Army and Progress? The Russian and Greek Reactions to the 1903 Coup in Serbia and to the 1908 Young Turk Revolution

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, Greece and Russia represented two strikingly different state and social models for the Christian Orthodox world – its first ethnocentric nation-state vs. its last confessional dynastic empire. Yet they demonstrated similar reactions to the military coups in Serbia and the Ottoman Empire. Except for rightwing monarchists, most commentators, diplomats, and officers shared a belief in the potential of army-led modernization to promote financial efficiency and legitimacy based on constitutional parliamentary institutions. As such, the article contributes to the studies of military political involvement in the context of nationalist and socialist challenges to established monarchical regimes. The article also adds to the literature emphasizing Ottoman agency and influence abroad. While there are some valuable works on Russian and Greek responses to the Young Turk Revolution, there have not been any attempts to compare them in a single book or paper based on a variety of archival and print sources. The repercussions of the 1903 Serbian coup are researched even less (not at all on the Greek side).