The Yugoslav-Bulgarian Perpetual Friendship Pact of 24 January 1937

Abstract

While Stojadinovic's government categorically refused to accept the transformation of the Little Entente into a universal defence pact, it was at the same time negotiating with Bulgaria for a pact with Bulgaria and Italy. This policy of the Yugoslav government had farreaching consequences upon the modification of the entire political constellation in the Balkans, as well as upon the influence exerted by individual great powers interested in this area, which also determined their respective attitudes towards these pacts. The process of Yugoslav-Bulgarian rapprochement was facilitated by the British policy of winning Bulgaria over for adhesion to the Balkan Pact, which Britain followed at the time of the Italian aggression on Ethiopia. During its negotiations with the governments of Yugoslavia, Turkey and Greece for mutual aid, the British government tried to strengthen its own position with Italy by including Bulgaria in the Balkan Pact. Being a revisionist country, Bulgaria always represented a potential ally of Italy in the Balkans. According to some documents, it seems that the British government was even prepared to help the Yugoslav-Bulgarian rapprochement outside the Balkan Agreement only in order to draw Bulgaria away from the Italian influence. At the end of May and in the beginning of June 1936, Edward Boyle, chairman of the Balkan Committee in London, was staying in Sofia. Boyle was known to be a friend of Bulgaria and a champion of the theses of the Pan-Bulgarian bourgeoisie on the "Bulgarian population" in "Serbian" Macedonia. Though he was there in an unofficial capacity, the Yugoslav minister in Bulgaria, Jurisic, was informed that Boyle had been instructed to investigate the disposition of Bulgaria towards Yugoslavia. In his contacts with Bulgarian officials and leaders of Macedonian emigrants, Boyle recommended the continuation of the policy of rapprochement with "fraternal Yugoslavia" as the soundest