The monopoly control of the state by the Right, perpetuated over time, had created a political survival problem for centrist politicians (mostly of the Venizelos lineage) by the early 1960s. Therefore, they were forced to set aside their leadership ambitions and proceed with the creation of a unified political entity, the E.K.

However, from the very beginning, there was an attempt to ensure collective governance and internal party balance in the new political formation, but the dynamics of events made its leader, Georgios Papandreou, all-powerful, and also turned Andreas Papandreou into a center of internal party power… This development was hard for the other barons of the faction to bear.

The so-called "Apostasy" of 1965 was largely a reaction from the old leadership group against the leader. However, because it occurred in a way and through maneuvers that created a sense of betrayal, conspiracy, and surrender of the old democratic faction to its historical opponent, namely the Crown, the Apostasy offered G. Papandreou a popularity he had never had in the past.

While his opponents now viewed him – mainly to the extent that his son exerted influence – as dangerous to the post-civil war status quo. Essentially, Greece was divided into Papandreou supporters and anti-Papandreou forces. Since the time of Eleftherios Venizelos, it perhaps hadn’t had a figure that so significantly became the basis of a divisive split.

A country that, just over a decade after the end of a bloody civil war, thought it had achieved a level of political normality such that smooth government alternation was possible, soon realized that nothing was taken for granted: The split of the centrist faction, the alignment of part of it with the Palaces and the Right, the consequent radicalization of a section of society, and its alignment even with the political entities that represented the losers of the Civil War, were the factors that revived the old demons and turned the hopeful beginning of the decade into a nightmare…

Thanasis Diamantopoulos was born in Athens. He studied Law at the University of Athens, then Political Science and Public Law at the same school, and Philosophy-Pedagogy-Psychology at the School of Philosophy. Receiving successive scholarships, he pursued postgraduate studies and obtained a doctorate from the University of Sorbonne, while later conducting postdoctoral research at Oxford. He teaches at Panteion University and has taught at the Institute of Political Science in Lille. He is the author of 25 scientific works and two literary works.