Eleutherios Venizelos

Venizelos, Eleutherios 

Born Aug. 23, 1864; died Mar. 18, 1936, in Paris. Greek statesman and politician.

In 1910, Venizelos founded and became the leader of the bourgeois Liberal Party of Greece. He was premier from 1910 to 1915, 1917 to 1920, in 1924, from 1928 to 1932 and in 1933. He participated in the creation of the Balkan League of 1912. As the result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, he was able to unite to Greece the island of Crete, Aegean Macedonia, Western Thrace, and other territories. On June 29, 1917, he announced that Greece was entering the war on the side of the Entente. He involved Greece in anti-Soviet intervention from January to April 1919 and in predatory war against Turkey from 1919 to 1922. In view of the growing authority of the USSR and in order to strengthen his position in the country, he concluded a Soviet-Greek agreement on trade and navigation on June 11, 1929, and opposed attempts to restore the monarchy, which had been abolished in 1924. He inspired an antimonarchist uprising in Crete in March 1935, which was put down by the promonarchist government. Sentenced to exile, he escaped abroad.