Diktatura krále Alexandra a československá diplomacie (1929–1931)

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.