with a similar attack: “Andreas was a snitch during the dictatorship.”
In this story, however, the crucial thing is not Papandreou’s decision to reveal the names of his comrades. It was his political choice, his decision to join a circle of young revolutionaries – among them philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis – who were inspired by Leon Trotsky and not by Joseph Stalin. Obviously, Papandreou did not remain a Trotskyist. However, the development of his intellectual and political thought reveals a constant communication with the space that during the Cold War was called the “anti-Stalinist left.”
This was a minority in Greece due to the specific characteristics of the 1940s. In the United States, on the other hand, and especially in the academic and political environments in which Papandreou moved, the “anti-Stalinist left” was the rule and not the exception. Intellectuals and activists who, in the 1930s, during the years of the Great Depression, had varying degrees of involvement in the Trotskyist movement, were now transforming their simultaneous criticism of capitalism and Stalinism into a new synthesis that referred to democratic socialism and the radicalism of social movements.
Papandreou introduced this culture into Greek political thought during the years of the dictatorship. It involved identifying with national liberation movements, popular and workers’ self-management and, above all, a rhetoric of socialist transformation that did not identify with the burden of the historical communist movement. Or to be even more precise, a rhetoric of socialist transformation in opposition to historical communism.
The narrative that Papandreou formulated for recent Greek history was indicative, when he argued that the National Liberation Front (EAM) – an alliance of various political parties and organizations which fought to liberate Greece from Axis occupation – was a genuine popular movement that was defeated by the “betrayal” of the Soviet Union and the dogmatism of the obedient Communist Party (KKE) leadership. It is a reading that refers to the Trotskyist tradition and at the same time exudes a direct questioning of the authority of the Communist Party. I think that here is the key to the whole issue: Papandreou did not feel any awe toward the KKE; he had delegitimized it within himself since his youth, and subsequently the space in which he formed his thinking confirmed the initial suspicion or even open rivalry with all sorts of “Stalinists.”
If we think about it, the anti-dictatorship group Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK) which he founded while in exile never actually collaborated with the organizations of the communist left during the junta. The then Communist Party leader Harilaos Florakis waited in vain for that phone call to form a coalition government after the 1981 elections, and Papandreou’s comments were systematically disparaging when referring to either the “living room” left or the one that remained attached to the directions of Moscow.
At the same time, he felt more than comfortable talking to old revolutionaries who came from the Trotskyist tradition, such as Trotskyist leader Michalis Raptis (known with the pseudonym Pablo), and incorporating the social base of the pre-dictatorial left that had identified with the United Democratic Left party, that is, the Greek version of the “national road to socialism.” This was the peculiarity of Papandreou. He did not seek to appear as the legitimate heir of Greek communism, but through the resounding challenge of the KKE he claimed the audience of the left by offering an answer to the historical question of its defeat during the Civil War and, above all, to the possibility of its victory.
The irony of Papandreou is that he began by dismantling the cult of personality, only to eventually become its object.
Kostis Karpozilos is an assistant professor in the department of history and political science at Panteion University.
This commentary is part of a Kathimerini special marking three decades since Andreas Papandreou’s death.
