Andreas Papandreou

Andreas Georgiou Papandreou was a Greek academic and economist who was prime minister of Greece from 1981 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1996. He founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement.
Born in Chios, Papandreou was the son of prime minister Georgios Papandreou. In 1938, Papandreou left Greece for the United States to escape the 4th of August Regime and became a prominent academic. He returned to Greece in 1959 after years of resisting his father's entreaties to prepare him as successor. After joining the now-ruling Centre Union party in 1963, Papandreou's rapid ascension during his father's premiership, together with his uncompromising radical rhetoric, amplified Greece's post–Civil War political instability, which created the conditions for a group of colonels to stage a coup d'état and rule Greece for seven years. Papandreou was imprisoned, then exiled during the ensuing Greek Junta, with many, including his father, blaming him for the fall of democracy. In exile, Papandreou developed and spread an anti-American, conspiratorial narrative of past events, in which he was a victim of larger forces.
On his return in 1974, Papandreou created PASOK, the first organised Greek democratic socialist party. Papandreou's populist rhetoric resonated with the Greek people who sought a break from the politics of the past, along with the mounting pressure from the 1970s energy crisis. PASOK won the 1981 elections and Papandreou implemented a transformative social agenda, expanding access to education and healthcare, reinforcing workers' rights, and passing a new family law that elevated the position of women in society and the economy. He secured official recognition of the communist resistance groups in the Greek Resistance, making it easier for communist refugees from the Civil War to return. His governance was tarnished by numerous corruption scandals, a soft stance on terrorism, democratic backsliding, a public divorce and subsequent marriage to an air stewardess half his age, controversial foreign policy decisions, and a constitutional crisis which he had instigated. Under Papandreou, the Greek economy diverged from the European average because of large-scale patronage, misuse of European Union funds, and excessive foreign borrowing, which resulted in Greece earning the reputation of Europe's "black sheep" and "lost cause".
Papandreou resigned from the premiership in January 1996 due to ill health and died in June of that year. He transformed Greece's post-junta liberal democracy into a populist democracy that continues to be popular after his death. His eldest son, George Papandreou, became the leader of PASOK in February 2004 and served as prime minister from 2009 to 2011.

Personal life and family

Papandreou was born on 5 February 1919 on the Greek island of Chios, the son of Zofia Mineyko and Greek liberal politician and future prime minister George Papandreou. His maternal grandfather was Polish-Lithuanian-born public figure Zygmunt Mineyko, and his maternal grandmother was Greek. He attended Athens College, a private school in Greece, then the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens from 1937 until 1938. During the dictatorship led by Ioannis Metaxas, he was arrested for purported Trotskyism. Following representation in court by his father, Papandreou gained an exit visa through family connections, and went to New York. From there he asked for political asylum based on the imprisonment by the Metaxas regime.
Papandreou married Christina Rasia in 1941. In 1948, he entered into a relationship with Margaret Chant, a journalism student at University of Minnesota where he was a professor. He obtained a divorce from his spouse in 1951 and married Chant later that year. They had three sons and a daughter. Papandreou also had, with Swedish actress and TV presenter, a daughter out of wedlock, Emilia Nyblom, who was born in 1969 in Sweden. Papandreou divorced Chant in 1989 and married Dimitra Liani, who was 37 years his junior.
Papandreou died on 23 June 1996. The government declared four days of national mourning, and at his funeral procession produced crowds of "hundreds of thousands." His will shocked the public because he left everything to his 41-year-old third wife and left nothing to his family by the second wife, their four children, or his illegitimate Swedish daughter.

Academic career

In 1943, Papandreou received a PhD degree in economics from Harvard University. Afterwards, he served in the U.S. Navy and qualified as a hospital corpsman at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Papandreou's skills in maths were recognized by an American admiral, who placed him in a statistical control unit planning the Okinawa invasion. He returned to Harvard in 1946 as a student advisor until 1947, when he received an assistant professorship at the University of Minnesota. Papandreou became a visiting professor at Northwestern University for 1950–1951. In 1956, he accepted a tenured teaching position at the University of California, Berkeley, where he later became the Department of Economics chair. While in exile, Papandreou worked at Stockholm University for a year and then at York University in Toronto until 1974.

Political career

Pre-Junta era (1959–1967)

Entry into politics

While he was chair of the department at Berkeley, Papandreou was pressured by his father to return to Greece to prepare him as his successor. He returned to Greece in 1959 and headed an economic development research program by invitation of Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis. In 1960, he began leading the Athens Economic Research Center and advising the Bank of Greece.
Papandreou developed an ideology shaped by the progressive liberalism from his years in the U.S., aiming to gain support from the non-communist, left-leaning electorate. He viewed this as the only viable path to help his father ascend to prime minister. His vision called for social and economic modernization, pursued through the creation of a mass-based political party. American officials hoped that Papandreou would be a stabilizing force in Greek politics. He received funding from the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation to promote projects aligned to liberal internationalism. He later moved away from progressive liberalism and adopted a populist rhetoric, in which the king, the armed forces, and the Americans are described as having "vested interests" that are not in the best interests of Greece.

Center Union rise and conflicts

The 1963 Greek legislative election brought his father, head of the Center Union, to the prime minister. Papandreou became chief economic advisor, renounced his American citizenship, and was elected to the Greek Parliament in the 1964 Greek legislative election. He then became the assistant to the Prime Minister and leader of the party's left wing. Papandreou's rapid ascension, orchestrated by his father, created displeasure among Center Union party members. The discontent of Center Union members increased as Papandreou's influence grew and his father started to ignore his own Cabinet on critical political decisions.
Papandreous advocated for the liberalization of the rapidly urbanizing Greek society, resulting in large salary increases for police, judges, and teachers. Resentment towards the Papandreous grew among the military as they were excluded from salary increases. The Papandreous made a faint attempt to gain military control, which alarmed officers without weakening them. The latter created friction with the king, who wanted to remain in command of the army. The Papandreous also released all the political prisoners towards healing wounds from the Civil War.
In foreign policy, Papandreou criticized the presence of American military and intelligence in Greece by describing Greece as a U.S. colony and publicly taking a neutral stand in the Cold War. Papandreou's rhetoric intensified after his father's visit as Prime Minister to Washington DC with President Johnson in July 1964 to discuss the Cyprus dispute. This criticism became politically turbulent with his interview on 4 October, resulting in his sudden but temporary resignation.

Disturbing the political balance

Papandreou's public attacks against the king and the Americans disturbed the political balance. Conservatives feared that Papandreou was a secret Communist, leading them to another civil war. The U.S. embassy officials, sensitive to these public attacks during the Cold War, and his father repeatedly requested Papandreou tone down his rhetoric. Andreas continued actively campaigning, further deepening divisions and prolonging the political instability in the pre-1967 coup period.
Weeks before the coup, his father apologized to the U.S. ambassador Phillips Talbot for his son's behavior, explaining that his son "would like nothing better than to be arrested" as he would "relish the role of martyr," and that if he were not his son, then he would have been expelled from Center Union. Papandreou became the target of ultra-rightists who feared that his nearly 80-year-old father would win the next election, but Andreas would be the actual focus of power in the party.

Iouliana

In 1965, Papandreou was accused in the Aspida scandal within the Hellenic Army. His father removed the defense minister and assumed the post himself to protect his son from investigations. King Konstantine II of Greece refused to endorse this move since this would create a conflict of interest, which forced George Papandreou's resignation; the events following this became known as Iouliana. For the next twenty-two months, there was no elected government, and hundreds of demonstrations took place, with many injured and killed in clashes with the police. The King convinced 45 Center Union party members to support him and his bid to form a government, who were rejected and called apostates by those supporting Papandreous.
To end the political deadlock, his father attempted a more moderate approach with the King; in March 1967, Papandreou publicly rejected his father's effort and attacked the whole establishment, preventing any compromise. This attracted the support of 41 members of the Center Union, aimed at securing the party's leadership. As the politicians were unable to sort out their differences, on 21 April 1967 anti-Communist Colonels led the Greek military junta of 1967–1974.