User:Sarah fides/Second Hellenic Republic

The Second Hellenic Republic is a modern term used to refer to the Greek state during a period of republican governance between 1924 and 1935. To its contemporaries it was known as the Hellenic Republic (Ἑλληνικὴ Δημοκρατία, ). It was a small country in the Balkans comprising the approximate territory of what is modern-day Greece (with the exception of the Dodecanese) and bordered with Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Italian Aegean Islands.

The Republic was proclaimed by the country's parliament on 25 March 1924. A relatively small country with a population of 6.2 million in 1928, it covered a total area of 130,199 km², almost all of modern-day Greece. Over its eleven-year history, the Second Republic saw some of the most important historical events in |modern Greek history emerge; from Greece's first military dictatorship, to the an unprecedented (for Greek standards at the time) short-lived democratic form of governance, the normalisation of Greco-Turkish relations which lasted until the 1950s, and to the first real efforts to industrialise the nation with considerable progress made.

It was abolised on 10 October 1935, and its abolition was confirmed by referendum on 3 November of the same year which is widely accepted as having been rigged. The fall of the Second Republic eventually paved the way for Greece to become a totalitarian single-party state, the 4th of August Regime of Ioannis Metaxas, which lasted from 1936 until the Axis occupation of Greece in 1941.

Name
When the Republic was proclaimed on 25 March 1924, the official name adopted for the country was Hellenic State (Ἑλληνικὴ Πολιτεία). However, the name was changed to Hellenic Republic (Ἑλληνικὴ Δημοκρατία) on 24 May 1924 by vote of the Parliament. Accordingly, the title of the country's head of state was changed from Governor (Κυβερνήτης) to President of the Republic (Πρόεδρος της Δημοκρατίας).

National Schism and the republican question


The collapse of the Hellenic Army in Asia Minor was quickly followed by the collapse of the government. Public outrage at the Asia Minor disaster, as Greece's defeat in the war became known, was partially reflected in the military coup which followed it. The coup, orchestrated by army officers, took the name The Revolution. Although The Revolution itself did not abolish the monarchy, one of its first acts was to shut down all the royalist newspapers as well as use the Armed Forces to prosecute known royalists (including Ioannis Metaxas, who was forced to flee abroad). The decision whether or not to abolish the monarchy is one which divided Greek society, as even some Liberal Party supporters, including the Party's founder, Eleftherios Venizelos, spoke out in favour of retaining the monarchy as a safety net against instability.

First years


The Republic was proclaimed on 25 March 1924 by the Parliament; the chosen date was very significant as the Greek War of Independence is traditionally celebrated on 25 March. Following the proclamation of the change in form of government from constitutional monarchy (βασιλευομένη δημοκρατία, literally crowned democracy) to republic (αβασίλευτη δημοκρατία, literally uncrowned democracy), a referendum was held proclaimed for 13 April 1924. Voters were asked whether they "approve of the decision of the National Assembly that Greece be reorganised into a Republic on the parliamentary model". Voting was to be secret, although the requirement that "yes" votes be cast with white ballots and "no" votes with yellow ones defeated the purpose of secrecy.

The results of the referendum were a clear victory for the Republican campaign: 69.9% in favour of a republic and 30.1% in favour of the monarchy; these results were almost identical to the results of the 1974 referendum (69.2% in favour, 30.8% against) which finally abolished the monarchy. Newspapers from a wide range of the political spectrum noted a lack of violence, implying a lack of electoral intimidation in favour of one side or another. The newspaper Forward wrote that the vote was "historic for the order which prevailed during the voting time", Skrip commented that people refrained from "any action which could be seen as a provocation" and that "the military measures [taken] made this easier", while the Communist Party's Rizospastis commented on the "relative calm" that prevailed in the electoral district of Athens. Makedonia added that so many people disregarded the yellow "no" ballots, that the floors inside the electoral centers and the streets around were littered with them. Meanwhile, the decree of 1924 "on the safeguard of the of the republican regime" introduced the jail sentence for a minimum of six months for advocating in public the return of the monarchy, disputing the results of the referendum or publishing slander against the founders of the republic. In an interview following the referendum, then-Prime Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou defended government plans to pass such a decree, saying that the government must be allowed to move forward with its reforms without any sort of hindrance for a limited amount of time.



The fragile nature of the young Greek republic became evident from the first year of its existence. While the Parliament was still debating the new constitution (see bellow), General Theodoros Pangalos organised a coup. When asked by the Minister of the Military whether he was planning to overthrow the government, Pangalos replied "of course I will carry out a coup". His plot was set to motion on 24 June 1925, and soon prevailed throughout the country with little or no resistance from government forces.



Following his coup, Pangalos was sworn in as Prime Minister by the acting Governor of Greece (Pavlos Kountouriotis) and demanded that the Parliament give him a vote of confidence. Surprisingly, he received the vote of confidence with 185 of the 208 Members of Parliament present voting in favour, including Alexandros Papanastasiou (the Prime Minister before Pangalos' coup) and Georgios Kondylis.

Meanwhile, relations between Bulgaria and Greece were cold, and this escalated into a full-blown conflict by October 1925. A clash along the Greco-Bulgarian border on 18 October lead to the Pangalos dictatorship ordering the III Army Corps to invade Bulgaria. Bulgaria, being unable to defend itself sufficiently, and with the Greek army on the outskirts of Petrich, turned to the League of Nations. Eventually, the League of Nations condemned the Greek invasion and ordered Greece to pay £47,000 to Bulgaria as compensation. Greece complied with the ruling and withdraw from Bulgaria, but not before 50 people had lost their lives in the short conflict. Further, Greece protested at the double standards that existed for dealing with such incidents, ones for small countries and ones for Great Powers like Italy, which occupied Corfu in the Corfu Incident just two years prior.

Law and order
The Constitution of 1927 is considered a progressive one for its time. Written to replace the Constitution of 1926, which was never implemented, it was passed in the parliament on 3 June 1927. The most profound change brought upon the country by the passing of the new constitution was the overthrow of the monarchy on a de jure level (the monarchy had been de facto abolished in the referendum of 1924). Article 2 established a republic (the word used in the constitution is "Δημοκρατία", which can mean both democracy and republic).

Various other civil and political rights were established in the Constitution. Article 6 established complete equality of Greek citizens before the law and abolished titles of nobility. Article 7 guaranteed the "absolute protection of the life and freedom" of all persons in Greece regardless of nationality, religion or language. Article 8 forbade the creation of ex post facto laws. Article 10 established personal freedom as "absolutely inviolable". Article 11 forbade arrest without a warrant. Articles 13 and 14 established freedom of assembly and freedom of association respectively. Article 15 established the sanctity of a person's house and forbade entry or search within a person's house without a warrant. Article 16 established freedom of the press. Article 17 forbade torture and public execution, and forbade executions for civil or political crimes. Article 18 established the privacy of letters, telegrams and telephone conversations as "absolutely inviolable". Article 19 established the right to property. Further, Articles 21 and 22 established artistic, academic and educational freedom and the right to intellectual property respectively. Finally, Article 25 established the right to petition.

Overall, the constitution included 127 articles which outlined the various organs of the state and how these functioned. Article 125 forbade the amendment of the constitution for the first 5 years of its implementation, and further forbade the amendment of the "fundamental" articles of the constitution thereafter. Article 127 made the Greek nation responsible for the implementation of the constitution. In effect, this gave "the Nation" supremacy over the country's politicians and/or parliament with regards to constitutionality and gave "the Nation" power to overturn laws deemed unconstitutional.

Parliament


The constitution of 1927 established a bicameral legislature. The two houses were the Vouli (Βουλή, ) and the Senate (Γερουσία, ). Further, the constitution outlines the duties of the two houses and the number of parliamentarians. The lower house was to be made up of between 200 and 250 members elected in their constituency for four-year terms. The Senate had a more complex composition; Article 58 states that it is made up of 120 senators of which 92 were directly or indirectly elected by the people, 10 were elected by a joint session of the Vouli and the Senate and 18 were elected by 8 unions representing various vocations including merchants (1), industrialists (3), workers (5) and academics (1). Of the 92 senators directly or indirectly elected by the people, 90 were allocated to parliamentary constituencies of varying size for direct election and two were given to ethnic minorities for election through an electoral college: 1 for the Turks of Western Thrace and 1 for the Jews of Thessaloniki. Each senator served a nine-year term, while the composition of the Senate was renewed by 1/3 every three years. The salaries of members of parliament in both houses were the same.

Between 1924 and 1935, a total of six elections took place. The politics of the Second Republic were dominated by the republican Liberal Party, under the leadership of Eleftherios Venizelos, and the moderately conservative-monarchist People's Party under Panagis Tsaldaris. The table below illustrates the performance of the two major political parties in the parliamentary and senate elections that took place under the Second Republic.

Foreign relations
The Republic's foreign policy was largely shaped by the Premiership of Eleftherios Venizelos. Before his re-ascention to power in the 1928 legislative elections, Greece was faced with significant obstacles in its foreign policy: growing claims by Yugoslavia on Thessaloniki, bad relations with Bulgaria and Turkey, while relations with the Great Powers were at their lowest point since Greece was established in 1832. In co-operation with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as well as İsmet İnönü's government, a series of treaties were signed between Greece and Turkey in 1930 which, in effect, restored Greek-Turkish relations and established a de facto alliance between the two countries. As part of these treaties, Greece and Turkey agreed that the Treaty of Lausanne would be the final settlement of their respective borders, while they also pledged that they would not join opposing military or economic alliances and to stop immediately their naval arms race. The good relations established by the Republic would last until the 1950s.

In 1934, the government of Panagis Tsaldaris signed, in Athens, the Balkan Pact (or Balkan Entente), a military alliance between Greece, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia, which further improved the Republic's relations with its Balkan neighbours, although the exclusion of Bulgaria and Albania left some matters unsettled. Eventually, however, Great Power politics derailed the Pact, which never brought the desired results.

Apart from an interest in regional stability and friendship, the Second Republic, through Venizelos, supported early initiatives for the creation of a European Union. In October 1929, as Prime Minister, Venizelos gave a speech outlining his government's support for Aristide Briand's efforts on the matter, saying that "the United States of Europe will represent, even without Russia, a power strong enough to advance, up to a satisfactory point, the prosperity of the other continents as well".

Economy


According to renowned British economic historian Angus Maddison, Greece's GDP in 1924 stood at $12.34 billion (in 1990 value). Economic growth between 1924 and 1935 stood at an average of 3%. Broken down, between 1924 and 1929 growth stood at 2%, during the Great Depression at –3%, and between 1932 and 1935 at an average of 5%.

In terms of GDP per capita, Greece lagged behind the western European average. In 1924 Greece's figure stood at $1,988 or only 56.5% of the Western average ($3,517). At the fall of the republic the figures were not much changed, with Greece's per capita being $2,480 or 57.1% of the Western average. However, Greece had the highest GDP per capita in the Balkans and the Near East.

When the Republic was established, more than two thirds of the country's wheat requirement had to be imported from abroad; by the fall of the Republic this had reverted and Greece was practically self-sustaining in terms of wheat thanks to tariffs established by the government and incentives given for the cultivation of wheat.

Bank reforms and industrialisation
In the early years of the Republic, the government of Alexandros Zaimis took a loan from British banks that totalled £9 million intended for land reclamation and improvement (primarily in the northern regions). The conditions for this loan, however, stipulated that Greece had to stabilise its currency (the Greek drachma) by adopting the gold standard and by establishing a central bank to oversee economic policy. In May 1928 the Bank of Greece was established, revoking the National Bank of Greece's rights to print currency much to the dissatisfaction of the NBG. A similar dispute erupted again in 1929, when the Greek government decided to establish the Agricultural Bank of Greece and revoke the NBG's rights to give out agricultural loans.

The reforms brought about by the government changed the face of the Greek banking sector, and although the Agricultural Bank sustained the Greek rural economy through two years of hardship between 1931 and 1932 by issuing loans totalling ₯1.3 billion, the National Bank of Greece dominated the industrial and manufacturing sectors.

One of the main electoral promises made by Venizelos during his campaign for the Premiership in 1928 was to change the face of Greece in four years by funding large-scale infrastructure projects aimed at increasing production. This was largely achieved by his government, and between 1929 and 1938 Greece had industrial growth rates that averaged between 5.11% and 5.73%, ranking the country third in the world behind Japan and the Soviet Union. Between 1923 and 1932 the Greek government borrowed ₯950 million which was channelled to infrustructural projects, while another ₯600 million was lent to private enterprises.

Greece during the Great Depression
In 1928 the Venizelos government had a number of economic concerns to worry about, however the government budget and general economic situation gave some hope. Between 1928 and 1931 three consecutive budgets had shown a surplus, unemployment was kept at a safe level and the national debt was reduced by 11%. On 21 September 1931 however the United Kingdom abandoned the gold standard and the crisis hit Greece. By 27 September 1931 the ran on the banks had caused the Bank of Greece to lose $3.6 million of its foreign reserves (~$55.6 million in 2012 value).

The following couple of years were grim for the Greek economy as it entered recession along with the rest of the global economy. In early 1932 Venizelos asked the League of Nations for a loan of $50 million (~$770 million in 2012 value) in order to help the Greek economy, but the loan was denied. Faced with insolvency, Greece abandoned the gold standard and defaulted on its debts on 25 April 1932. The Greek drachma was devalued by 62% against the dollar, foreign trade contracted by 61.5% compared to 1929 and tobacco production was reduced by 81.0%. However, the Venizelos government's policies secured a steady flow of credit for the Bank of Greece and thus averted a collapse of the banking system, which had occured in most other European countries as well as the United States.

Currency and circulation


Under the Second Republic, the Greek drachma (sign: ₯, Δρ or Δρχ) continued to exist as the national currency. As part of the government's efforts to reform the banking system (see above), the Bank of Greece was established in 1928. Following this move, Greece's largest commercial bank, the National Bank of Greece, could no longer print currency. In addition, Greece joined the gold standard on 14 May 1928 and the Drachma was de facto stabilised at an exchange rate of £1 to ₯375 ±₯2.5. This put an end to the spiralling devaluation of the Drachma, whose exchange rate to the Pound had dropped from ₯25 per £1 in 1919 to ₯309/£1 in 1924 and back down to ₯247/£1 in 1927.

When Britain abandoned the Gold Standard on 21 September 1931, Greece did not follow suit. Instead, the Drachma remained in the Gold Standard but switched pegging from the Pound to the US dollar. Despite this move, the Drachma had already been under pressure and the convertibility was suspended in April 1932, when the Drachma was devalued and Greece left the Gold Standard. For the rest of the Second Republic, Greece showed interest in joining the Gold bloc.

Transport and infrastructure
Air transport was still in its infancy, but nevertheless there were 2 domestic air routes and 16 international routes. Because of its geographic location, it acted as a stopover for European airlines on the way to the East and Africa. The foreign airlines which operated in Greece in 1933/1934 were Aero Espresso Italiana, Aeroput, Air Orient (Air France), CIDNA (Air France), Deutsche Luft Hansa, Imperial Airways, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, and the Società Aerea Mediterranea, along with the Greek Company for Air Transportation (EEES).There were no airports in the modern sense, but rather airfields.

Demographics
The total number of people in Greece numbered 6,204,684 people according to the census of 1928. This was an increase from the census of 1920 (5,536,000 people) despite the fact that Greece lost territories with an area of approximately 20,000 square kilometers with a population of over half a million people in the Treaty of Lausanne. Additionally, the census of the same year indicates that 1.2 million people (19% of the population of the country) registered as refugees. The census revealed that there were 3.13 million women and 3.08 million men in the country.

Urban life increased following the exchange of population. In 1920 26% of people lived in urban centers and 74% in rural areas. In 1928 the figures had changed to 33% and 67% respectively, primarily due to the influx of refugees. Due to immigration, some cities saw tremendous growth between the censuses of 1920 and 1928, including Kavala (118%), Piraeus (85%) and Athens (54%). The country's principal urban centers in 1928 were:



Ethnic groups
Like present-day Greece, the second Republic was a relatively homogenous country, with almost 94% of the population being ethnically Greek according to the census of 1928. The census of 1928 showed that the percentage of Greeks in the country rose from 80.53% in the census of 1920 to 93.75% in the census of 1928. In the meantime the populations of the Turkish and Bulgarian communities dropped from 13.90% and 2.51% to 1.66% and 1.32%. This was because of the exchange of populations that took place in 1923 between Greece and Turkey and Bulgaria.

During the years of the Republic, no significant minorities existed in the country. The largest, the Turkish minority, was the only officially recognised minority in the country and numbered approximately 103,000 people or 1.66% of the population of the country. Other ethnic groups with over 1.00% of the population were the Bulgars (1.33%) and the Jews of Salonica (1.13%). Foreign citizens accounted for an additional 1.18% of the population, while Armenians and Albanians for 0.56% and 0.40% respectively.

Statistical Yearbooks used as primary sources
The following Statistical Yearbooks were used as primary sources in this article, to compile information for the years 1924-1935. Of these, the yearbooks of 1930, 1931 and 1934 were published under the Second Republic while the yearbook of 1936 was published after the restoration of the monarchy.
 * Statistical Yearbook 1930
 * Statistical Yearbook 1931
 * Statistical Yearbook 1934
 * Statistical Yearbook 1936