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September 2023 - September 2024
Argyrios Tasoulas is a historian of the Cold War and Russian foreign policy. His research explores the strategy, tactical approaches, and activities of the USSR and Russia in the Eastern Mediterranean. He received his MA in Modern and Contemporary Greek and European History from the University of Ioannina (2017), and his Ph.D. in History from Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in Moscow (2021). His dissertation ‘The Cyprus issue in the foreign policy of the USSR, 1953-1974’ (in Russian), utilising recently declassified Soviet and Greek archival material examines the main hallmarks of the USSR’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the Cyprus issue under the prism of its international behaviour during the Cold War. Argyrios has been awarded grants and fellowships from esteemed institutions and think tanks, including the Institute of International Relations (IDIS) in Athens, the University of East London, and the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels. His research has been published in English, Greek, and Russian in peer-reviewed journals, such as Voprosy Istorii and Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.
The project ‘The USSR, Greece and the Cyprus Issue, 1953-1983’ aims to provide insights about a network of activities and information that illuminate the role of Soviet intelligence in Greece and Cyprus. Despite extensive historical treatments of the Western states’ policies in the Cyprus problem, the role of the other major party of the Cold War has been a terra incognita of International history. However, Soviet tactics, not only during the Cypriot struggle for self-determination in the mid-1950s but also during the major Cyprus crises of 1964, 1967, and 1974, proved to be more sophisticated and effective, resulting in the exertion of its political influence in the region. Based on a corpus of unpublished recently declassified diplomatic and intelligence sources in Russian and Greek this research investigates the Kremlin’s perceptions of this multifaceted conflict.