What the former prime minister writes in the foreword of “Ithaca”
THE Alexis Tsipras made a pre-release from the foreword of his book, “Ithaca”, which is released in a few days.
“There are moments in life when you reach a crossroads. Not a simple hesitation or a difficult everyday decision, but at that critical point where every inner certainty of yours is tested”, Mr. Tsipras initially writes.
And he continues:
“In my political journey so far, I have been faced with such knots many times. And each time, the weight was far greater than a man could bear alone. Because when your decisions don’t just affect your own life, but shape the fate of thousands or even millions of people, the responsibility becomes almost existential. Hasty movements and delays are not allowed either. There is no room for simplifications.
When everything tightens like a vise around you, logic and emotion seem inadequate. It is not enough to calculate the data or listen to your heart. There is something more fundamental that, each time, determines the choice: an instinct, not raw and spontaneous, but deeply shaped by experience, forged by events and a sense of responsibility. Something that works almost silently, but pushes you in a direction that you recognize inside as the only honest and right one.
Every critical moment is accompanied by this inner urge. Do not accept the knot as the final limit. To find the way, with responsibility, with stability, with cost, to cross the street. This strength comes not from ambition, but from the need to remain true to a mission that transcends your face. To serve not what interests you, but what you consider right.
This book was born out of such a need. Not out of a need for personal justification. It was not written to sugarcoat decisions, embellish facts, or construct a narrative convenient for its author. The reader, moreover, will quickly realize that the book was written out of a sense of inner obligation: the need for testimony. To tell the events as I lived them, to capture the conditions, the conflicts, the dilemmas and the costs.
Because I have been certain for a long time that in History we do not have to present ourselves as vindicated, but we do have to speak. With responsibility, with purity and without fear. That’s what I tried to do with this book.
When I took over the leadership of a small Left party in 2008, at the age of just 34, many were talking about a “jump into the void”. I saw it differently: as a personal challenge, but also a necessary act, not only for me personally, but also for a generation of people who were looking for a voice, who felt that the formed political map did not fit it. I knew there was no safety net if I fell, neither political nor personal. But there was that mixture of faith, stubbornness and responsibility that pushes you to go forward even if everything around you tells you to stop.
When I took charge of the country in 2015, the reality was relentless. Many urged me to avoid responsibility, to shift it to others so that I could receive as ripe fruit a country completely exhausted. I didn’t panic. I assumed responsibility when Greece was at one of the most critical turning points in its modern history. The decisions that had to be made did not just have a political cost; they had a moral weight, a social extension, a historical dimension. I felt like I was carrying on my back the ghosts of yesterday’s unfair struggles, but also the hopes of an entire generation that dared to believe that things could change. It was not simply the responsibility of governance. It was the responsibility to a collective need for change and dignity.
In 2019, I wasn’t the same. Most importantly, Greece was no longer the same. The country did not resemble the Greece of paralysis and fear, that shadow of itself that dragged its steps in humiliation without end. She had regained her financial autonomy, she had healed, to a certain extent, her wounds, she had stood on her feet again. Not without losses, not without mistakes, but with your head held high. I had lived through experiences that shaped me deeply. I already knew, experientially, what it means to rule breathlessly and in melting conditions: to bear the weight and the attacks, to withstand the challenge, to protect what can be saved and to build what did not exist.
Politics, when practiced not as an inherited role but as an inner mission, has the power to transform you. It is not the management of everyday life but the art of overcoming it. The ability to expand the boundaries of the possible until what yesterday seemed impossible became reality. This policy is a raid on heaven. Politics wears you down, yes, but it gives you something precious. The rare opportunity to truly connect with your era. To leave behind an indelible stamp, a legacy that will transcend time and your face. To see your beautiful country standing tall and its people raised a little higher.
Much has been written about the dramatic events of that period. Journalists, analysts, political opponents, comrades and allies, foreign observers, all have given their own version of the Greek crisis that shocked not only our country, but also the whole of Europe. All but one: the man called upon to make the decisions.
So, it’s time for my voice to be heard. Time to tell the truth as I experienced it. My truth.
I am writing this book because I believe that politics is the field where the vision of a just world is tested against reality, thereby giving meaning to the limits and essence of a society’s struggles for a better tomorrow. Because I believe that this world can change for the better. No struggle is in vain, as conservative cynicism would have us believe. I try to capture this experience in this book.
I write to record the experience of a country and its people, which, in one of the darkest moments of its modern history, dared to claim dignity by breaking the rules, those rules that were imposed not to protect the weak, but to ensure the permanence of the power of the strong.
I am writing about a collective effort that did not hesitate to challenge an establishment that considered itself the permanent owner of this country. An establishment that had never imagined that its power could be ephemeral. I write because this collective effort, with all its mistakes, exaggerations, contradictions, dared to try to change the course of History.
At a time when politics had become the management of decline, we attempted to articulate a different narrative. We didn’t always succeed. Not all battles were won. But our every step was accompanied by the dream of a better, fairer world for the many, for the weakest. I write because I want to show that I may have made mistakes, but I never lacked courage, nor did I allow my country to be fatalistically pushed to the brink by the same people who would later point the finger at us as responsible for the disaster.
I am writing because I want to show that I put myself in the service of my country and also in the cause of social justice, seeking with all the fire of my soul, and with the last of my strength, a better fate for this tortured people.
My Ithaca is not just a narrative of the past, it is not the narrative of the present. It was not written, just to record the events, as a kind of account. It is, first of all, an attempt to understand the present: to see how we got here, through which route, which choices, which small or large victories, which defeats. And, at the same time, it captures my quest to talk about the future, not in terms of abstract wishful thinking, but to describe it in as much detail as possible and with the belief that history is not over.
This book is the testimony of a man who lived from the inside of governing in stormy times; who was called to negotiate with the powerful of Europe; who made critical, hard, controversial decisions, decisions that affected the lives of millions of our fellow citizens. But that’s not all.
This book is not just a record of experiences. It is also a proposal. It is the attempt to turn the knowledge gained in the fire of the crisis into a thought, into a plan, into a vision for the Greece of tomorrow. A Greece that will not walk in fear or resignation, but will dare to think, to claim, to change.
We often talk about tomorrow as something distant, abstract. Here, I want to see it another way: as a field of responsibility. To talk about tomorrow in terms of justice, with social content, with clear priorities. Which country do we want, which economy, which Rule of Law, which work, which education, which democracy? There are no neutral answers to these. There are only political options. And this book is, in its own way, such a choice.
I am also writing because I want to speak not only to those who have memories of the events of yesterday but also to young people, to those who did not experience all these difficult and exciting things that defined us. Young people who have no memories of the day Alexis Grigoropoulos, Pavlos Fyssas were murdered, who did not feel the tightening of the heart when it was announced that the country was entering the Memorandum in 2010. Today they are looking for their own paths, first of all with the anxiety to understand a world that changes radically day by day.
Today he is very different. Unfortunately not better. The knowledge of the real facts of our country’s modern history is a prerequisite for understanding the difficulties but also the possibilities that open before us. The foundation to build the races of tomorrow.
Because the effort for social change is not a theory, nor a utopia, but an act of daily small or bigger ruptures and promotional compromises. And governance is not the work of the “class enemy”, nor does it mean abandoning ideas, but fighting for their implementation amid the adversities of reality.
And radicalism is not a psychological state, nor a pose, but the understanding of the problems of the most vulnerable and weak and, above all, the effort to solve them.
Finally, I am writing this book because I feel that I have no right to leave History in the hands of those who think it belongs to them, just because today they are considered the winners. History is not a trophy, nor a field of property. It is our common ground, a place of memory, responsibility and truth. And if you don’t claim the truth, if you don’t give your own testimony, then you abandon not only yesterday but above all today and tomorrow without a fight. And this future of our country, but also of our collective struggles for a just society, I am not willing to give up, at least not without a fight.
The future takes a long time. And our country needs memory. Not as a museum relic, but as a living political tool. Memory of struggles, sacrifices, difficult decisions, victories and defeats. Memory of the moments we bent and those we stood up. Only with this knowledge can we build something better. Learning from mistakes, not to forget them, but not to repeat them. And inspired by the moments we dared to dream and claim.
Therefore, this book is an act of responsibility towards the past and a claim for the right to the future”.