The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE

Catherine the Great) had ear-marked the western part with Salonica and Kavala, and Russia had booked Constantinople and the eastern part of the peninsula. As the Russian and AustroHungarian political influences remained paramount till this day in the Balkans, often changing roles, but always pursuing the same preconceived scheme of the conquest of the Balkans, plotting and intriguing, threatening and exhorting, they have done very much to divide the Balkan nations and, if possible, to establish an unbridgeable gulf between Serbia and Bulgaria. They have accentuated the existing differences, exaggerated opposing interests, and counteracted every spontaneous tendency towards unity and co-operation between them. For the sake of historical truth, we must say here that Russia was less persistent in such a policy, and that her more recent influence in fostering the SerboBulgarian Alliance of 1912 and the late Balkan League proves, that Russia was inspired by more sincere motives than Austria, and seemed to have quite abandoned any idea of the conquest of the Balkans.

Left alone without any foreign influence, it appeared at one time that the Serbians and Bulgarians would in brotherly union have formed a single State upon the inevitable ruins of the Turkish Empire. Also the first steps towards such an end were taken in the ’sixties of last century during the reign of the Prince Michael of

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