Bulgaria: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Early Settlement and Empire: Present-day Bulgaria attracted human settlement as early as the Bronze Age. The first known civilization in the region was that of the Thracians, whose culture reached a peak in the sixth century B.C. Because of disunity, in the ensuing centuries Thracian territory was occupied successively by the Greeks, Persians, Macedonians, and Romans. A Thracian kingdom still existed under the Roman Empire until the first century A.D., when Thrace was incorporated into the empire, and Serditsa was established as a trading center on the site of the modern Bulgarian capital, Sofia. In the fourth century, the region became part of the Byzantine Empire, and Christianity was introduced. Both Latin and Greek cultures pervaded the region in the centuries that followed.

Beginning in the fifth century, Slavic tribes arrived in the region, initiating a process of substantial slavicization of the existing social system. In the seventh century, Bulgar tribes, of mixed Turkic and Slavic origin, entered the region and established a state in present-day

northeastern Bulgaria. Based on that state, the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Simeon (ruled 893–927) expanded substantially until it was defeated by the Byzantine Empire in 924. In 870 the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity increased the influence of Byzantine and Slavic cultures on the Bulgarians. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Bulgaria was ruled by the Byzantine Empire, and the First and Second Crusades devastated the land en route to the Middle East.

In 1202 the Second Bulgarian Empire was established as the Byzantine Empire weakened. After a brief second golden age, in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Bulgaria’s internal divisions led to successive incursions by Tatars, Magyars, and Byzantines. After its establishment in the fourteenth century, the Ottoman Empire captured Bulgaria’s commercial center, Sofia, in 1385 and occupied all Bulgarian territory by the mid-fifteenth century. Bulgaria was to remain under Ottoman control for nearly five centuries.

Under the Ottoman Empire: The Ottomans removed all of the apparatus of the Bulgarian Empire and subordinated the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to the Byzantine Patriarchate in Constantinople. Bulgarian institutions generally were assimilated into the centralized Ottoman state system, although certain classes such as the merchants received autonomy or special treatment. Traditional Bulgarian culture survived this period only in small villages, and Bulgaria’s location along a major east-west trade route added people of many nationalities to the population. Three major uprisings, in the 1590s, the 1680s, and the 1730s, were harshly suppressed. Ottoman rule became harsher as the empire declined, beginning in the seventeenth century. At the same time, Western contacts and the broad sweep of Christian resistance to Ottoman occupation in Eastern Europe stimulated national consciousness in Bulgaria, which flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Of particular influence was a history of the Bulgarian people written in 1762 by Father Paisi of the Mt. Athos monastery.

NATIONAL Revival and Independence: The Bulgarian national revival gained strength in the nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1860s, a series of independence organizations made limited progress. Among the leaders of such movements were Georgi Rakovski, Vasil Levski, and Ivan Karavelov. An important obstacle to the independence movement was Western opposition to increased Russian influence in a post-Ottoman Europe. During most of the nineteenth century, Britain and France defended the Ottoman Empire in order to thwart Russia’s ambition to gain access to the Balkans and the Bosporus. Meanwhile, the collapse of regional Ottoman control left Bulgaria in a chaotic condition that also inhibited formation of a national state in the nineteenth century. After decades of resistance, in 1870 the Ottoman Empire declared the Bulgarian Orthodox Church independent of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople, to which it had been subordinate for four centuries. The new exarchate became a leading force for cultural revival. In 1877 a massacre by Ottoman forces of Bulgarian nationalist groups precipitated Russian occupation of all of Bulgaria. The ensuing Treaty of Berlin (1878) provided for an independent Bulgarian state much smaller than insurgent forces had envisioned. Alexander of Battenburg, a German, became the first modern prince of Bulgaria.

Into the Modern Era and Communism: After six years of instability, Alexander was deposed in 1886. A strong prime minister, Stefan Stambolov, then achieved stability after Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was named the new ruler in 1887. Before his removal in 1894, Stambolov established a strong Bulgarian economy. The conservative Ferdinand dominated governance and continued most of Stambolov’s policies from 1894 until the beginning of World War I. Meanwhile, territorial ambitions (particularly in Macedonia) remaining from the Treaty of Berlin brought Bulgaria into two Balkan wars in 1912 and 1913, which in turn led to the onset of World War I in Bosnia. Siding with Germany and Austria-Hungary in that war, Bulgaria was forced by popular opinion and military defeats to withdraw in September 1918.

The period following the war was one of slow economic growth, uneasy political coalitions, and continued division over Macedonian territory. In 1923 Macedonian radicals assassinated Prime Minister Aleksandŭr Stamboliĭski. War reparations, the Macedonia issue, and diplomatic isolation hindered Bulgaria’s progress in the 1920s, and the Great Depression decimated its economy in the early 1930s. In 1935 Tsar Boris III ended a period of political chaos by declaring a royal dictatorship. In the late 1930s, Bulgaria increasingly moved into the economic and geopolitical sphere of Nazi Germany. Under strong pressure after the outbreak of World War II, Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1941. Although Bulgaria took a passive position throughout the war, the Soviet Union invaded it in 1944 and withdrew only in 1947, leaving behind a communist government. After a period of Stalinist repression under Vŭlko Chervenkov (prime minister, 1950–56), Todor Zhivkov completed his rise through the ranks of the Bulgarian Communist Party by becoming prime minister in 1962. For the next 27 years, Zhivkov would remain the unchallenged leader of Bulgaria.

The Zhivkov Era: Zhivkov broadened his political support and maneuvered through a series of national and international threats such as the Prague Spring of 1968 and the opposition of conservative communists to rapprochement with the West. Zhivkov also presided over a general expansion of intellectual and media activity. However, until the 1980s he avoided antagonizing his patron nation, the Soviet Union. Economically, he emulated that country by emphasizing heavy industry and centralizing agriculture. By the mid-1980s, Bulgaria had been implicated in an assassination attempt on the pope, relations with the Soviet Union had cooled, and its government was increasingly corrupt. Zhivkov was removed as Bulgarian Communist Party chief in 1989, heralding the end of communist rule.

The Post-communist Era: The wave of East European democratization caught Bulgaria fully in 1990, as Zhelyu Zhelev of the United Democratic Front was named the first postwar non-communist prime minister. The 1990s saw constant public unrest and a series of shaky coalition governments and grave economic crises, as Bulgaria attempted to establish a free-enterprise system. In 2000 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, son of Boris III, returned to Bulgaria and established a new party, which won the parliamentary elections of 2001. In 2001 Simeon, who formed a broad political coalition, was named prime minister, a position he retained in mid-2005. In the early 2000s, the government underwent a series of no-confidence crises and continued economic uncertainty, but economic growth resumed, and foreign relations generally improved. Bulgaria joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004. The prospect of entry into the European Union (EU) in 2007 stimulated a variety of domestic reforms; Bulgaria’s parliament ratified the accession treaty to the EU in May 2005.