On 24 August 1925, Pouliopoulos, along with 23 others, was put on trial in Athens on charges of promoting the autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace.

Later that year, they were formally expelled from the party after publishing and circulating the pamphlet New Beginning (Greek: Neo Ksekinima).

They refused to join the Archeiomarxists group which split from the KKE, regarding it as having a sectarian attitude towards the party.

However, he took the initiative in the move to unite the Greek Trotskyists in 1938 to form the Unified Organisation of Communist Internationalists of Greece (EOKDE).

In 1943, along with over a hundred other militants, he was executed by the Italian occupation forces in Nezero, near Larissa, in retaliation for the destruction by partisans of the Kournovo tunnel.

There is a postwar claim that he spoke in Italian to the firing squad, exhorting them not to commit such a crime against the anti-fascist resistance and opponents of the war.