Andreas in Jail and in Exile: Junta, Resistance, Americans, Karamanlis by Stan Draenos (review)

Abstract

Stan Draenos is well known to anyone who has an interest in post – World War II Greek politics. His work in Athens included service as historian at the Andreas Papandreou Foundation. His earlier book, Andreas Papandreou: The Making of a Greek Democrat and Political Maverick (I. B. Tauris, 2012) provided a balanced analysis of Andreas’s leap into Greek politics after two decades in American academia and association with the American liberal political establishment. That volume ended with the 1967 coup in Athens and Andreas’s arrest by the Greek Junta. The discussion in the book under review ends late in 1969, although the epilogue looks ahead well into 1974. The book is short but insightful. It is written in Greek, which limits its readership, and is part of a series published in Athens on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 coup. It is likely to become the preamble and foundation of Draenos’s planned second volume on Andreas. While most books on Andreas offer either passionate accounts or condemnations of the man and his career, Draenos’s work is distinguished by balanced perspectives derived from archival sources and wideranging research. Various documents and letters are also included in this volume. The book focuses on the political shifts and compromises Andreas made during his traumatic experience in jail and his eventual exile. Developments in Greece are examined in the context of the troubled US politics of the period. The Vietnam War and events surrounding the election of Richard Nixon in 1968 are examined for their effects on US relations with Western Europe and the intensifying EastWest confrontation. The volume examines various unknown and inad-