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Nowadays, with the celebration of the Greek state’s bicentennial, the exploration of how the national past was debated, historicised and narrated through historiographical and political means holds an interesting position: by examining how certain pasts entered the national canon, how events and figures were pantheonised, and how history and memory wars were conducted, we may be able to assess why and how nation-states commemorate themselves and formulate narratives about the shared past. Using the past as a symbolic resource, the agents of political and social power seek to provide the definitive version of how and why did we arrive at the present. Simultaneously, these official versions of the past are constantly contested by opposing social forces, which frequently manage to have their versions merge with, incorporated into or stand alongside those of their opponents. It is through these procedures, namely historiographical debates such as these explored in this issue of Historein, that the past turns into history.

The position of historian emerged as a distinct academic and professional field in Greece in the last quarter of the 20th century. In an attempt to explore this “delay” in comparison to Western European countries, this article offers an overview of the making of the field of modern Greek history during the twentieth century. Starting from the gradual acknowledgment of the autonomy of modern Greek history in relation to classical and Byzantine studies, the article traces its evolution and its close ties to political and social developments. The prevalence of historical positivism and philological principles, along with the dominance of the ideology of national continuity – the latter enriched through the postwar ideologies of national-mindedness and anticommunism – led to the persistence of the “historian-philologist” until 1974. The fall of the military dictatorship in 1974, which marked the end of the post-Greek Civil War era, was a catalyst for the flowering of modern Greek studies and the formation of a small but distinct community of historians, who regularly intervened in the public sphere.

This paper focuses on Greek higher education and the transition from dictatorship to democracy, between the fall of the junta in 1974 and the ascent to power of the socialist government of Andreas Papandreou in 1981. It analyzes the developments, recording them in the history of tertiary education in Greece and considering them in the context of the political and social conjuncture. Main sources for writing this article were legal provisions, the press and the few relevant studies that deal with the topic. The basic working hypothesis of the paper is that the fall of the dictatorship and the participation of the student movement in the fight against the dictatorship unleashed forces within university institutions –that had already acquired a mass character since the 1960s– which claimed a more substantial role in their administration and operation. The purging of academic staff of junta elements provided an initial sample of this change. The challenging of university hierarchies, the quest for equality and democratization, and the dissolution of hitherto «sacrosanct» areas were demands put forward both by the student movement and auxiliary teaching staff, which faced the hostility of professors and the suspicion of executive power. The organized, unprecedented in intensity and methods and successful response of the bodies that claimed a new role vis-a-vis the government’s attempt to discipline the students and meet only a part of the demands of auxiliary staff were good indications of events and, at the same time, laid the groundwork for the important changes that would be effected in the following decade by a new political authority. How to reference this article Karamanolakis, V. (2015). From the fall of the «junta» to «Change»: the «timid» transition of higher education in Greece (1974-1982). Espacio, Tiempo y Educacion , 2(2), 33-48. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/ete.2015.002.002.003

Obituaries in memoriam Vangelis Kechriotis by I. Laliotou and V. Karamanolakis

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