ABSTRACT

Greece was the only Balkan country to have entered the 1930s without a king but with a prewar political leader still at the head of government. Venizelos was the last of the great figures that had dominated Balkan parliamentary politics and government for decades. Venizelos's great achievement in foreign policy was reconciliation with Turkey. Although Stamboliiski, prime minister of Bulgaria, backed the Balkan Conferences, his preference was for bilateral arrangements. Romania's elections of 1937 were the swan song of parliamentary government in the Balkans. To protect the frontiers obtained at the peace settlement, all Romanian governments had championed collective security. Having followed the French example of establishing diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1934, Bessarabia notwithstanding, Romania even planned a mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union. Albania's newly created monarchy in September 1928, its constitutional niceties notwithstanding, was a framework for Zog's dictatorship, established three months before that of King Alexander in Yugoslavia.