Word: balkanization
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...back door of Greece opens on the mountainous Balkan hinterland, its front door on the Mediterranean. By the sea, greatness as well as grief have come to Greece. Three weeks ago from the sea, from Greece's greatest island. Crete, came Revolution, led by that greatest of modern Greeks, sly, old Eleutherios Venizelos, against the "Balkan policy" and the monarchist intrigues of Premier Panayoti Tsaldaris...
...emerged as Premier. After reorganizing the Army and Navy, he sized up Greek military pretensions as a hollow bluff, saw that Greece's future depended on the good will of the Powers, proceeded to play the future that way. He broke with previous Greek policy by joining the Balkan League of Bulgaria and Serbia and ganging on Turkey in the first Balkan War. This time Greece won. In the squabble over the spoils, alert Venizelos formed another alliance with Serbia and ganged on Bulgaria. Spoils: most of Macedonia and the Aegean Islands, the most productive lands in the realm...
...economic situation (tobacco, wine, textiles, leather goods) but it was still "the poorest nation in Europe.'' Partial cause of this was the unprecedented importation of 1,400,000 indigent Greeks from Turkey and Bulgaria in exchange for deported Turks and Bulgars. Without Venizelos, Greece entered a typical Balkan shambles of dictatorships and coups d'état, with the royalists always gaining. The old split between the Balkan interests of the repopulated peninsula and the world-trading Mediterranean interests of the islands began to widen, complicated by the unreconciled Macedonians of the north. Finally, in 1928, Venizelos cashed...
Some onlookers are inclined to dismiss the current Greek revolt as merely another Balkan flare that will soon fizzle out. This eruption, however, involves every fighting Greek male, and has already provided "room for future generations" by killing and wounding several thousands. The rebellion, moreover, aside from its being the most serious in recent years, has international complications that are unpleasant to behold...
...BALKAN PACT (Feb. 9, 1934) signed at Athens by Foreign Ministers Maximos, Tewfik, Titulescu and Jeftitch of Greece, Turkey, Rumania and Yugoslavia pledges all signatories to defend the frontiers of each. Attached was a secret protocol, since divulged, extending the Pact to guarantee all Balkan frontiers against aggression by any Balkan State, and to punish any Balkan State which may join any State whatsoever which attacks a Balkan State. Unless they turn out to be scraps of paper, the Balkan Pact and protocols mean cast iron peace in Europe's inflammatory cockpit...