ABSTRACT
The Depression had brought postwar recovery to an end. Yugoslavia argued that the Athens pact had crowned the work of the conferences; Bulgaria and Albania maintained that it had brought it to an end. In October, after the Munich Agreements, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria moved yet closer. The Depression had pushed Bulgaria further towards Germany than was the case with other Balkan countries. Although Bulgaria was at the forefront of Balkan efforts to modernize agriculture through technical improvements and diversification away from cereals, it remained backward. In January, Yugoslavia had signed a one-clause bilateral Treaty of Eternal Friendship with Bulgaria which went against the letter and the spirit of the Balkan Entente. The government did its best to alleviate the debt problem after the Depression, but it was not until the advent of Zveno that measures were adopted to reduce the principal owed, with lowered interest rates.
