Based on Czech diplomatic materials, the study explains the attitude of Czechoslovak governmental circles towards King Alexander's dictatorship. It was formed in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from January 6, 1929 until the autumn of 1931, when the regime was incorporated into a formal constitutional framework octroyed by the sovereign. The essay explains dilemmas, to which the Czechoslovak foreign policy was subjected. On the one hand, it was an effort to sustain a key ally for Czechoslovakia; on the other hand, it was an effort not to bog into domestic political conflicts in the South Slav state. The initial optimism regarding the potentialities of the authoritarian regime in consolidating the country (impersonated by the envoy Jan Seba and his superior Edvard Benes) was replaced by an increasing disillusion over intellectual sterility and lack of political imagination of the royal regime at resolving existential problems of the Yugoslavian state. The warning prognoses about Yugoslavia's future came to light. Behind the persisting façade of the Czechoslovak-Yugoslavian alliance, this time produced the first symptoms of mutual estrangement and incipient disintegration of the alliance.
The study deals with the destinies of the French researcher in Slavonic studies Andre Mazon (1880-1967), a graduate of the 'Ecole nationale des Langues orientales vivantes' and subsequently a professor at the 'College de France', within the context of the engagement of French intellectuals of that time for the benefit of their warring homeland. At first, Andre Mazon was a translator with the French navy in the Mediterranean; in its services, he conducted a political mission to Montenegro. During his presence on the Salonica front, he worked as an interpreter, promoter and reporter. In this role, he visited the Bulgarian Zograf monastery in Athos. In 1917, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent him to Russia to work as a reporter and documenter. He spent almost four months in jail after an attack on Lenin took place in August 1918. After he was released, he continued his research activities. Mazon's fate is an interesting manifestation of the efforts of a European intellectual of the 20th century to become useful in the social and political fields.
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