Catching up and falling behind : Bulgaria and Greece at the turn of the twentieth century

Abstract

Bulgaria and Greece are a prime example of the possibilities and limits 

of the process of the belated and accelerated Balkan modernization. For most
of the late 19th and early 20th centuries the two countries have been
stagnating. At the end of the Second World War each undertook a different
strategy to overcome historical backwardness.
The two countries were considered the economic miracles of their own
economic blocks. Yet the crisis of the early 1970s and particularly the decade
of the 1990s revealed the dark side of the two countries’ economic dynamism.
Their dramatic economic and social transformation caused the second postwar
miracle -the gradual and peaceful democratization of the political systemssince
1974 in Greece and since 1989 in Bulgaria. The analysis of the postwar
development of Greece and Bulgaria brings us to a moderate optimism.
Despite the persistent lag vis-à-vis developed Europe (particularly great in
the case of Bulgaria), both countries can claim that they belong to the modern
world. The “dirty work” of modernization, which in the West had taken
centuries, was carried out by the efforts of two or three postwar generations of
Bulgarians and Greeks.