THE BALKAN SETTLEMENT AND ITS EFFECT UPON BULGARIA AND ALBANIA
If the Paris Conference had in mind a durable peace, no problem ought
to have received more careful and judicial attention than that of the
Balkan settlement. Since the first revolts against Turkish rule in
Serbia and the War of Greek Independence, a hundred years of unsettled
political condition in southeastern Europe had passed. It had become
a truism that the conflicts among the powers began in the Balkans.
Serbia’s difficulties with Austria-Hungary had precipitated the World
War. But the causes of the war went back deep into the roots of Balkan
history, long before either Germany or Italy played leading rôles in
the councils of the great powers. What the Balkan peoples had sorely
needed, in their bloody struggle for freedom from the Ottoman yoke,
was non-interference of the great powers in their internal affairs and
their relations among themselves. But this they had never enjoyed.
Disinterested friendship was not shown to the Balkan peoples in their
fight for emancipation. They were encouraged to seek backing from
powerful European states, and then, when they had done this, they
provoked the enmity of the powers who were rivals of their actual or
supposed backers. In the game for political and economic influence in
the Balkans, the great powers were accustomed to use the little Balkan
peoples as pawns. Thus they were set against each other. When they
became independent states their boundaries were not fixed by mutual
compromises but by the great powers. Thus they were not allowed a
normal political evolution. It was hoped that the World War had taught
the powers a lesson, and that they would have become converted to the
idea of a “live and let live” policy for the Balkans, attainable only
by a “hands off” policy on the part of the great powers.
Experts in Balkan affairs knew that the three great problems of the
Balkans--Thrace, Macedonia, and Albania--had not been solved by the
Balkan wars and the Treaties of London and Bucharest. The Turks
were still in Thrace. Macedonia had not been equitably divided.
The frontiers of Albania had not been fixed. It was hoped that the
bitter experiences of the World War would demand of the peacemakers a
courageous and far-seeing solution of these problems.
But from the moment the armistice was signed the attitudes of
the powers toward Turkey became divergent; the sufferings of the
Armenians and Greeks were forgotten; and Italy was given a free hand
in Albania in the hope that she would not demand too much in Asia
Minor or anything at all in Africa at the expense of French and
British ambitions. As for Bulgaria, it was decided to impose upon her
a punitive peace, following the lines of the treaties imposed upon
Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians.
Eastern Thrace, to the Maritza River line, was all that had been left
of the Ottoman Empire in Europe after the two Balkan wars. Western
Thrace, with a stretch of sea-coast from the mouth of the Maritza west
for sixty miles, had remained Bulgarian by the Treaty of Bucharest. In
answer to President Wilson at the beginning of 1917, the Entente Powers
had declared their intention of driving the Turks definitely out of
Europe. Seemingly living up to this promise, the Big Four decided to
take Eastern Thrace away from Turkey. But at the same time they took
Western Thrace from Bulgaria, thus cutting her off from exit to the
sea. The Treaty of Neuilly provided that transit and port facilities be
granted Bulgaria. But this provision has not been executed.
The reason for separating Western Thrace from Bulgaria was the same as
for separating Eastern Thrace from Turkey, that the two nations had
joined the Central Empires in a war of aggression and were unworthy
to rule over these provinces. But, later, Eastern Thrace was given
back to Turkey. When the Bulgarians begged for the return of Western
Thrace, on the ground that it was their outlet to the sea, the plea
was rejected. It is clear, then, that the reasons invoked, punishment
for a war of aggression and unfitness to rule over minorities in the
ceded territories, were simply subterfuges. The rearrangement, like the
arrangement, was made in the interests of the Entente Powers, without
consideration for the wishes of the inhabitants or the economic needs
of Bulgaria.
All the world knows that Macedonia has been for more than forty years
the great bone of contention among Bulgarians, Serbians, and Greeks,
who have been pitted against one another in this region by the Turks
and the great powers alike. The Balkan alliance came to grief over the
question of the partition of Macedonia. The crying injustice of the
Treaty of Bucharest was what gave Germany her most powerful argument
to induce Bulgaria to join the Central Empires. The bribe offered
Bulgaria by Germany was the same as the bribe offered Italy and Rumania
by the Entente Powers, the emancipation of “unredeemed” provinces.
Because there had not been a fair partition of Macedonia in the Treaty
of Bucharest, Bulgaria joined the Central Empires, and was able to do
tremendous mischief to the cause of the Entente Powers. Germany had her
bridge through to the Ottoman Empire. She was enabled to go to the aid
of the Turks, attacked at Gallipoli. The war was probably prolonged by
two years because of the Macedonian question!
But the Treaty of Neuilly, far from providing a solution of the
Macedonian question, only made it worse by depriving Bulgaria of still
more territory inhabited by Bulgarians. The new line between Serbia
and Bulgaria was drawn still more to the advantage of Serbia than
in 1913; and Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, was brought nearer the
frontier, and placed at the mercy of armies advancing along the railway
lines from the northwest and the southwest. In vain did experts on
the Balkans bring to the attention of the Peace Conference the fact
that the frontiers of the Treaty of Neuilly would tend to increase
and not diminish causes for a new war in the Balkans. Bulgaria, cut
off from the Ægean Sea by the loss of Western Thrace, excluded still
more rigorously from Macedonia, and put in an indefensible military
position as regards her capital, would have economic, ethnographic,
and strategic reasons to take the first opportunity to get rid of the
inequalities imposed upon her and the discriminations against her
normal national development.
The Treaty of Neuilly presupposed, as did the other treaties of the
Paris settlement, the complete encirclement of the victim by neighbors
bound together by the common interest of keeping her permanently in
a position of inferiority. It did not take into account, moreover,
two possibilities: the intervention of Russia and the drifting apart
of Rumania, Serbia, and Greece. A patchwork peace, a peace based on
expediency, could ignore these possibilities. A durable peace would
have to take them into account. Already we have seen the Turks back
in Eastern Thrace, with a common frontier once more with Bulgaria.
We have seen Greece, strong in 1920, grievously weakened, internally
and internationally, in 1923. Greater Serbia and Greater Rumania are
not really friends. They still claim against each other the Banat of
Temesvár. Greater Serbia is not at the end of her difficulties with
Italy. Greater Rumania holds Bessarabia in defiance of Russia. If
Italians and Serbians, or Russians and Rumanians, come to blows, the
aid of Bulgaria would once more be solicited by great powers. If the
war between Greece and Turkey is renewed, Turkey, perhaps with Russia
behind her, will once more solicit the aid of Bulgaria in a war that
would be bound to spread to western Europe. Instead of saying that the
Bulgarians would be foolish to try for the third time to change their
luck in a war, is it not wiser and saner, in view of the mischief
Bulgaria could still accomplish, to insist upon a peace of justice, so
that Bulgaria could not again be tempted?
We cannot get rid of the latent power of any of our former enemies
simply by damning them, the Bulgarians least of all. Their progress
during the last half-century has been remarkable. They were the last of
the Balkan peoples to be allowed to establish a separate national life,
free from Turkish interference. Despite this handicap, Bulgaria has
developed more rapidly than her neighbors in literacy, communications,
cultivation of the land, and peasant ownership of farms. Out of
every hundred inhabitants thirteen children go regularly to school,
while Greece counts but six, Rumania five, and Serbia four. Among
European countries Bulgaria is second only to France in distribution
of the ownership of land. The World War did not seriously affect the
prosperity of the people, and the crushing defeat of their hope made
slight, if any, difference in their productive energy. Since the
war they have forged ahead fast; their Government has succeeded in
maintaining its stability against great odds; and in the spring of 1923
Bulgaria, first of all the vanquished, was able to make definite and
satisfactory reparations arrangements with the victors.
This is only partly due, however, to the innate sobriety and habits
of work of the Bulgarian people. They have enjoyed the advantage of
not having a large industrial population, herded together in cities,
and dependent for prosperity upon ability to compete on equal terms in
world markets. And no sooner was the ink dry on the Treaty of Neuilly
than the Entente Powers began once more secretly at Sofia to win a
favorite position, as they had done in the past. All wanted to do
business with the Bulgarians. Great Britain and France were anxious to
keep Sofia from a _rapprochement_ with Moscow. This meant everything to
Rumania, also. France thought Bulgaria might some day be useful against
Greece, and Italy needed a revived Bulgaria with which to threaten
Greece and Serbia.
If only Greece and Serbia can be properly “managed” by their supporters
of 1919, it is within the possibility of Entente diplomacy to expect
to see the Treaty of Neuilly modified, in its political as well as its
economic clauses, within the near future. Greece has already had that
experience in regard to Turkey. If the Entente Powers feel that it is
to their interest to do so, they will not hesitate to offer Bulgaria,
at the expense of Greece and Serbia, what they took away from her in
1919, to the profit of Greece and Serbia. There is already talk of
Rumania modifying her southern frontier in the Dobrudja in favor of
Bulgaria. An offer of this sort Rumania will certainly make if she is
threatened with invasion by Russia.
The dominant rôle in post-bellum Bulgaria has been played by Premier
Stambulisky, who owed his position to the confidence he won several
years ago and has maintained up to the Revolution in the Agrarian
party. His remarkable hold upon the Bulgarian peasantry was due to his
cleverness in saving this largest element in the country from feeling
the financial consequences of losing the war. He has deliberately
catered to the peasants, frankly basing his power upon their support
and as frankly shaping his attitude toward problems as they arose
by the desire to keep the favor of the peasants. In defiance of the
Nationalists, Stambulisky came to an agreement with the Reparations
Commission to give them powers over Bulgarian revenues in return for
low taxation of the peasants. This hastened his downfall.
A grave source of internal danger is the Macedonian League, which is
extremely active, and which cannot be controlled because the army is
far too small to patrol effectively the Serbian frontier. At least
three hundred thousand Macedonian refugees, among them people of
wealth and influence, are living in Bulgaria, and they form a third
of the population of the capital. From highest to lowest they work to
foment the Macedonian revolutionary movement, and this makes serious
trouble with the Serbian Government in its new territories, which can
be held only by martial law. Bands are formed in Bulgarian territory,
make raids, and then return to Bulgaria for refuge. This condition the
Bulgarian Government is powerless to remedy. The Treaty of Neuilly,
by proscribing conscription, makes it impossible for Bulgaria to
raise troops. King Boris told me in the summer of 1922 that of the
thirty-three thousand allowed by the treaty he had been able to get
only fifty-five hundred. I found on personal investigation that most of
the volunteers for the army came from the dregs of the population, men
who could make a living in no other way.
On April 22, 1923, Premier Stambulisky won a sweeping victory in the
General Election. Out of 246 seats in the Sobranje (Parliament) the
Peasant Party won 213. In the previous Parliament he had had only 110
followers. The 50 Communists of the 1920 Parliament dropped to 15.
The Bourgeois, united, carried only 12 seats, electing three former
premiers, Malinoff, Theodoroff, and Daneff, and two former ministers,
Madjarlow and Dankaloff, who were in prison charged with high treason
for having misled Bulgaria during the World War.
M. Stambulisky stood for the loyal execution of the peace treaty,
on the ground that Bulgaria’s real interests lie in economic and
international political rehabilitation, and not in more military
adventures. He did not conceal the hope that the establishment of
friendly relations with the Entente Powers and Serbia would lead to
a radical revision of the Treaty of Neuilly, especially in regard to
Western Thrace.
Bulgaria demonstrates the fact that a nation in defeat is not
necessarily “down and out.” The country is not going to smash, no
matter what burdens are laid upon the people and no matter how harsh
may be the fetters forged to keep Bulgaria behind her neighbors. Four
years after the war, Bulgaria had completed the deliveries of animals
exacted by the Treaty of Neuilly, and yet the country was entirely
under cultivation, with a surplus of cereal of more than a million tons
for export; and the export had begun again of hides, beef on the hoof,
and sheep. Above the reparations coal sent annually to Serbia, Bulgaria
was mining enough for her needs and exporting a surplus. With the
country in this condition, Bolshevism could be discounted.
This hope was disappointed. At the end of May it was announced at
Lausanne that Venizelos had come to an agreement with Ismet Pasha
which involved the cession to Turkey of a strip on the left bank of
the Maritza around Karagatch, so that Turkey would have control of the
railway station of Adrianople and be better able to protect that city.
From the Greek point of view this was a diplomatic triumph. It was
the slight price paid for Turkey’s renunciation of a war indemnity.
But it made more hopeless than ever the fulfilment of the promise to
Bulgaria in the Treaty of Neuilly, that she should be guaranteed a
free exit to the Ægean Sea. It pointed also to the great moral of the
World War, that if one possessed the force one could do in this world
what one pleased. The Turks resisted the Treaty of Sèvres. Immediately
the Entente Powers released them from all the inconveniences and
disadvantages of having been on the losing side in the war. Why, then,
should Bulgaria tamely submit to do the bidding of the Entente Powers,
especially when being good meant being still further penalized?
Added to the unpopularity of Stambulisky’s foreign policy of abject
surrender--so different from the example given by Mustafa Kemal
Pasha in similar circumstances--was his domestic policy of running
Bulgaria solely in the economic interest of the agrarian population.
A few days after the news of Turkey’s crowning Thracian success at
Lausanne reached Bulgaria, the bourgeois of Sofia, supported by former
army officers and the Macedonian party, overthrew the Stambulisky
Government. Stambulisky was pursued and killed. Professor Zankoff,
of the University of Sofia, formed a revolutionary government, and
Bulgaria entered upon a new Nationalist era which is bound to result
eventually in a radical modification of the Treaty of Neuilly.
As part of the price of Italian intervention, the Entente Powers agreed
to give Italy the foothold in the Balkans she had so long coveted,
offering her full sovereignty over Valona, the island of Sasseno, “and
surrounding territory of sufficient extent to assure defense of these
points.” Italy, on her side, consented to the eventual division of
northern and southern Albania between Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece.
But the Albanians proved themselves able to vindicate by arms their
right to survive as an independent country. The treatment of Albania is
an example of the cynicism of the protestation of “the rights of small
nations” as a war aim of the Entente Powers, and an illustration of the
necessity for every people to rely ultimately upon its own strength to
vindicate its rights.
Throughout the World War Albania was a battle-field of the opposing
groups. After the downfall of Serbia, in the autumn of 1915, the
Austro-Hungarians occupied northern and central Albania. In November,
1916, the Italians landed at Valona. The Greeks had already occupied
Epirus, but were succeeded by the Italians and French. On June 3,
1917, Italy proclaimed the independence of all Albania under Italian
protection, and formed a cabinet of marionettes, which sent a
delegation, under Italian guidance, to the Peace Conference. In the
meantime the French tried to checkmate the Italian scheme, while the
Serbians, when the Austrians finally retreated, seized Mount Tarabosh,
dominating Scutari.
At Paris an effort was made to adjust the rival claims of Italy,
Serbia, and Greece; and no attention was paid to the claim of the
Albanians that they were a nation, very much alive, and not disposed to
be partitioned. Were the victorious powers going to resurrect Poland,
on the ground that her partition had been a horrible crime, and then
go ahead and do the same thing themselves? This pointed question
was answered on January 14, 1920, when Great Britain, France, and
Italy decreed anew the complete partition of Albania among Italians,
Serbians, and Greeks. President Wilson sent a formal note to the three
Governments, declaring the opposition of the United States to any
such scheme. The Entente statesmen explained that they did not mean
to do what they had announced, and then went on with their plans. The
Albanians protested without avail to the League of Nations. Then they
decided to fight. In June, 1920, began a five weeks’ struggle with
Italy. The Italians were defeated everywhere and were literally driven
into the sea, being compelled to evacuate even Valona. The Serbs, who
had advanced on Tirana, were driven back to the lowlands.
These successes decided the fate of Albania. Italy signed an agreement
on August 2, 1920, recognizing Albania’s independence, and promising
to withdraw what troops she had left in the north. Albania was invited
to join the League of Nations, and was formally admitted in January,
1921. Because she retained arms in hand while negotiating with Serbia,
Albania was able to secure, through the League of Nations, a compromise
frontier.
One Balkan state, however, was not able to escape the fate of
suppression of its nationhood, as Albania had done. Montenegro
was refused a seat at the Peace Conference, and has been forcibly
incorporated into Greater Serbia.