Second Hellenic Republic

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 (Greek: Ἑλληνικὴ Δημοκρατία [eliniˈci ðimokraˈti.a]) or more commonly as Greece (Greek: Ἑλλάς [eˈlas], Hellas). It occupied virtually the coterminous territory of modern Greece (with the exception of the Dodecanese) 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 (50,270 sq mi). 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.

The Second Hellenic Republic was abolished on 10 October 1935, with its abolition being confirmed by referendum on 3 November; this referendum was widely believed to have been mired with electoral fraud. The fall of the Republic eventually paved the way for Greece to become a totalitarian single-party state, when Ioannis Metaxas established the 4th of August Regime in 1936, lasting 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 (Greek: Ἑλληνικὴ Πολιτεία).