Appointed as a clerk in the Ministry of the Interior, he was called up for military service in the mobilization of 1915, being sent to Drama, where he was cut off following the occupation of the area by the Bulgarian army in 1916.
Along with Pantelis Pouliopoulos and Giorgos Nikolis, he was an active propagandist among the troops of SEKE's uncompromising opposition to the Asia Minor Campaign.
In September 1925 Stavridis was elected as provisional Secretary of the Central Committee, replacing Pouliopoulos, who had been arrested by the dictatorial regime of Theodoros Pangalos.
Stavridis was to prove the accusations of "pro-bourgeois deviation" right by immediately joining Georgios Kafantaris' Progressive Party, and by his rapid turn to ardent anti-communism; indeed, this volte-face cause him to be publicly beat up in Kavala, where he had been elected MP.
[3] Stavridis later collaborated with the dictatorial 4th of August Regime of Ioannis Metaxas, and during the Axis occupation of Greece served as director of the Akropolis newspaper.
In the virulently anti-communist climate of the post-Civil War years, Stavridis soon became a major government-sponsored propagandist against the banned KKE and communism in general.
[1] During this time he participated in the establishment of a clandestine anti-communist committee, which was funded by the government and aimed at combating the United Democratic Left, the KKE's legal front which in the 1958 elections had come second and formed the main opposition party.