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Leonidas Kirkos had understood that they were in the same political area with Andreas Papandreou and tried to convince him that it was necessary to establish a permanent and stable connection. Soon, however, he found out that their relationships were more formal than substantial. "I cannot say that we had any influence upon him. He made plans without including us in them. It was clear that we needed his support but he wanted to control us."

Leonidas Kirkos was the only one who felt the danger of imposing a military dictatorship in 1967 and wrote for this purpose that it was necessary to form a broad front against the junta. In an interview, he said that Moscow had no idea of what was going on in Greece. On the contrary, Andreas Papandreou received information from the U.S. Embassy in Athens and he was hiding, doing nothing to prevent the imposition of dictatorship.

One of the first captured on the evening of 21 April 1967 was Leonidas Kirkos, who spent in prison five of the seven years of dictatorship. This was also the period of tense relations within the Communist Party, which had been illegal since the Civil War and therefore, its headquarters were in Bucharest. Its members, who were in Greece, began to openly express their disagreement with the orders coming from abroad. "The split started with the important issue of where the centre issuing the directives was - in Greece or abroad. And who was running things: EDA, which had full control in the country or the people, who were abroad and obviously had no idea what was happening in Greece, as they learned about things only from newspapers and with significant delay." The plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece met in Budapest in February 1968. Some members who were in Greece had not been invited to the meeting. Furthermore, some old members disaffiliated and formed an internal Communist Party of Greece. At that time, Kirkos was in prison and was shocked. Then, he tried to interfere to make reorganization for fear of splitting and its impact in the fight against the military junta.

The students’ movement, reaching its height with the entry of tanks into the Athens Polytechnic School, caught the left unawares. "We were all against the anarchist appeals that had appeared there and tried to inform the participants that they could not deliver results. The issue was to remove the junta, not the crap like "down with capitalism" or "down with the state", which anarchists were blaring forth at the Polytechnic School. Ultimately, this policy prevailed."

After the fall of the dictatorship in Greece, Konstantinos Karamanlis returned and took over the country, launching a new era in Greek history. According to Leonidas Kirkos, this happened "in the absence of the people" because in meeting Karamanlis, there was no one to say anything different.

In the elections in November 1974, the Communist Party became legal for the first time since the Civil War. It was also the first time after the split, when the two Communist parties joined forces and participated in the elections together. At that time, the leader of the Communist Party was Harilaos Florakis and Leonidas Kirkos was one of the leading members of the internal Communist Party of Greece. New Democracy of Constantinos Karamanlis won the elections in a landslide. In the next elections in 1977, the differences were so great that the two communist parties participated separately again. In 1981, the situation in the left changed again after Andreas Papandreou had won the elections, "borrowing" many of its slogans and much of its electorate. "Andreas Papandreou supported the Communist Party and did not support us. I would say that he was afraid of our ability to influence the masses with our policy whereas he wanted to have complete control over them."

In the 1985 elections, only one deputy from Kirkos’party was elected. Then, he decided it was time for a change. He decided to remove the word "Communist" from the name of the party, hoping to form a broad left political force. The rest, however, disagreed and during a Congress in 1986, the internal Communist Party of Greece had also split.

In April 1987, Leonidas Kirkos founded the Greek Left. As its leader, he was trying to reduce the polarization between the two major parties. For that purpose, he invited their leaders to one of the congresses of the party. Konstantinos Mitsotakis responded to the invitation, but socialist Andreas Papandreou did not accept it. Leonidas Kirkos would make more attempts to reach consensus, but they were all doomed to failure. He said in the interview that during one of their meetings, President Konstantinos Karamanlis told him that his position would not prevail because he was "at the wrong time, in the wrong place and with the wrong party."

Shortly before the elections in 1989, Leonidas Kirkos and the chairman of the Communist Party Harilaos Florakis, had decided after years of political antagonism to take a big step and join forces in a new party - the Coalition of the Left and Progress. The winner of the elections was New Democracy, but it did not have the majority to form a separate cabinet. Therefore, Konstantinos Mitsotakis, Harilaos Florakis and Leonidas Kirkos decided to form a coalition government with Prime Minister Tzanis Tzanetakis. It had the sole task of organizing the next elections held in November of that year. The three politicians met in the house of Constantine Mitsotakis and this meeting has remained in history. "Nothing special happened there. We were told the conditions of cooperation. We stated that we should write programming statements, and they would ensure their implementation. Indeed, I wrote the text and Tzanis Tzanetakis did not correct anything in it."