History of the Greek Interwar Period

This course deals with the Greek interwar period (1922-1940). The Greek interwar crisis, a combined effect of the Asian Minor Disaster and of the Depression –notwithstanding the fast economic recovery, acutely posed two intertwined themes: those of national both reconstruction and new cultural orientation. The Greek interwar period is defined by the (terror of the) ideological void after the bankruptcy of the irredentist ideal of Megali Idea and the arrival of almost 1,500,000 refugee population after the military defeat in Asia Minor and their expulsion from Turkey. It was a period of economic development and political and social disturbance. The deterioration of social conditions following the Depression in spite of the fast economic recovery led to the sharpening of the social conflicts and to an acute ideological crisis. The intense quest for authoritarian political solutions from the major part of the political and ideological spectrum finally led to the collapse of parliamentarism at the mid-thirties. In this perspective, Greek interwar society can be described as “a stressed society”, as Roger Griffin characterizes Weimar Germany and other Europeanized societies of the period; a society which faced a “profound disquietude” in Karl Mannheim’s terms. The course gives emphasis on the relations between the social, political and economic domains, on the study of the so-called National Schism and its consequences, on the institutions which were established during this period, and also on how the contemporaries conceived of the notions of “nation”, “crisis”, and the “proper” form of the polity.