The dramatic circumstances in which the first PASOK era had ended in 1989 prompted the former president, Konstantinos Karamanlis, to declare, with characteristic bluntness, that he felt at times as if he were living in an ‘enormous madhouse’. The ensuing turmoil and the holding of three elections within less than a year served to distract attention from the momentous changes that were concurrently taking place in the countries on Greece’s northern borders, Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, all of which had been under communist rule since the end of the Second World War. The end of the communist era in the Balkans inevitably had major implications for Greece, although successive governments were slow to appreciate this and a unique opportunity for Greece, the only politically stable and relatively prosperous country in the peninsula, to exert a positive influence in the region was largely missed.

The gradual thaw in the hitherto rigidly Stalinist policies of the Albanian regime focused attention on what was at once geographically the closest, yet until recently much the most politically isolated, area of Greek settlement outside the borders of the Greek state. Claimed by the Greek authorities to number over 300,000 (the official Albanian figure was 60,000), the Greek minority in southern Albania was for the most part compactly settled in what in Greece is termed ‘northern Epirus’, an area adjoining the Albanian–Greek border. The sudden exodus of thousands of ethnic Greeks at the beginning of 1991 gave rise to fears that the Albanian government was putting pressure on members of the minority to leave, and prompted the Greek government to urge that they remain in Albania in the expectation of better times to come. Like all Albanians, members of the Greek minority had suffered severe repression during the communist era and cross-border family visits had been out of the question. Although basic linguistic, educational and cultural rights were conceded there had been attempts to disperse the minority and pressure had been applied to its members to adopt authentically ‘Illyrian’ names. Orthodox Christian Albanians, like their Muslim and Catholic compatriots, had been subject to a prohibition against all forms of religious activity. A hopeful precedent was that, at Christmas 1990, members of the Greek minority were able openly to attend religious services for the first time since 1967.