Andreas Stergiou
Visiting Fellow, Spring 2020
- AffiliationUniversity of ThessalyResearch Project:Greece's Ostpolitik
Andreas Stergiou is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics University of Thessaly specialised on European Institutions and International Relations and Teaching Fellow at the Open University of Greece. Degrees: B.A., History (Department of History, Ionian University) 1995 (Greek State Scholarship Foundation and Minor Asia Refugees Foundation). Magister and Ph.D. (with distinction), Contemporary History and Political Science (University of Mannheim, Germany) 1996-2001 (Greek State Scholarship Foundation Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Kölner Foundation, Hermann Weber Foundation) Germany. Postdoc in History of International relations (Department of History, Ionian University) 2004–2006 funded by the EU. Postdoctoral seminar on American Politics and Political Thought, Donahue Institute, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Summer 2010) State Department Scholarship. Visiting Research Fellow at the Truman Institute for advancement of Peace in the Hebrew University in 2013 and 2018 and Research Affiliate 2014-2015, at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO) in Moscow in 2015, at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA University) in 2017. He has been Teaching Fellow at the University of Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, University of Crete, at the Diplomatic Academy of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the National School of Public Administration, at the Hellenic Open University, at the National Trade Confederation (ESEE) as well as at the School-Research Center of the Union for Civil Servants (ADEDY). He has published in French, English, Greek and German, Portuguese.
About the Research Project
Greece's Ostpolitik
The project deals with a relatively unknown chapter of the Greek foreign policy during the Cold War and a terra incognita of European history and international politics so far: Greece’s opening to the Communist Camp from the early 1950s until 1989. Ostpolitik, translated literally, means ‘‘Eastern politics’’, i.e. the policy of conducting relations with the Eastern European states, including the Soviet Union. However, from the late 1960s onwards, this Ostpolitik has come to mean a policy of détente with the Eastern European countries, based on the acceptance of Europe’s post-war division. This only partially applies to the Greek foreign policy only for the period 1950-1967, during which the contacts between Greece and Eastern Europe were still marginal or of secondary importance within the general Greek foreign policy concept. The reason is that the security fears pushing European countries to seek a peaceful modus vivendi with their enemies, were Greece’s concerns only in the 1950s and 1960s. Greece’s Ostpolitik in the 1970s and 1980s was of a unique, peculiar nature. The military regime’s Ostpolitik, mainly in the period from 1969 until 1973, served predominantly propaganda purposes, while the respective policy in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by flourishing multiple political and economic ties between Greece and many Communist countries of the world, was driven by a threat within the Western alliance: Turkey.
Publications
Greece's Ostpolitik: Dealing With the "Devil"Springer,