The fifty years since the fall of the dictatorship present an opportunity to attempt writing a ‘history of the present.’ The article discusses four issues that I consider important for the critical re-examination of the historical period from 1974 to 2024. The first issue concerns the starting point of this historical period, specifically the ‘moment’ of 1974, and the exploration of the relationship between rupture and continuity. The second concerns the 1980s and the country’s governance by PASOK, which represented a paradigm shift in the exercise of power. The third issue relates to the ‘unknown’ decade of the 1990s, during which some significant changes began to emerge, which were completed in the following decades. Finally, I discuss Metapolitefsi (post-1974 period) in the public discourse during the years of the recent economic crisis and the attempt to negatively reinterpret the changes that occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the different phases of the Greek party system, as well as the dominant characteristics of each phase from 1974 to 2024. Although the emphasis is placed on the nature of party competition, references are also made to other elements that are directly or indirectly related to party competition, or may even be its consequences (e.g., the state of public opinion or the quality of democracy). The transition from strong bipartisanship to extreme and polarized multipartyism, and then to fragile bipartisanship, leading to the current situation of a dominant party, is related to developments that have shaped not only the parties but also the entire political institutions of the Metapolitefsi period.

After the end of the Greek Civil War and especially during the Dictatorship, the memory of the dead soldiers was used ideologically by the state and the army. The victors of the Civil War imposed their own commemorative practices by establishing a series of public ceremonies in order to construct the collective memory that they desired. But since 1974 onwards, the ceremonies for the fallen soldiers were initially redesigned in order not to match the previous regime. The purpose of this article is to examine the process of reorganizing the public ceremonies, which for the sake of national reconciliation, were finally forgotten or marginalised.

The present article explores spaces linked directly with torture during the period of the Colonels’ Regime in Athens and Thessaloniki. At the epicenter of this short study are some of the major torture loci during the Junta; buildings at the heart of major metropolitan centers whose history nonetheless remains a well-concealed guilty secret even to this day. Specifically, we examine Athens’ General Security Police on Bouboulinas, 18 Str., Athens, the two buildings of Security Police at Valaoritou and Vardaris districts as well as the Transportation Police Department at Thessaloniki. Why have these specific locations been selected? Because these are locations where the traces of the age in question have been either destroyed in full or totally integrated into the contemporary urban tissue, maintaining today a different identity; in both cases the result is the obliteration of memory until we reach the final stage: forgetting.

How is the collective memory of the tortures being formed? What is the spatial imprint of that memory? What are the traits of the memories of a dark historical period? How do we cope with the events of this period and how are these events integrated into the collective memory after the 1974 regime change? How did the society deal with these difficult and delicate issues after 1974? These are the core questions on which the contents of the following article are based.

This article examines the case of Mitsos Partsalidis’s funeral, a former member of the Communist Party of Greece (abbr. KKE) and one of the main figures of the Greek Civil War.  After the end of World War II, and especially after the fall of the Greek Junta in 1974, one of the major issues that emerged in the public sphere was the struggle for the official recognition of the National Resistance during the German Occupation of 1941-1944. The heated debate regarding this matter created alliances that would seem unlike in the past decades. Partsalidis’s funeral, in 1980, became an emblematic event of this phenomenon, mainly because of the eulogy delivered by Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, a prominent conservative politician and protagonist of the events that led to the Civil War. This characteristic moment helps us to analyse the different perspectives of Partsalidis, Kanellopoulos, and the organization “Movement, United National Resistance 1941-1944”, three major actors of the struggle for recognition, whose views were highlighted during and after the funeral. By examining their views we will try to underline their similarities and key differences, focusing on how a traumatic past was confronted and how it functioned in such a way that promoted the long-awaited recognition, a demand that was perceived as a crucial step towards the “national reconciliation”.

This article examines the image of the “German” at the beginning of the Third Greek Republic through the Greek press. We look for continuities or intersections, convergences and divergences between the major newspapers of the period 1974-1989, using Critical Discourse Analysis as a methodological tool and focusing on the so-called Dark Anniversaries, i.e. key dates of the Second World War for Greece. The research has shown that there is a clear differentiation between the Hitler’s Germany and the Federal Republic of Germany, which was due to the multifaceted assistance given to Greece by the Federal Republic of Germany and the spirit of consensus that prevailed, without, of course, implying that there is debate about forgetting the past.

This article focuses on Greek Parliamentary Elections of 1977 impact on Greek social and political life afterwards. Historicizing the electoral fact, the present article approaches the elections in an analytical scheme which associates space of experience and horizon of expectations with the social struggle for democratization after Metapoliteusi. Moreover, the article refers to social protests during democratic institutional transition explaining the experience of social movements connection with mass-based party strategy adopted by left parties. Analyzing the elections and its results, the document elucidates the struggle for the democratization of social life to electoral claim.

Pre-election rallies and the “battle” of the poster, as means of mass communication, were mobilized in the context of party competition by both political factions and their friendly press in post-political Greece. This article examines in particular how the specific “visual wars”, which were fighting by the party armies exacerbated the political polarization in the national elections in 1981. Furthermore, it aspires to explain how the participation of ordinary people in the mass meetings and the poster war also reflects the political culture of the time.

In the 1980s, PASOK implemented a social democratic model of governance, aiming to establish a state based on social justice, human rights and gender equality. PASOK’s policy was largely focused on the emergence and empowerment of a new female identity based on equality and independence. This article examines the way in which these changes were promoted through television, which in the 80s was undoubtedly the protagonist of information, entertainment, but also managed to transform gender perceptions.

What is the role of historians in critical times such as these? What is the function of anniversaries in the context of institutional management of a past? Through which memorial routes can the different pasts converse and how can they be parts of the constitution of a plural identity? The occasion for these questions was the holding of an international history conference in Lisbon by INTH (International Network for Theory of History), with the central theme of the “responsibility of historians” and the way we “make history”. The timing of the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese Transition to Democracy and the Restoration of Democracy in Greece was the trigger for the formulation of some thoughts and questions about the anniversary as a public memory, the use and role of symbols and monuments of the past in the present, while maintaining the thought that in order to reinterpret History, we have to reconsider the past from the viewpoint of our uncertain present.