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  • Editor's Note
  • Peter Allen

The Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine are the subjects of four of the articles in this issue. They are substantially revised versions of papers delivered at the Modern Greek Studies symposium in New Haven, CT in 2007. The authors of these articles all examine the impact of the Marshall Plan on post-war Greece. Initial reaction to the Marshall Plan in Greece was very favorable, but beginning in the 1960s a re-assessment, fueled by nationalism and anti-Americanism in Greece, played down the role of the Marshall Plan in the country's post-war recovery. In a careful assessment of the data, all four of these authors, while acknowledging that American aid was diverted to the Greek military at the onset of the Korean War and that heavy industry was largely neglected in American development plans, conclude that the Marshall Plan was critical to the development of the Greek economy and the establishment of political stability in the wake of World War II and the very divisive and destructive Greek Civil War. Yuprak Gürsoy's piece is a nice complement to these four papers. In it, she chronicles the role of the Americans in two instances of regime change in the eastern Mediterranean: the Greek coup d'etat of 1967 and the transition to democracy in Turkey in 1950. Using a cost-benefit analysis, she concludes that, although the Americans had an important part in both instances, domestic factors were far more important. Moving beyond ideas of Greek exceptionalism, Effie Fokas argues in her well-reasoned contribution that the place of religion in modern Greek society has more in common with Europe than many scholars have maintained. Finally, Despina Michael, drawing on a series of interviews conducted 20 years ago, makes an assessment of Greek popular musicians' own evaluation of their music and its role in Greek society. [End Page 1]

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