Georgios Ioannou Rallis (; 26 December 1918 – 15 March 2006),

anglicised Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English place adopts the English language ...

to George Rallis, was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

conservative politician and

Prime Minister of Greece The prime minister of the Hellenic Republic (), usually referred to as the prime minister of Greece (), is the head of government of the Greece, Hellenic Republic and the leader of the Cabinet of Greece, Greek Cabinet. The officeholder's of ...

from 1980 to 1981.

Ancestors in politics

Georgios was descended from the old, noble and political Rallis family. Alexandros Rallis, born in 1760, was a prominent Phanariote (Greek from

Constantinople Constantinople (#Names of Constantinople, see other names) was a historical city located on the Bosporus that served as the capital of the Roman Empire, Roman, Byzantine Empire, Byzantine, Latin Empire, Latin, and Ottoman Empire, Ottoman empire ...

). In 1849 his son became Chief Justice of the Greek Supreme Court. Dimitrios Rallis, paternal grandfather of Georgios Rallis, served as Prime Minister of Greece for five separate short periods in 1897, 1903, 1905, 1909 and 1921. Dimitrios's son and Georgios's father, Ioannis Rallis, was a collaborationist Prime Minister from 1943 to 1944, during the German occupation. After the liberation of Greece he was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration and died in jail in 1946. His maternal grandfather,

Georgios Theotokis Georgios Theotokis (; 8 February 1844 – 12 January 1916) was a Greek politician and Prime Minister of Greece, serving the post four times. He represented the Modernist Party or Neoteristikon Komma (NK). Biography He was the third child of C ...

, was four times Prime Minister of Greece, between 1901 and 1907.

Early life

Georgios Rallis was born on 26 December 1918 in the prestigious

Kolonaki Kolonaki (, ), literally "Little Column", is an upscale neighborhood in central Athens, Greece. It is located on the southern slopes of Mount Lycabettus. Its name derives from the two metre column (located in Kolonaki Square) that defined the area ...

district of

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

. He studied law and political sciences at the

University of Athens The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA; , ''Ethnikó kai Kapodistriakó Panepistímio Athinón''), usually referred to simply as the University of Athens (UoA), is a public university in Athens, Greece, with various campuses alo ...

. Shortly after graduating he joined the fight against fascist Italy after the italian invasion on 28 October 1940 as a cavalry Second Lieutenant of the Reserve. He was recalled to active service during the

Greek Civil War The Greek Civil War () took place from 1946 to 1949. The conflict, which erupted shortly after the end of World War II, consisted of a Communism, Communist-led uprising against the established government of the Kingdom of Greece. The rebels decl ...

of 1946–49, during which he served in the armoured corps.

Political career

Rallis was first elected to the Greek Parliament as a member of the People's Party in the 1950 general election, and was re-elected in all subsequent elections until the end of his political career in 1993, except the 1958 election and the June 1989 election, where he did not run. He was first appointed a cabinet minister on 11 April 1954 in the government of Alexander Papagos, as Minister for the Presidency of the Government. A close collaborator of Constantine Karamanlis, he retained the position under the first Karamanlis cabinet (6 October 1955 – 29 February 1956), and went on to serve as Minister for Transport and Public Works in the 1956–58 Karamanlis cabinet, and as Minister for the Interior in the 1961–1963 Karamanlis cabinet. He was also among the founding members of the

National Radical Union The National Radical Union ( (ΕΡΕ), (ERE)) was a Greek political party formed in 1956 by Konstantinos Karamanlis, mostly out of the Greek Rally party. History ERE was a conservative, right-wing party, which also had some prominent centris ...

(ERE) in 1956. In 1958, he quarrelled with Karamanlis over the latter's adoption of a new electoral law, on which he had not been consulted, and for a few years left ERE, before returning to the fold in 1961. Rallis was appointed to the post of Minister for Public Order in the caretaker cabinet of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos on 3 April 1967. It was in this position that the

coup d'état A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...

of the Colonels found him on 21 April 1967. Rallis managed to evade capture by the putschists and go to the command centre of the

Greek Gendarmerie The Hellenic Gendarmerie (, ''Elliniki Chorofylaki'') was the national gendarmerie and military police (until 1951) force of Greece. History 19th century The Greek Gendarmerie was established after the enthronement of Otto of Greece, King Ot ...

, from where by radio he tried in vain to get in contact with the III Army Corps and order it to descend onto Athens and suppress the coup. Following the establishment of the Junta of the Colonels, he was arrested thrice, imprisoned and sent to internal exile to the island of

Kasos Kasos (; , ), also Casos, is a Greek island municipality in the Dodecanese. It is the southernmost island in the Aegean Sea, and is part of the regional unit Karpathos-Kasos. The capital of the island is Fri. , its population was 1,223. ...

. Among his anti-regime activities were his campaigning against the Junta-sponsored Republic referendum of 1973, and his criticism of the regime through his editorship of the magazine ''Politika Themata''. In 1974, following the fall of the dictatorship, Rallis became briefly Minister for the Interior and then again Minister to the Prime Minister in the national unity government under Karamanlis, and held on to the post (from 2 January 1975 as Minister for the Presidency of the Government) under the government formed by Karamanlis' new party, New Democracy, after the November 1974 election. On 5 January 1976 he also assumed the post of Minister for National Education and Religious Affairs, which he held in tandem with the former post until the end of the cabinet term on 28 November 1977. From the post of Minister for Education he oversaw the

educational reform Education reform is the goal of changing public education. The meaning and educational methods have changed through debates over what content or experiences result in an educated individual or an educated society. Historically, the motivations for ...

, the institution of the

Demotic Greek Demotic Greek (, , , ) is the standard spoken language of Greece in modern times and, since the resolution of the Greek language question in 1976, the official language of Greece. "Demotic Greek" (with a capital D) contrasts with the conservat ...

as the

formal language In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of strings whose symbols are taken from a set called "alphabet". The alphabet of a formal language consists of symbols that concatenate into strings (also c ...

in schools and the administration, replacing the

Katharevousa Katharevousa (, , literally "purifying anguage) is a conservative form of the Modern Greek language conceived in the late 18th century as both a literary language and a compromise between Ancient Greek and the contemporary vernacular, Demotic ...

, and the reform of the school curricula. Following the 1977 election, he served first as Minister for Coordination, before becoming Minister for Foreign Affairs in May 1978. He was the first Greek Foreign Minister to visit the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, in October 1978, and negotiated Greece's accession to the

EEC The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...

, signing Greece's accession agreement in May 1979. He also worked to restore relations with

Bulgaria Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...

and

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

. After Karamanlis was elected to the post of President of the Republic, on 8 May 1980 Rallis was elected by New Democracy's parliamentary group as the new party chairman, and was sworn in as Prime Minister on 10 May. During his tenure Greece rejoined the military wing of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

. He led the government until his defeat by

Andreas Papandreou Andreas Georgiou Papandreou (, ; 5 February 1919 – 23 June 1996) was a Greek academic and economist who founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and served three terms as Prime minister of Greece, prime minister of Third Hellenic Repu ...

PASOK The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (, ), known mostly by its acronym PASOK (; , ), is a social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Greece, political party in Greece. Until 2012 it was Two-party system, one of the two major ...

in the 18 October 1981 election, resigning on 21 October. Shortly after, in early December, having lost the confidence of his party's MPs, he resigned from the chairmanship of New Democracy. In May 1987 he split from New Democracy and became an independent MP. He did not participate in the June 1989 election, but after a personal invitation by the new New Democracy chairman,

Konstantinos Mitsotakis Konstantinos Mitsotakis (, ; – 29 May 2017) was a Greek politician who was Prime Minister of Greece from 1990 to 1993. He graduated in law and economics from the University of Athens. His son, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was elected as the Prime Mi ...

, he rejoined the party and was elected an MP for

Corfu Corfu ( , ) or Kerkyra (, ) is a Greece, Greek island in the Ionian Sea, of the Ionian Islands; including its Greek islands, small satellite islands, it forms the margin of Greece's northwestern frontier. The island is part of the Corfu (regio ...

. After a renewed dispute with Mitsotakis, now Prime Minister, over the handling of the

Macedonia naming dispute The use of the country name "Macedonia (terminology), Macedonia" was disputed between Greece and the North Macedonia, Republic of Macedonia (now North Macedonia) between 1991 and 2019. The dispute was a source of instability in the Balkans#W ...

, he resigned from his post and retired from politics in March 1993. During his retirement, Rallis established and cultivated organically-farmed vineyards and olive groves at his family estate on Corfu. Although Rallis became Prime Minister at a time when the fortunes of his party were in decline, he remained a popular figure because of his well-liked personal attributes of mildness, modesty and straightforwardness. A wealthy patrician by birth, he always made a point of living modestly, walking to work (even as a Prime Minister, much to the frustration of his security detail), and taking the time to greet and talk with those he met on the street. He died of

heart failure Heart failure (HF), also known as congestive heart failure (CHF), is a syndrome caused by an impairment in the heart's ability to Cardiac cycle, fill with and pump blood. Although symptoms vary based on which side of the heart is affected, HF ...

at his home on 15 March 2006. He is survived by his wife, Lena Rallis (''née'' Voultsou) and their two daughters, Zaira Papaligouras and Joanna Farmakidis. Rallis spoke English, French, and German, and wrote 14 books. A bust of Rallis in Corfu was stolen in April 2019.

References

External links

''Athens News'' obituary1991 interview of Rallis on his career in the 1950s and early 1960s
ERT Archive , - , - , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Rallis, Georgios 1918 births 2006 deaths 20th-century prime ministers of Greece Children of prime ministers of Greece Foreign ministers of Greece Greek MPs 1950–1951 Greek MPs 1951–1952 Greek MPs 1952–1956 Greek MPs 1956–1958 Greek MPs 1961–1963 Greek MPs 1963–1964 Greek MPs 1964–1967 Greek MPs 1974–1977 Greek MPs 1977–1981 Greek MPs 1981–1985 Greek MPs 1985–1989 Greek MPs 1989–1990 Greek MPs 1990–1993 Greek military personnel of the Greek Civil War Greek military personnel of World War II Greek prisoners and detainees Greek Rally politicians Leaders of New Democracy (Greece) Ministers of the interior of Greece National and Kapodistrian University of Athens alumni National Radical Union politicians Politicians from Athens People's Party (Greece) politicians

Georgios Georgios (, , ) is a Ancient Greek, Greek name derived from the word ''georgos'' (, , "farmer" lit. "earth-worker"). The word ''georgos'' (, ) is a compound (linguistics), compound of ''ge'' (, , "earth", "soil") and ''ergon'' (, , "task", "underta ...

Resistance to the Greek junta Greek Freemasons