Greece had changed dramatically by the end of the ‘long First World War’ (1912–22). As one politician put it: ‘those of us that survived the last war ask ourselves is this the same planet, or have we moved to another, having abandoned the earth’ (Merkouris 1933: 3). The Greek state had come into possession of vast new territories and now had a much larger and more diverse population. The lands and peoples also presented challenges that pre-war Greece was not equipped to manage, and which therefore required a new kind of state focused on societal need rather than ‘high’ politics (diplomacy, irredentism). What kind of political economy was required to manage and stabilise this bigger and culturally diverse ‘Hellas’? How were the many new peoples to be transformed into good citizens and committed patriots? How might Salonican Jews, Pomaks, Slav Macedonians, Karamanlides and Pontians be integrated with the host society?

Governmentality rather than governance

Throughout interwar Europe, governance was an object of experimentation (Moses 2016: 329–31). The old political order had vanished by 1918, but there was bitter division over what might replace it. Any ideological movement with a following had its hostile countermovement. Leninism was pitted against Wilsonian liberalism. The utopian dreams of some were the dystopic nightmares of others. But the one concept for which there was a consensus was étatisme: the radical extension of the power and purpose of the state in society. This reality was recognised in Greece as much as anywhere else, particularly given the challenges presented by the refugee influx. According to economics professor and future prime minister Xenophon Zolotas, the keynote feature of twentieth-century Greek economic and political thought was that ‘only through state intervention and guidance can the orderly economic progress of Greece be guaranteed’ (Zolotas 1936: 21).

In the wake of the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the ensuing chaos, an officer movement known simply as ‘Revolution’ (Epanastasi) had seized power. It then made three decisions that would have lasting consequences. Firstly, it committed the then prime minister Dimitrios Gounaris and other leading government and military figures to trial for the debacle in Asia Minor.