page_title: Second Hellenic Republic
section_title: National Schism and the republican question
hierarchical_section_title: Second Hellenic Republic / History / National Schism and the republican question
caption_attribution_description: Proclamation of the Second Hellenic Republic in Greece. Crowds holding placards depicting Prime Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou and the Republican military leaders, Admiral Alexandros Hatzikyriakos and Colonel Georgios Kondylis.
context_page_description: The Second Hellenic Republic is a modern historiographical term used to refer to the Greek state during a period of republican governance between 1924 and 1935. To its contemporaries it was known officially as the Hellenic Republic or more commonly as Greece. It occupied virtually the coterminous territory of modern Greece and bordered Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Italian Aegean Islands. The term Second Republic is used to differentiate it from the First and Third republics.
  The fall of the monarchy 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. 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 short-lived democratic form of governance that followed, the normalisation of Greco-Turkish relations which lasted until the 1950s, and to the first successful efforts to significantly industrialise the nation.
context_section_description: 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.
  After the defeat of Greece by the Turkish National Movement (the "Asia Minor Catastrophe") of 1922, the defeated army revolted against the royal government. Under Venizelist officers like Nikolaos Plastiras and Stylianos Gonatas, King Constantine I was again forced to abdicate, and died in exile in 1923. His eldest son and successor, King George II, was soon after asked by the parliament to leave Greece so the nation could decide what form of government it should adopt. In a 1924 plebiscite, Greeks voted to create a republic. These events marked the culmination of a process that had begun in 1915 between King Constantine and his political nemesis, Eleftherios Venizelos.
caption: Proclamation of the Second Hellenic Republic with crowds holding placards depicting Alexandros Papanastasiou, Georgios Kondylis and Alexandros Hatzikyriakos
exif: {}