52 Facts About Andreas Papandreou

Andreas Georgiou Papandreou was a Greek economist, politician and a dominant figure in Greek politics, known for founding the political party PASOK, which he led from 1974 to 1996.

Andreas Papandreou served three terms as the 3rd and 8th prime minister of Greece.

Andreas Papandreou was born on the island of Chios, Greece, the son of Zofia Mineyko and Greek liberal politician and future prime minister George Andreas Papandreou.

Andreas Papandreou's maternal grandfather was Polish-Lithuanian-born public figure Zygmunt Mineyko, and his maternal grandmother was Greek.

Andreas Papandreou attended the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens from 1937 until 1938 when, during the authoritarian, right-leaning Metaxas dictatorship, he was arrested for purported Trotskyism.

In 1943, Andreas Papandreou received a PhD degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Immediately after getting his doctorate, Andreas Papandreou joined America's war effort and volunteered for the US Navy, serving as an examiner of models for repairing warships, and as a hospital corpsman at the Bethesda Naval Hospital for war wounded.

Andreas Papandreou returned to Harvard in 1946 and served as a lecturer and associate professor until 1947.

Andreas Papandreou then held professorships at the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, the University of California, Berkeley, Stockholm University and York University in Toronto where he worked alongside long term academic advisor Christos Paraskevopoulos.

Andreas Papandreou was married to Christina Rasia from 1941 to 1951.

Andreas Papandreou had, with Swedish actress and TV presenter Ragna Nyblom, a daughter out of wedlock, Emilia Nyblom, who was born in 1969 in Sweden.

Andreas Papandreou divorced his second wife in 1989, and married Dimitra Liani who was 37 years his junior.

Andreas Papandreou's will generated much discussion because he left everything to his 41-year-old third wife.

Andreas Papandreou left nothing to his second wife, to whom he was married for 38 years, their four children, or his illegitimate Swedish daughter.

Andreas Papandreou returned to Greece in 1959, where he headed an economic development research program, by invitation of Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis.

Andreas Papandreou renounced his American citizenship and was elected to the Greek Parliament in the 1964 Greek legislative election.

Andreas Papandreou immediately became Minister to the Prime Minister.

Andreas Papandreou took publicly a neutral stand during the Cold War and wished for Greece to be more independent from the United States.

Andreas Papandreou criticized the massive presence of American military and intelligence in Greece, and sought to remove senior officers with anti-democratic tendencies from the Greek military.

Andreas Papandreou disagreed with the American policy on the Cyprus dispute.

In 1965, while the "Aspida" conspiracy within the Hellenic Army was being investigated, Georgios Papandreou decided to remove the defense minister and assume the post himself.

Andreas Papandreou then moved to Sweden with his wife, four children, and mother.

In Paris, while in exile, Andreas Papandreou formed an anti-dictatorship organization, the Panhellenic Liberation Movement, and toured the world rallying opposition to the Greek military regime.

On 6 August 1974, Andreas Papandreou called an extraordinary meeting of the National Congress of PAK in Winterthur, Switzerland, which decided its dissolution without announcing it publicly.

Andreas Papandreou returned to Greece after the events in Cyprus and the fall of the junta in 1974, during metapolitefsi.

Andreas Papandreou testified in the first of the Greek Junta Trials about the alleged involvement of the junta with the Central Intelligence Agency.

At the 1981 elections, PASOK won a landslide victory over the conservative New Democracy party, and Andreas Papandreou became Greece's first socialist prime minister.

In office, Andreas Papandreou backtracked from much of his campaign rhetoric and followed a more conventional approach.

Greece did not withdraw from NATO, United States troops and military bases were not ordered out of Greece, and Greek membership in the European Economic Community continued, largely because Andreas Papandreou proved very capable of securing monetary aid for Greece.

Andreas Papandreou officially recognized the role of leftist partisan groups in the Greek Resistance during the Axis Occupation.

Andreas Papandreou introduced various reforms in the administration and curriculum of the Greek educational system, allowing students to participate in the election process for their professors and deans in the university, and abolishing tenure.

Andreas Papandreou was hospitalized with advanced heart disease and renal failure on 21 November 1995 and finally retired from office on 16 January 1996.

Andreas Papandreou died on 23 June 1996, with his funeral procession producing crowds, ranging from "hundreds of thousands" to "millions" to bid farewell to Andreas.

In 1999, Andreas Papandreou was posthumously awarded the Swedish Order of the Polar Star.

Andreas Papandreou's increased spending in his early years in power was necessary in order to heal the deep wounds of the Greek society, a society that was still deeply divided by the brutal memories of the Civil War and the right-wing repression that followed; furthermore, the postwar government philosophy of the Greek conservatives simply saw the state as a tool of repression, with very little money spent on health or education.

Furthermore, Andreas Papandreou's governments managed to handle the inflation and unemployment rate, maintain the growth of the economy, while according to his supporters the external debt in 1989 was in normal levels.

Andreas Papandreou was praised for conducting an independent and multidimensional foreign policy, and proved to be a master of the diplomatic game, thus increasing the importance of Greece in the international system.

Andreas Papandreou was co-creator in 1982 of, and subsequently an active participant in, a movement promoted by the Parliamentarians for Global Action, the Initiative of the Six, which included, besides the Greek PM, Mexico's president Miguel de la Madrid, Argentina's president Raul Alfonsin, Sweden's prime minister Olof Palme, Tanzania's president Julius Nyerere and India's prime minister Indira Gandhi.

Andreas Papandreou's rhetoric was at times antagonistic to the United States.

Andreas Papandreou was the first western prime minister to visit General Wojciech Jaruzelski in Poland.

Andreas Papandreou's government was the first in post-war Greece that redirected the nation's defense policy to suit its own security needs, and not those of the United States.

Andreas Papandreou supported the causes of various national liberation movements in the world, and agreed for Greece to host representatives offices of many such organisations.

Andreas Papandreou supported the cause of Palestinian liberation, met repeatedly with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and condemned Israeli policies in the occupied territories.

Andreas Papandreou was a supporter of the two-state solution for the conflict.

Andreas Papandreou was famous for wearing his business suits with turtleneck sweaters, instead of the traditional white shirt and tie; he thus created a huge fashion, mainly but not exclusively among his political supporters.

Andreas Papandreou exercised a more independent foreign policy elevating Greece's profile among non-aligned nations.

Andreas Papandreou affirmed Greece's independence in setting her own policy agenda, both internally and externally, free from any foreign domination.

Andreas Papandreou is widely acknowledged as having shifted political power from the traditional conservative Greek Right, which had dominated Greek politics for decades, to a more populist and centre-left locus.

Andreas Papandreou systematically pursued inclusionist politics which ended the sociopolitical and economic exclusion of many social classes in the post-civil war era.

Andreas Papandreou is described as both prudent and a realist, despite his appearance as a leftist ideologue, and charismatic orator.

Andreas Papandreou's skillful handling of these difficult policies had the effect of providing common policy goals to the political forces of Greece.

In two separate polls, conducted in 2007 and 2010, Andreas Papandreou was voted as the best prime minister of Greece since the restoration of democracy in 1974.