BULGARIA: A GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY  

The following notes are taken from a number of sources and are intended to give some understanding of the complexity of modern Bulgaria, before, during or after a visit!  

GEOGRAPHY

Within a relatively small compass, the Bulgarian landscape exhibits striking topographic variety. Open expanses of lowland alternate with broken mountain country, cut by deep river gorges and harbouring upland basins such as that in which Sofia lies. Three basic structural and physiographic divisions run east-west.

All but a short section of the northern frontier of Bulgaria is marked by the lower Danube, the abrupt and often steep banks on the Bulgarian side contrasting with the swamps and lagoons of the Romanian side. Extending southward from the Danube to the foothills of the Balkan Mountains is the fertile, hilly Danubian Plain. The average elevation of the region is 584 feet (178 metres), and it covers some 12,200 square miles. Several rivers cross the plain, flowing northward from the Balkans to join the Danube.

The Balkan Mountains border the Danubian Plain on the south, their rounded summits having an average height of 2,368 feet and rising to 7,795 feet (2,376 metres) in Mount Botev, the highest peak. Parallel to this principal chain (its Bulgarian name, Stara Planina, means "Old Mountains," "old" signifying its greater extent compared with the adjacent ranges) lies a transitional region of complex relief. Block faulting—the raising or lowering of great structural segments along regular lines of crustal weakness—has produced there the Sredna Mountains (Sredna Gora), the Vitosha Mountains, the Lisa Mountains, a number of sheltered structural basins, and the Upper Thracian and Tundzha lowlands.

Another mountain mass covers southern Bulgaria. This includes the Rhodope Mountains (Bulgarian: Rodopi; Greek: Rodhópis), which rise to 7,188 feet in Golyam Perelik Peak; the Rila Mountains, rising to Musala Peak, at 9,596 feet (2,925 metres) the highest in the country and indeed in the whole Balkan Peninsula; the Pirin Mountains, with Vikhren Peak reaching 9,560 feet; and a frontier range known as the Belasitsa Mountains. These majestic ranges discharge melt water from montane snowfields throughout the summer, and their sharp outlines, pine-clad slopes, and, in the Rila and Pirin ranges, several hundred lakes of glacial origin combine to form some of the most beautiful of Bulgarian landscapes.

Trending north-south at the eastern fringe of the other regions is the narrow Black Sea coastal region. The coast has few bays (exceptions being the fine harbours of Varna and Burgas) but does have extensive stretches of sandy beach that have led to the growth of a number of picturesque seaside resorts.

Bulgaria has a complex drainage pattern characterized, with the notable exception of the Danube, by relatively short rivers. The major rivers are the Maritsa (Marica), the Iskur, the Struma, the Arda, the Tundzha, and the Yantra. Overall, more than half of the runoff drains to the Black Sea, and the rest drains to the Aegean Sea. Bulgaria's numerous lakes may be coastal (such as the large lakes around Varna and Burgas, both on the Black Sea), glacial (such as those in the southern mountains), structural, or karst in origin. The country has some 500 mineral springs, half of which are warm or hot (reaching 217° F [103° C] at Sapareva Banya, in the west). Numerous dams have been constructed in the mountains.

Maritsa River

Also called Marica, Greek Évros, Turkish Meriç, the river in Bulgaria, rises in the Rila Mountains southeast of Sofia on the north face of Musala Peak. It flows east and southeast across Bulgaria for 170 miles (275 km), forms the Bulgaria–Greece frontier for a distance of 10 miles (16 km), and then becomes the Greece–Turkey frontier for another 115 miles (185 km). At Edirne it changes direction, flowing south and then southwest to enter the Aegean Sea. Major tributaries are the Arda, Stryama, Topolnitsa, and Tundzha. The area of its drainage basin is 20,000 square miles (53,000 square km).

The Maritsa River valley forms part of the route for the Sofia–Istanbul railway. The fertile valley soils support extensive fruit and vegetable growing, especially for export. Several large hydroelectric and irrigation schemes have been developed on tributaries of the Maritsa.

Arda River

Greek Árdhas, this river in Bulgaria rises in the central Rhodope Mountains near the town of Smolyan and follows a 180-mile (290-kilometre) course eastward past Kurdzhali and Ivaylovgrad to enter the Maritsa just west of Edirne, Tur, after a 23-mile (37-kilometre) course in Greece. The Bulgarian section has three hydroelectric and irrigation dams, among the largest in Bulgaria. In the upper valley are the mining towns of Rudozem, Madan, and Smolyan on the tributary Cherna River. The Arda River valley is known for its tobacco growing.

The varied Bulgarian natural environment has produced about 20 soil types and subtypes, which may be grouped into three main regions. Northern Bulgaria is characterized by the fertile black-earth soils known as chernozems and also by gray soils of forest origin. Southern Bulgaria has forest soils with acidic (cinnamonic) traces—by far the most extensive single category—as well as the modified chernozems known as chernozem-smolnitzas (a dark-coloured zonal soil with a deep and rich humus horizon). The rugged high mountain regions have brown forest, dark mountain forest, and mountain meadow soils.

The greater part of Bulgaria has a moderate continental climate, which is tempered by Mediterranean influences in the south. The average annual temperature is 51° F (10.5° C), but this conceals a wide variation; temperatures as low as -37° F (-38° C) and as high as 113° F (45° C) have been recorded. Mean annual precipitation ranges from about 18 inches (450 millimetres) in the northeast to more than 47 inches in the highest mountains. The lowlands receive snowfall from mid-October to mid-May, with an annual average of 25–30 days of snow cover. Hailstorms occur between May and August.

The relatively large number of Bulgarian plant and animal species reflects the country's location adjoining several of the great Eurasian bio geographic zones. During the Pleistocene Epoch (from about 1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago), life in the region was not destroyed by advancing glaciers as occurred in much of Europe but was actually enriched by the immigration of species from the north, some of which still survive. Influences from the steppes of western Asia also penetrated the region at that time. Nonetheless, the greater part of the plant and animal life is central European, mixed with a type that blends Arctic and Alpine characteristics in the high mountains. Steppe species are most characteristic in the northeast and southeast, while the south is rich in sub-Mediterranean and Mediterranean species. The Bulgarian government has introduced a number of conservation measures, including steps to protect soil, water, and air from pollution and to establish protected areas of outstanding interest to naturalists.

The natural environment of Bulgaria falls into three basic regions: North Bulgaria, including the Danubian Plain and the Balkan Mountains; South Bulgaria, including the Rila-Rhodope massif; and a transitional area between them. Each of these traditional regions over the centuries has been subjected to the actions of humans, whether in the remoter mountains, where national culture was cherished and the seeds of nationalism were sown during the long Ottoman domination, or in the Danubian Plain, where agriculture has been practiced from ancient times. Bulgarian settlements have been officially classified into more than 200 urban areas and 5,000 villages, the latter including hundreds of small hamlets, clusters of farmsteads, and, deep in the mountains, a handful of historic monasteries.

Many Bulgarian towns have roots in the Middle Ages and in remotest antiquity, although many new, modern settlements were created in the communist era. The urban population overtook the rural for the first time in 1969. Despite the pressure of urban population growth, many Bulgarian towns preserve their ancient charm and are rich in cultural monuments; in the remoter areas, they offer a slower pace of life than can be found in the cities.

Sofia, the capital, is the largest city and dominates the national economic and cultural life. Plovdiv, in the south-central region, enjoys a scenic location on the Maritsa River and is another major industrial and cultural centre, where an international trade fair is held annually. Varna is a centre for industry, transport, and tourism on the shores of the Black Sea. The nearby seaside resort of Zlatni Pyassutsi ("Golden Sands") attracts an international tourist trade. Burgas is Bulgaria's largest Black Sea port and a major industrial, cultural, and resort centre. Ruse, on the Danube in the north, is the largest Bulgarian river port; there the Friendship Bridge leads to the Romanian city of Giurgiu. Stara Zagora lies on the southern flanks of the central Sredna Mountains and is notable for its archaeological and architectural remains.

The numerous contemporary Bulgarian villages are either clustered or scattered. Since World War II they have undergone a transformation from the sleepy, backward, and poverty-stricken settlements that typified much of the region for centuries. Almost all of the rural population live in villages supplied with water and electricity; three-quarters of the houses are recent constructions, replacing the older lath and plaster structures. Most of the villages have paved and asphalted streets. Processing plants have been built in many villages, so that rural areas are increasingly industrialized.

Ethnically, the population is fairly homogeneous, Bulgarians making up about 85 percent of the total. The Slav tribes that settled in the eastern part of the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries AD, thereby assimilating the local Thracian tribes, formed a basic ethnic group. The group known as the Bulgars, who formed the first Bulgarian state in 681, formed another component. With the gradual obliteration of fragmented Slav tribes, Bulgars and Slavs consolidated into a unified Slav people who thenceforward retained the name of Bulgarians. This national unity, present in embryonic form during the long Ottoman domination, flowered in the independence struggles of the 19th century.

The Turks, Bulgaria's largest minority, live in some regions of the northeast and in the eastern Rhodope Mountains region. Gypsies (Roma) and Macedonians are two other sizable minorities (though the government does not consider Macedonians as such, regarding them as ethnically Bulgarian), and there are a few thousand Armenians, Russians, and Greeks (mostly in the towns) and Romanians and Tatars (mostly in the villages).

The Bulgarian language belongs to the South Slavic group, along with Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, and Macedonian (the last, however, considered to be a dialect of Bulgarian by the government). A number of dialects remain in common speech.

Following the reforms of 1989–90, the state continued to encourage atheism, but religious activity was increasingly tolerated. The majority of religious Bulgarians are adherents of the Bulgarian Orthodox church, which pressed the new leadership for greater autonomy and restoration of monastic lands. Minority religious groups include Muslims, Jews, Bulgarian Catholics, Protestants, and Gregorian Armenians.

As a result of social and economic changes after World War II, notably the introduction of free medical care and the improvement of working conditions, Bulgaria's death rate dropped significantly, but it began to rise again in the 1970s as the proportion of older people in the population rose. The birth rate has dropped, as has the infant mortality rate.

Emigration since World War II has mostly affected non-Bulgarians. About half a million Turks left the country, 155,000 having been expelled in 1949–51 and a further 300,000 or more having emigrated in 1989. Almost all Czechs and Slovaks returned to their homelands, as did large numbers of Russians and Armenians (to what was then the Soviet Union) and Jews (to Israel). About 35,000 others, mostly Bulgarians, returned from North America and from European countries. Internally, the movement of population has been from rural areas to larger towns and cities. From 1946 to 1988, for example, the population of Sofia trebled; the populations of Varna and Plovdiv increased more than sixfold; and Ruse's population increased more than fivefold.

Bulgaria's geographic variety is reflected in the distribution of its population. The most densely populated areas are the Danubian Plain, the Upper Thracian Basin, the Burgas Plain, and the intermontane basins of southwestern Bulgaria. Areas of lowest density are the east and southeast of the country, the Strandzha and Dobruja regions, and the higher mountain areas.

Urbanization continues to have an effect on the demographic structure; a large segment of the urban population is of a young working—and childbearing—age, leading to natural growth of the towns. Because relatively more older adults remain in the villages, the birth rate there continues to be lower and the death rate higher. These effects thus amplify the shift of population from rural areas to urban centres.

Bulgaria is relatively well endowed with a variety of both metallic and nonmetallic minerals. Geologic exploration has identified about 40 coal basins, which together contain an estimated 4.1 billion tons of proven recoverable reserves. Of the reserves, virtually all is lignite. The main mining areas are in the Pernik basin southwest of Sofia, the Maritsa basin south of Stara Zagora, the Maritsa basin at Dimitrovgrad in the south, and Lom on the Danube. Lignite and brown coal fuel the country's thermal power stations and are used as fuel and as raw material for many of its industries. Although deposits of bituminous and anthracite coal have been almost exhausted in Bulgaria, other promising deposits of black coking coal have been found in the northeast, in the Dobruja region.

Deposits of iron ore are estimated at 317 million tons; one of the largest reserves is at Kremikovtsi near Sofia, the site of the country's largest metallurgical plant. Smaller quantities of iron ore are mined in the northwest (Montana [formerly Mikhaylovgrad]), in the central region (Troyan), and in the southeast (Yambol). There are significant deposits of nonferrous ores (copper, lead, and zinc) in the Rhodope Mountains, the Balkan Mountains, and the Sredna Mountains. Bulgaria is also rich in less valuable minerals, including rock salt, gypsum, limestone, dolomite, kaolin (china clay), asbestos, perlite, feldspar, fluorite, and barite.

Bulgaria has only small deposits of oil and natural gas; mineralogists have begun offshore exploration of the Black Sea, which is believed to be rich in coal, oil, natural gas, and other minerals.

Bulgaria gets about one-fourth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, and hydroelectric plants supply one-tenth.

Agriculture accounts for less than one-fifth of the national income in Bulgaria. Cereal crops are grown on almost three-fifths of the sown land. Wheat is by far the most important, followed by corn (maize) and barley; rye, oats, soybeans, and rice also are grown. Industrial crops are important, especially tobacco, which is of a good-quality Oriental type and is grown mainly in the south. Sunflower seed is the chief oilseed crop; after extraction of the oil, the pulp is made into cattle feed. Sunflowers, like sugar beets, grow mainly in the north. Bulgaria has become a leading exporter of grapes and tomatoes. Stock breeding has increased since World War II, and productivity has improved; cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are raised.

A cooperative movement developed in the agricultural sector in Bulgaria before World War II, and after the war it spread further, until most of the arable land was in cooperative farms. The cooperative and state farms then merged into large state and collective units. Agriculture grew unevenly, however, and in 1970–71 these units were consolidated into the larger groupings called agro-industrial complexes to take better advantage of integrated systems of automation, supply, and marketing.

Beginning in 1990, farmers were paid bonuses for each head of cattle or sheep exceeding the previous year's total; reduction of herds or flocks resulted in fines. Hard-currency exchange rights gave dairy farmers an incentive to maintain high milk-production levels. Supplies of quality wool and hides were to be paid for in hard currency. Farmers in upland and mountainous regions also received incentives. In addition, the government lifted restrictions on private farming and made available loans for the establishment of small farms and food-processing facilities. Agriculture was officially decollectivized in 1991.

Before World War II, industries were of minor importance in Bulgaria. Under the socialist system, industrialization became one of the principal aims of economic policy, with particular emphasis on basic industries such as electric power, ferrous and nonferrous metallurgy, and chemicals. Central planning of management, production, and investment channelled into industry a large portion of the national resources.

Before the war, shipbuilding at Varna and foundries at Sofia, Plovdiv, Ruse, and Pernik were the most important metallurgical industries. Those developed after the war include iron and steel works at Pernik, utilizing local brown coal and iron ore from the Sofia district; a large steel project at Kremikovtsi; a lead and zinc works at Kurdzhali; and a copper and sulphuric acid plant at Pirdop. A chemical industry has developed at Dimitrovgrad, and chemical plants were also built at Stara Zagora, Vratsa, Devnya, and Vidin, and a petrochemical plant at Burgas. The biotechnology sector is increasingly important in the economy.

Machine building is a priority of the national economy. Its relative share of industrial production has jumped dramatically. Machine building and metal processing are widely dispersed throughout the country; the largest plants are located in Sofia, Varna, Ruse, Burgas, and Plovdiv. The production of chemicals and rubber is mainly centred around Sofia, Dimitrovgrad, Varna, Reka, Devnya, and Plovdiv.

Since the 1960s, three other industries have had marked regional development: food, beverage, and tobacco processing; textiles; and tourism. While food processing and beverage production are found throughout the country, three main industrial regions may be defined. The first, in the south, includes the towns of Plovdiv, Krichim, Pazardzhik, Asenovgrad, and Purvomay, which primarily specialize in canning and tobacco processing. The second region, in northern Bulgaria (comprising Gorna Oryakhovitsa, Veliko Turnovo, and Lyaskovets), concentrates on canning, sugar refining, and meat processing. A third region to the northwest (Pleven, Dolna Mitropoliya, and Cherven Bryag) has become important for flour, paste products, poultry processing, canning, sugar refining, and the processing of vegetable oils. Fishing and fish breeding have also become important industries.

Before World War II, textile industries were mainly to be found where the demand for textiles was constant (Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna) or where raw materials were available (Sliven, Vratsa). The industries used locally produced wool, cotton, or silk. Under the republic's five-year plans, large new mills were built at Sofia, Sliven, and Plovdiv, and the total output of textile fabrics rose tremendously.

Tourism in Bulgaria has grown markedly since the 1960s. In addition to the popular Black Sea resorts, tourists are attracted to historical centres such as Sofia, Plovdiv, and Rila Monastery and to winter sports centres such as Borovets in the Rhodope Mountains.

The major source of energy in Bulgaria is the Maritsa lignite field, which provides fuel to large thermoelectric plants at Dimitrovgrad and Maritsa-Iztok; there are also thermal power stations at Pernik, Sofia, Plovdiv, and Burgas. The country's first nuclear power station, at Kozloduy, was constructed with Soviet aid. It began operation in 1974, but, following the Chernobyl accident in 1986 (which involved reactors of the same type as some operating at Kozloduy), the entire station was placed on a regimen of repair and reconstruction. Transmission lines carry electric power to most parts of the country.

The development of the Bulgarian economy has required the expansion of the transportation system. Road transport accounts for a large percentage of all freight carried (on a tonnage basis) as well as for most passenger traffic. Roads and railways together account for all but a small fraction of both freight and passengers carried. The European International Highway links Sofia with Istanbul, and the main railway lines connect Sofia with the Black Sea coast.

The Danube is used for both internal and international traffic, Ruse, Svishtov, and Lom being the main river ports. The chief seaports are Varna and Burgas, and there is a regular international merchant service on the Black Sea. Bulgaria has international airports at Sofia, Varna, and Burgas, and internal air services have grown; scheduled international service has increased considerably.

Township councils embody state power at the local government level. The members of the township councils are elected by the inhabitants of the township to four-year terms. Executive power at the level of local government lies with the elected mayor of a township. Between the township and state levels of government is the oblast, or province, government.

The court system consists of the Supreme Court of Appeals, the Supreme Administrative Court, local courts, courts of appeal, and military courts. The constitution provides that specialized courts may also be established. A prosecutorial structure, headed by a prosecutor general, corresponds to that of the courts. The High Judicial Council, consisting of 25 members, appoints judges, prosecutors, and investigators. The members of this council are appointed by the National Assembly and judicial authorities. The Constitutional Court, composed of 12 justices (who each serve a nine-year term), is charged with interpreting the constitution and ruling on the legality of measures passed by the National Assembly.

Liberalization of price controls in the early 1990s led to a marked rise in prices. As a result, inflation rose, strikes occurred frequently, and unemployment became a significant social problem.

The rapid industrialization since World War II has had noticeable socioeconomic effects: more than one-third of the people are now engaged in industry, while only one-fifth are in agriculture. The number of people employed in education, in culture and art, and in the health services has risen to more than one-seventh of the active work force. The percentage of women workers has risen to almost half of the total labour force, and women are especially concentrated in finance, banking and insurance.

From 1946 until 1990, daily life in Bulgaria was outwardly dominated by the socialist political system. The state sought to inculcate a new mode of thinking and manner of action based above all on the need for and benefit of social labour. More inwardly, however, daily life long has been dominated by a much older tradition and cultural legacy. For example, the Bulgarian family kept many of its traditional forms of organization. Many households consist of an extended family comprising parents and one of their married sons—usually the youngest—or daughters.

Under the socialist government, religious functions were entirely separate from state functions, the postwar constitution prohibiting the use of religion or religious organizations for political purposes. On the other hand, even prior to the democratic reforms of the early 1990s, the government tolerated religion and did not usually attempt to take away the political rights of religious believers.

Modern Greek Thráki, Latin Thracia, ancient and modern region of the southeastern Balkans.

The historical boundaries of Thrace have varied. To the ancient Greeks it was that part of the Balkans between the Danube River to the north and the Aegean Sea to the south, being bounded on the east by the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and on the west by the mountains east of the Vardar River. The Roman province of Thrace was somewhat smaller, having the same eastern maritime limits and being bounded on the north by the Balkan Mountains; the Roman province extended west only to the Néstos River. Since Roman times, Greek Macedonia to the west has been separated from Greek Thrace by the Néstos. Modern Thrace is bounded by the Néstos River to the west, the Rhodope Mountains to the north, and the Maritsa River to the east and corresponds to the southern part of Bulgaria, the Greek province of Thrace, and European Turkey, including the Gallipoli Peninsula. About one-fourth of Thrace lies in Turkey, about one-tenth in Greece, and the remainder in Bulgaria.

Topographically, Thrace alternates between mountain-enclosed basins of varying size and deeply cut river valleys. A wide plateau extends southward from the Rhodope Mountains and separates the lowlands along the Maritsa River from the plains of western Thrace. A Mediterranean climate prevails in southern Thrace and is modified by continental influences in the Rhodope Mountains. The range of temperatures is greater in Thrace than in the southern Greek mainland; average temperatures in Alexandroúpolis range from 43° F (6° C) in January to 80° F (27° C) in July. Rivers are reduced to trickles during the summer months, and they drain toward the Aegean.

Ancient Greek and Roman historians agreed that the Thracians, who were of Indo-European stock and language, were superior fighters; only their constant political fragmentation prevented their overrunning the lands around the north-eastern Mediterranean. Although these historians characterized the Thracian tribes as primitive partly because they lived in simple, open villages, the Thracians in fact had a fairly advanced culture that was especially noted for its poetry and music. Their soldiers were valued as mercenaries, particularly by the Macedonians and Romans.

The Greeks founded several colonies on the Thracian coasts, the most notable being Byzantium. Others were on the Bosporus, Propontis, and Thracian Chersonese peninsula. On the Aegean were Abdera near the Néstos delta and Aenus near Alexandroúpolis. Farther north on the Black Sea's Gulf of Burgas, the Milesians founded Apollonia (7th century BC), and the Chalcedonians, Mesembria (end of the 6th century BC).

Most Thracians became subject to Persia in about 516–510 BC. Members of the Odrysae tribe briefly unified their fellow Thracians into an empire that in 360 BC split three ways and was quite easily assimilated (356–342) by Philip II of Macedon. The Thracians provided Philip's son, Alexander the Great, with valuable light-armed troops during his conquests. In 197, Rome assigned much of Thrace to the kingdom of Pergamum, though the coastal area west of the Maritsa was annexed to the Roman province of Macedonia. In the 1st century BC, Rome became more directly involved in the affairs of the whole region, and dynastic quarrels among the local Thracian rulers, who had by then become client kings of Rome, prompted the emperor Claudius I to annex the entire Thracian kingdom in AD 46. Thrace was subsequently made into a Roman province. The emperor Trajan and his successor, Hadrian, founded cities in Thrace, notably Sardica (modern Sofia) and Hadrianopolis (modern Edirne). In about AD 300, Diocletian reorganized the area between the Lower Danube and the Aegean into the diocese of Thrace.

From the 3rd to the 7th century the population of Thrace was altered greatly by repeated Gothic, Visigothic, and Slavic invasions and immigrations. In the 7th century the Bulgarian state was founded, and Byzantium consequently lost all Thrace north of the Balkan Mountains to the Bulgarians. Racked by Byzantine civil wars in the 14th century, Thrace fell piece by piece, up to 1453, to the Ottoman Turks, who ruled it for four centuries thereafter. Russian encroachments in the eastern Balkans culminated in the Russo-Turkish Wars (1828–29 and 1877–78), but Russia failed to create a "Greater Bulgaria" that would include the northern portions of Thrace at the expense of Turkey. The whole of Thrace therefore remained under Turkish domination. During the Balkan Wars (1912–13) Thrace suffered terribly. After World War I the boundaries of Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey in Thrace were established by the treaties of Neuilly (1919), Sèvres (1920), and Lausanne (1923), and after World War II they remained unchanged.

As a result of wars and both forced and voluntary population migrations, the ethnic character of Thrace has become more homogeneous during the 20th century, although there are still large Turkish minorities in both Greek and Bulgarian Thrace. The Turks in Greek (Western) Thrace were excluded from the Greek-Turkish population exchange of 1923, while many of the resettled Greeks from Anatolia were settled in Western Thrace. A relatively small number of Turks from Bulgaria were resettled in Eastern Thrace. The Muslim population was exempted from repatriation to Turkey by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, but many emigrated after the appropriation of their land in 1924 and subsequently continued to emigrate because of deteriorating relations between Greece and Turkey.

The Greek population of Thrace has grown rapidly since 1923 and is now the dominant population group, generally enjoying a higher standard of living than the Muslim minority. Greek is gradually supplanting Turkish as the language of instruction even in Muslim schools. Tensions between Greeks and the remaining Muslims have led to occasional outbursts of intercommunal violence. Most Thracian Muslims are of Turkish ancestry and speak Turkish. The Pomak people, a Turkicized Muslim group speaking a Bulgarian dialect, are concentrated along the border with Bulgaria. There is also a small group of sedentary Gypsies who speak Romany and Turkish.

High-quality Turkish tobacco, cultivated primarily by Muslims, is the chief cash crop of the region. Corn (maize) and rice are grown on the lowlands of the Evros River and the plains of western Thrace. Vineyards are found around Alexandroúpolis, where wine is produced. Oyster farming around Keramotí and eel fishing at Komotiní provide exports to central Europe. The manufacturing industries of Thrace consist chiefly of the processing of agricultural crops, tobacco curing, and wine production.

Archaeological sites, including Abdera, home of Democritus, the 5th-century philosopher who developed an atomic particle theory, and of Protagoras, a counsellor of Alexander the Great, and the course of the Roman highway called the Via Egnatia attract tourists. Komotiní has a large museum with objects from throughout Thrace. Komotiní also is the site of Democritus University (1973) and of a Muslim secondary college.

Thracian language spoken by the inhabitants of Thrace primarily in pre-Greek and early Greek times. Generally assumed to be an Indo-European language, Thracian is known from proper names, glosses in Greek writings, and a small number of inscriptions, some of which appear on coins; these sources date from as early as the 6th century BC. Thracian is thought by many scholars to be related to the ancient Phrygian language spoken in Asia Minor.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the Balkans were populated well before the Neolithic Period (about 10,000 years ago). At the dawn of recorded history, two Indo-European peoples dominated the area: the Illyrians to the west and the Thracians to the east of the great historical divide defined by the Morava and Vardar river valleys. The Thracians were advanced in metalworking and in horsemanship. They intermingled with the Greeks and gave them the Dionysian and Orphean cults, which later became so important in classical Greek literature. The Illyrians were more exclusive, their mountainous terrain keeping them separate from the Greeks and Thracians.

Thracian society was tribal in structure, with little inclination toward political cohesion. In what was to become a persistent phenomenon in Balkan history, unity was brought about mostly by external pressure. The Persian invasions of the 6th and 5th centuries BC brought the Thracian tribes together in the Odrysian kingdom, which fell under Macedonian influence in the 4th century BC. The Illyrians, ethnically akin to the Thracians, originally inhabited a large area from the Istrian Peninsula to northern Greece and as far inland as the Morava River. During the 4th century BC they were pushed southward by Celtic invasions, and thereafter their territory did not extend much farther north than the Drin River. Illyrian society, like that of the Thracians, was organized around tribal groups who often fought wars with one another and with outsiders. Under the Celtic threat they established a coherent political entity, but this too was destroyed by Macedonia. Thereafter the Illyrians were known mainly as pirates who disturbed the trade of many Greek settlements on the Adriatic coast. The Romans were also affected and took police action, annexing much of Illyrian territory in the early 3rd century BC. An Illyrian kingdom based in modern-day Shkodër, Albania, remained an important factor until its liquidation by Roman armies in 168 BC.

The Romans were different from other major conquerors of the Balkans in that they first arrived in the west. Later attacks were launched from the southeast as well, so that by the 1st century AD the entire peninsula was under Roman control. At the height of Roman power, the Balkan peoples were the most united of any time in their history, with a common legal system, a single ultimate arbiter of political power, and absolute military security. In addition, a vibrant commerce was conducted along the Via Egnatia, a great east-west land route that led from Dyrrhachium (modern Durrës, Albania) through Macedonia to Thessalonica (modern Thessaloníki, Greece) and on to Thrace. The northwestern part of the peninsula, including Dalmatia along the Adriatic coast as well as Pannonia around the Danube and Sava rivers, became the province of Illyricum. What is now eastern Serbia was incorporated into Moesia, which reached farther eastward between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube all the way to the Black Sea. The southeastern part of the peninsula was ruled as Thrace, and the southern part was brought into Macedonia.

The Romans largely regarded the Danube River as their northern frontier, but in the 2nd and 3rd centuries their authority was extended northward into Dacia, in what is now western Romania. Dacia had been the home of a people closely related to the Thracians. The Dacians had suffered invasion by a number of peoples, including the Scythians, a mysterious people probably of Iranian origin who were absorbed into the resident population. In the 3rd century BC they managed to contain Macedonian pressure from the south, but in later years they were much less able to fend off Celtic invaders from the northwest. By the 1st century AD a substantial Dacian state extended as far west as Moravia and threatened Roman command of the Danube in the Balkans. The extension of the Dacian state and Dacian raids across the river into Moesia prompted the emperor Trajan in the first decade of the 2nd century to march into Dacia, obliterate the Dacian state and Dacian society, and establish a Roman colony that lasted until barbarian incursions forced a withdrawal back across the Danube beginning in 271.

In AD 395 the Illyrian empire was finally divided, and Illyria east of the Drinus River (the Drina, in modern Yugoslavia) became part of the Eastern Empire. Between the 3rd and the 5th century it was devastated by the Visigoths and the Huns, who, however, left no lasting mark on Illyria. But the Slavs, who started their incursions into the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th century, had by the end of the 7th century transformed the ethnic structure of all the Illyrian-speaking territories. Croatia, Serbia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and parts of Macedonia lost their Illyrian language and were thoroughly Slavonized, so that only the Albanians remain as direct descendants of the ancient Illyrians.

The story of the modern Bulgarian people begins with the Slavic invasions of the Balkan Peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries AD, a time when Byzantium was absorbed in prolonged conflict with Persia and could not resist the incursions from the north. Ancient sources refer to two Slavic tribes north of the Danube at this time, the Slavenae and the Antae. Evidence suggests that the Slavenae, to the west, were the ancestors of the Serbs and Croats, while the Antae moved into the regions of Bulgaria, Macedonia, and northern Greece. The Slavic tribes tilled the soil or practiced a pastoral way of life and were organized in patriarchal communities.

The name Bulgaria comes from the Bulgars, a Turkic people who are first mentioned in the sources toward the end of the 5th century AD. Living at that time in the steppes to the north of the Black Sea, the Bulgar tribes were composed of skilled, warlike horsemen governed by khans (chiefs) and boyars (nobles). The Bulgars were subdued by the Avars in the 6th century, but in 635 Khan Kubrat led a successful revolt and organized an independent tribal confederation. After Kubrat's death in 642 the Bulgars were attacked by the Khazars and dispersed. According to Byzantine sources, the Bulgars split into five groups, each under one of Kubrat's sons. One of these, Asparukh (or Isperikh), moved into Bessarabia (between the Dniester and Prut rivers) and then crossed to the south of the Danube, where his people conquered or expelled the Slavic tribes living north of the Balkan Mountains. The Byzantine emperor Constantine IV led an army against the Bulgars but was defeated, and in 681 Byzantium recognized by treaty Bulgar control of the region between the Balkans and the Danube. This is considered to be the starting point of the Bulgarian state.

Asparukh and his successors established their court at Pliska, northeast of modern Shumen, and a religious centre at nearby Madara. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Bulgars kept their settlements distinct from those of the Slavs, from whom they accepted tribute. They maintained a mixed pastoral and agricultural economy, although much of their wealth continued to be acquired through warfare. Asparukh's successor, Tervel (701–718), helped to restore Emperor Justinian II to the Byzantine throne and was rewarded with the title "Caesar." On the whole, however, relations with Byzantium were hostile, and the 8th century was marked by a long series of raids and larger campaigns in which the Byzantine forces were usually victorious. Bulgaria recovered under Khan Krum (803–814), who, after annihilating an imperial army, took the skull of Emperor Nicephorus I, lined it with silver, and made it into a drinking cup. Under Krum's successors Bulgaria enjoyed an extended period of peace with Byzantium and expanded its control over Macedonia and parts of what is now Serbia and Croatia.

Internally, the 8th and 9th centuries saw the gradual assimilation of the Bulgars by the Slavic majority. There are almost no sources that describe this process, but it was certainly facilitated by the spread of Christianity, which provided a new basis for a common culture. Boris I of Bulgaria (852–889) was baptized a Christian in 864, at a time when the conflict between the Roman church and the Eastern church in Constantinople was becoming more open and intense. Although Boris' baptism was into the Eastern church, he subsequently wavered between Rome and Constantinople until the latter was persuaded to grant de facto autonomy to Bulgaria in church affairs. The spread of Christianity was facilitated by the work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who had invented an alphabet in which to write the Slavic language (known as Old Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian) and who had developed a Slavonic liturgy in Moravia. When Moravia committed to Rome and expelled the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, many of them resettled in Bulgaria, where they were welcomed by Boris and undertook the translation of church books and the training of priests. St. Clement and St. Naum are credited with preparing more than 3,000 priests, and they established an important church and educational centre on the shores of Lake Ohrid (Okhrid) in Macedonia.

Bulgaria's conversion had a political dimension, for it contributed both to the growth of central authority and to the melding of Bulgars and Slavs into a unified Bulgarian people. Boris adopted Byzantine political conceptions, referring to himself as ruler "by the grace of God," and the new religion provided justification for suppressing those boyars of Bulgar origin who clung to paganism and the political and social order with which it was linked. In 889, Boris, whose faith apparently was deep and genuine, abdicated to enter a monastery. When his eldest son, Vladimir, fell under the influence of the old boyars and attempted to re-establish paganism, Boris led a coup that overthrew him. After Vladimir was deposed and blinded, Boris convened a council that confirmed Christianity as the religion of the state and moved the administrative capital from Pliska to the Slavic town of Preslav (now known as Veliki Preslav). The council conferred the throne on Boris' third son, Simeon, and Boris retired permanently to monastic life.

With the collapse of the first Bulgarian state, the Bulgarian church fell under the domination of Greek ecclesiastics who took control of the see of Ohrid and attempted to replace the Bulgarian Slavic liturgy with liturgy in the Greek language. Bulgarian culture was by this time too deeply rooted to be easily removed, and the Byzantine Empire, beset by the attacks of the Seljuk Turks and the disturbances of the Crusaders, lacked the power to support a more forcible Hellenisation. In 1185 the brothers Ivan and Peter Asen of Turnovo launched a revolt to throw off Byzantine sovereignty. The Asen brothers defeated the Byzantines and forced Constantinople to recognize Bulgarian independence. Their brother and successor, Kaloyan (reigned 1197–1207), briefly accepted the supremacy of Rome in church affairs and received a royal crown from the pope. But when the patriarch at Constantinople again recognized the independence of the Bulgarian church, Kaloyan reverted to Orthodoxy.

The second Bulgarian empire, with its centre at Turnovo, reached its height during the reign of Tsar Ivan Asen II (1218–41). Bulgaria was then the leading power in the Balkans, holding sway over Albania, Epirus, Macedonia, and Western Thrace. During this period the first Bulgarian coinage appeared, and in 1235 the head of the Bulgarian church received the title of patriarch.

The successors of Ivan Asen II could not match his ability. Moreover, Bulgaria was beset by Mongol attacks from the north and by internal upheavals brought on by the growing burdens placed on the peasantry by the powerful nobles. The great peasant revolt of 1277–80 briefly allowed the swineherd Ivaylo to occupy the royal throne at Turnovo before he was defeated with the aid of the Byzantines. The Asen dynasty died out in 1280 and was followed by two others, both of Cuman origin, neither of which succeeded in restoring central authority. The declining state reached its nadir in 1330 when Tsar Mikhail Shishman was defeated and slain by the Serbs at the Battle of Velbuzhd (modern Kyustendil). Bulgaria lost its Macedonian lands to the Serbian empire of Stefan Dušan, which then became the dominant Balkan power. Bulgaria appeared to be on the point of disintegration into feudal states when the invasions of the Ottoman Turks began.

The Ottoman Turks first entered the Balkans as mercenaries of Byzantium in the 1340s, and they returned as invaders in their own right during the following decade. Between 1359 and 1362 Sultan Murad I wrested much of Thrace from Byzantine control and captured Adrianople (modern Edirne, Tur.), commanding the route up the Maritsa valley into the heart of the Bulgarian lands. In 1364 the Turks defeated a crusade sent by Pope Urban V to regain Adrianople, but not before the crusaders committed so many atrocities against the Orthodox Christians that many Bulgarians came to regard Turkish rule as preferable to alliance with the Roman Catholic West. Although Ivan Shishman, Bulgaria's last medieval tsar, declared himself a vassal of Murad in 1371, the Ottomans continued to seek complete domination. Sofia, in the west, was seized in 1382, and Shumen, in the east, fell in 1388. A year later the defeat of the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo sealed the fate of the entire Balkan Peninsula. In 1393, after a three-month siege, Turnovo was taken and burned. Ivan Shishman died in Turkish captivity three years later. With the capture of a rump Bulgarian kingdom centred at Bdin (Vidin) in 1396, the last remnant of Bulgarian independence disappeared.

The five centuries from 1396 to 1878 are engraved in Bulgarian consciousness as the era of the "Turkish yoke," traditionally seen as a period of darkness and suffering. Both national and ecclesiastical independence were lost. The Bulgarian nobility was destroyed—its members either perished, fled, or accepted Islam and Turkicization—and the peasantry was enserfed to Turkish masters. The "blood tax" took a periodic levy of male children for conversion to Islam and service in the Janissary Corps of the Ottoman army. The picture was not entirely negative, however. Once completed, the Turkish conquest included Bulgaria in a "pax ottomanica" that was a marked contrast to the preceding centuries of war and conflict. While Ottoman power was growing or at its height, it provided an acceptable way of life for the Bulgarian population. It was only when the empire was in its decline and unable to control the depredations of local officials or maintain reasonable order that the Bulgarians found Ottoman rule unbearable.

Bulgaria did not change radically in its religious or ethnic composition during the Ottoman period, for the Turks did not attempt forcibly to populate Bulgaria with Turks or to convert all Bulgarians to Islam. With the exception of the people of the Rhodope Mountains who did convert (and thereafter were called Pomaks), the Bulgarian population remained within the Orthodox church. Although Turkish administrators were established in the towns and countryside, Turkish peasants were not settled in Bulgaria in large numbers, and those who did immigrate were concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country and in some of the valleys of Macedonia and Thrace. In the 15th and 16th centuries Turkish authorities permitted the immigration of Jewish refugees from the Christian West. While the majority were resettled in Constantinople and Salonika, most Bulgarian towns acquired small Jewish communities.

At the time Bulgaria was conquered, the Ottoman Empire was divided into two parts for administrative purposes. Bulgaria was part of the European section, called Rumelia, headed by a beylerbey ("lord of lords") who resided in Sofia. As the empire expanded, this system proved inadequate, and in the 16th century it was replaced by territorial divisions called vilayets (provinces), further subdivided into sanjaks (districts). The borders of these units changed many times over the centuries. Bulgarian lands were assigned as fiefs to Turkish warriors, or spahis, who could impose taxes and other obligations on the subject population. Fiefs were also given to governors and other officeholders to provide their income, and lands in the form of vakifs—designated for the support of religious, educational, or charitable enterprises—were assigned to specific institutions. The spahi had no right of lordship or justice over the peasants living in his fief, and the Bulgarians frequently retained their traditional village administration and the customs of local law with regard to issues in which Turkish interests were not involved.

The decline of the Ottoman Empire was marked by military defeats at the hands of Christian Europe and by a weakening of central authority. Both of these factors were significant for developments in Bulgaria. As the empire was thrown on the defensive, the Christian powers, first Austria and then Russia, saw the Bulgarian Christians as potential allies. Austrian propaganda helped to provoke an uprising at Turnovo in 1598, and two others occurred in 1686 and 1688 after the Turks were forced to lift the siege of Vienna. Under Catherine II the Great, Russia began to assert itself as the protector of the Orthodox population of the Ottoman Empire, a claim that the Sublime Porte (as the government of the empire was called) was forced to recognize in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774.

Of greater significance, however, was the inability of the central government to keep the spahis and local officials under control. During the 17th and 18th centuries the spahis succeeded in converting their fiefs to çiftliks, hereditary estates that could not be regulated by the government. Owners of çiftliks were free to impose higher obligations on the peasantry or to drive them off the land. Turkish refugees from lands liberated by Christian states were frequently resettled on çiftliks in Bulgaria, increasing the pressure on the land and the burden on the peasantry. Occasionally, Turkish refugees formed marauding bands that could not be subdued by central authority and that exacted a heavy toll from their Christian victims. One response among the Bulgarians was a strengthening of the haiduk tradition. The haiduks were guerrillas—some would say bandits—who took to the mountains to live by robbing the Turks. Although the haiduks lacked a strong sense of national consciousness, they kept alive a spirit of resistance and gave rise to legends that inspired later revolts.

In the 19th century growing Bulgarian discontent was given direction in a movement of national revival that restored Bulgarian national consciousness and prepared the way for independence. The social foundation of this movement was produced by the quickening of economic life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and by the influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, echoes of which, however faint, were heard among the people. A growing demand for cotton cloth and other products stimulated urban development. Many Bulgarian merchant houses were founded, and artisans in the towns began to form guild organizations (esnafi). The latter played an important role in sponsoring schools and providing scholarships for young Bulgarians to study abroad.

The monk Paisiy of the Khilendar Monastery on Mount Athos is recognized as the founder of the national revival. Little is known of his life except that he came from a merchant family in Bansko, a town in southwestern Bulgaria that maintained commercial relations with Vienna. In the 1760s Paisiy used texts preserved on Mount Athos to write his "Slaveno-Bulgarian History." It reminded Bulgarians of the greatness of their past empires and called on them to foreswear foreign tongues and customs and to take pride in their race. Sofroniy, bishop of Vratsa, helped to spread Paisiy's influence. In his own writings he stressed the importance of education, without which his people would remain, in his words, "dumb animals."

The cultivation of Bulgarian national consciousness was initially a cultural rather than a political movement. Consequently, it was directed more against the "cultural yoke" of the Greeks than the "political yoke" of the Ottoman Empire. After the Turkish conquest of the Balkans, the Greek patriarch had become the representative of the Rum millet, or the "Roman nation," which comprised all the subject Christian nationalities.

The desire to restore an independent Bulgarian church was a principal goal of the national "awakeners." Their efforts were rewarded in 1870 when the Sublime Porte issued a decree establishing an autocephalous Bulgarian church, headed by an exarch, with jurisdiction over the 15 dioceses of Bulgaria and Macedonia. Although the Greek patriarch refused to recognize this church and excommunicated its adherents, it became a leading force in Bulgarian life, representing Bulgarian interests at the Sublime Porte and sponsoring the further expansion of Bulgarian churches and schools. After the liberation of 1878 it provided a powerful means of spreading Bulgarian national feeling in Macedonia.

The creation of the Bulgarian exarchate was the high point of the national revival as a cultural movement. The inability of the Sublime Porte to maintain order or to carry through its program of reform known as Tanzimat (1839–76), combined with the examples of Greek and Serbian independence, engendered an explicitly revolutionary movement among the Bulgarians. Inspired by the haiduk tradition, Georgi Rakovski formed a Bulgarian legion on Serbian territory in 1862 to send armed bands to harass the Turks in Bulgaria. In 1866 Lyuben Karavelov and Vasil Levski created a Bulgarian Secret Central Committee in Bucharest to prepare for a national uprising. It dispatched "apostles" into Bulgaria to spread the message among the people. Levski was captured during one such mission and was hanged in Sofia. He is considered to be the greatest hero of the revolutionary movement.

Against the background of a wider Balkan crisis, the Bulgarian revolutionary committees laid plans for a nationwide uprising in 1876. The April Uprising (beginning April 20 [Old Style], May 2 [New Style]) broke out prematurely and was violently put down. The atrocities committed against the civilian population by irregular Turkish forces, including the massacre of 15,000 Bulgarians near Plovdiv, increased the Bulgarian desire for independence. They also outraged public opinion in Europe, where they became known as the Bulgarian Horrors. A conference of European statesmen proposed a series of reforms, but when the sultan refused to implement them Russia declared war. In the ensuing campaign Bulgarian volunteer forces fought alongside the Russian army, earning particular distinction in the epic battle for the Shipka Pass.

Advancing to the outskirts of Constantinople, the Russians dictated the Treaty of San Stefano, which called for a large independent Bulgaria stretching from the Danube to the Aegean and from the Vardar and Morava valleys to the Black Sea. The boundaries stated in the treaty, signed on March 3, 1878, represented the fulfilment of Bulgaria's territorial aspirations and remained for generations the national ideal of the people. But the creation of a large Bulgaria, perceived as an outpost of Russian influence in the Balkans, was intolerable to Austria-Hungary and Britain, and they forced a revision of the Treaty of San Stefano a few months later at the Congress of Berlin. The new Treaty of Berlin (July 13, 1878) created a much smaller Bulgarian principality, autonomous but under the sovereignty of the Sublime Porte, in the territory between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains. To the south, the treaty created the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia, subject to the sultan but with a Christian governor. Macedonia was returned entirely to the Ottoman Empire. The treaty also stipulated that Bulgaria would elect an assembly of notables to meet at Turnovo to prepare a constitution and to choose a prince who would be confirmed by the powers.

The liberation of Bulgaria from Turkish rule also functioned as a land reform, for Russian occupation authorities and subsequent Bulgarian governments confiscated the Turkish estates and sold them in small parcels to the peasantry. Bulgaria began its independence as a nation of smallholders with one of the most egalitarian land distributions in Europe.

In March 1911, against the background of increasing unrest in Macedonia, Ferdinand appointed a new government under Ivan Geshov to begin negotiations for an anti-Turkish alliance. In May 1912 Bulgaria signed a treaty with Serbia providing for military cooperation but leaving a large section of Macedonia as a contested zone, the fate of which would be determined after the war. A quickly made agreement with Greece also made no provision for the future distribution of territory. An arrangement between Greece and Serbia and verbal agreements with Montenegro completed the formation of the Balkan League. Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire on October 8, and the other Balkan states soon entered the conflict.

The successes of the Balkan League exceeded expectations. Bulgarian forces won major victories at Lozengrad (now Kurklareli) and Lüleburgaz and laid siege to Adrianople and the Çatalca line of fortifications defending Constantinople, while the Greeks took Salonika (now Thessaloníki), and Serbian troops won a series of battles in Macedonia. Turkey asked for an armistice, but Ferdinand insisted that the army attempt to capture Constantinople. When the assault on the Çatalca line failed, leaving the Bulgarian army in a weakened state, the tsar agreed to the armistice, and peace negotiations began in London. On May 30, 1913, Turkey signed the Treaty of London, conceding all but a small strip of its European territory. But it proved impossible to divide the territory peacefully among the victors. Serbia and Greece insisted on retaining most of the Macedonian territory they had occupied, and Romania demanded compensation for its neutrality. When Geshov was not able to negotiate a compromise, he resigned in favour of Stoyan Danev, who reflected the tsar's desire for a military solution. On the night of June 29–30 Bulgarian forces began the Second Balkan War by launching a surprise assault on Greek and Serbian positions in Macedonia. As the Bulgarian attack was being repulsed, Romanian troops began an uncontested march toward Sofia from the north, and Turkey reoccupied the fortress of Adrianople. By the Treaty of Bucharest (Aug. 10, 1913), Romania took the rich lands of the southern Dobruja and the city of Silistra, while Serbia and Greece divided the larger part of Macedonia between them. From its gains in the First Balkan War, Bulgaria retained only a small part of eastern Macedonia, the Pirin region, and a portion of eastern Thrace. This was\poor compensation for the loss of the southern Dobruja and of the Bulgarian exarchate in Macedonia. Consequently, the desire to win back what had been lost was the main motivating factor in Bulgaria's diplomacy when World War I began.

When World War I began, Bulgaria declared strict neutrality, but the tsar and a Germanophile government under Vasil Radoslavov encouraged both sides to bid for Bulgarian intervention. In this contest, the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary\and the German empire) could offer far more at the expense of Serbia, Greece, and, later, Romania, than could the Triple\Entente (an alliance of Great Britain, France, and Russia), which had to take the interests of its smaller allies into account. During the summer of 1915, when the military balance swung in Germany's favour, Bulgaria committed to the Central Powers and declared war on Serbia on October 14. Some of the neutralist and pro-Entente political figures objected, but none went as far as the Agrarian leader Stamboliyski, who threatened the tsar and issued a call for the troops to resist mobilization. For these acts he was arrested and condemned to life imprisonment.

By the autumn of 1918 approximately 900,000 men, nearly 40 percent of the male population, had been conscripted. The army suffered 300,000 casualties, including 100,000 killed, the most severe per capita losses of any country involved in the war. In the interior, bad weather and the absence of adult male labour cut grain production nearly in half, while the town population suffered from shortages of food and fuel and from runaway inflation. "Women's riots" for food began early in 1917 and continued to the end of the war. The revolutions in Russia and the hopes inspired by American intervention in the war and by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points peace plan further contributed to the breakdown of civilian order and military discipline. In June 1918 the replacement of the pro-German Radoslavov by Alexander Malinov, a leader of the parliamentary opposition, raised hopes for an end to the war, but instead frustration increased as Malinov yielded to Tsar Ferdinand's determination to fight on.

On Sept. 15, 1918, the Allied forces on the Macedonian front broke through the Bulgarian lines at Dobropol'ye. The army dissolved, as many of the troops deserted to return home, and others began a march on Sofia to punish the tsar and party leaders responsible for the war. Ferdinand turned to Stamboliyski, releasing the Agrarian leader from prison in return for his promise to use his influence to restore order among the troops. Stamboliyski, however, joined the uprising and, at the village of Radomir, where rebel troops were encamped, proclaimed Bulgaria a republic. The Radomir Rebellion was short-lived, as the Agrarian-led assault on Sofia was repulsed by German and Macedonian forces that remained loyal to the tsar. But this provided only a temporary respite. The Bulgarian government asked the Allies for an armistice, which was signed on September 29. Four days later Tsar Ferdinand abdicated in favour of his son Boris III and left the country.

Bulgaria was punished for its part in World War I by the Treaty of Neuilly, which assigned the southern portion of the Dobruja region to Romania, a strip of western territory including Tsaribrod and Strumitsa to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (subsequently called Yugoslavia), and the Aegean territories gained in the Balkan Wars to the Allies, who turned them over to Greece at the Conference of San Remo in 1920. Bulgaria also was disarmed and subjected to a heavy burden of reparations.

When World War II began in Europe, Bulgaria proclaimed neutrality. Tsar Boris, however, appointed a new government under a notorious Germanophile, Bogdan Filov, and moved steadily closer to the German orbit, particularly after Germany forced Romania to restore the southern Dobruja to Bulgaria in August 1940. The desire for territorial expansion at the expense of Yugoslavia and Greece and the expectation of a German victory led Boris to join the Axis on March 1, 1941. German troops used Bulgaria as a base from which to attack Yugoslavia and Greece, and in return Bulgarian forces were permitted to occupy Greek Thrace, Yugoslav Macedonia, and part of Serbia. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval installation at Pearl Harbor (in Hawaii), Bulgaria yielded to German pressure to declare war on Great Britain and the United States, a move that was regarded as of only symbolic importance, but Tsar Boris avoided joining the war against the Soviet Union, fearing that this would lead to popular unrest.

Bulgaria was relatively untouched by military operations until the summer of 1943, when Allied bombers began to attack rail and industrial centres. The government complied with German requests to deport the Jews of the occupied territories to the concentration camp at Treblinka (in Poland), but Tsar Boris cancelled orders for the deportation of the rest of Bulgaria's Jews in the face of protests led by prominent political figures and Metropolitan Stefan, head of the Bulgarian Orthodox church.

Some attempts at forming a resistance were made by Agrarian leaders when Bulgaria joined the Axis. After the German attack on the Soviet Union, however, it was the Bulgarian Communist Party that assumed the initiative inside the country. Until the final stage of the war, the tactics of the resistance emphasized sabotage and small-group operations. About 10,000 persons are estimated to have participated, making it the largest resistance movement among any of Germany's allies. Politically, the communists sought the cooperation of other opposition groups, and in August 1943 the Fatherland Front was formed, composed of communists, left-Agrarians, Zveno, socialists, and some independent political figures. The front's influence grew as the military situation of Germany deteriorated.

Many Bulgarians expected Tsar Boris to break with the German alliance when circumstances permitted. On Aug. 28, 1943, however, the tsar suffered a fatal heart attack. Because his son and heir, Simeon II, was only six years old, Filov established a Regency Council headed by himself and appointed a new government under Dobri Bozhilov that remained loyal to the German alliance. In May 1944, faced with the continuing German collapse and stern Allied threats that Germany's allies would be severely punished, Bozhilov resigned. He was replaced with the right-Agrarian Ivan Bagrianov, who began secret negotiations for surrender with the Allies but at a snail's pace. At the end of August, the sudden surrender of Romania, which brought Soviet troops to the Danube months before they had been expected, created panic in Sofia. When Bagrianov's attempt to proclaim Bulgarian neutrality was rejected as insufficient by both Britain and the Soviet Union, the prime minister resigned and was replaced by Kosta Muraviev of the Agrarian Union, who reiterated a proclamation of neutrality. Four days later, on Sept. 5, 1944, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria, and Soviet forces began to enter the country unopposed. Simultaneously, the Fatherland Front began preparations for a coup d'état. Despite Muraviev's declaration of war against Germany on September 8, during that night military forces organized by Zveno and partisan detachments occupied key points in Sofia and toppled Muraviev's government in the name of the Fatherland Front. Kimon Georgiev of Zveno became the new prime minister and sought an immediate armistice with the Soviet command.

The consolidation of communist power in Bulgaria was carried out by 1948, coinciding with the completion of the peace treaty with the Allies and the presence of Soviet occupation forces. In the coalition Fatherland Front government, the communists enjoyed control of the interior and judicial ministries, which were crucial in setting up the new state. Taking advantage of the popular feeling that those who were responsible for Bulgaria's involvement in the war should be punished, the regime established "people's courts" to prosecute the political leaders of the wartime period. The first mass trial, lasting from Dec. 20, 1944, to Feb. 1, 1945, resulted in death sentences for 3 of the tsar's former regents, 28 former ministers, 68 members of parliament, and an adviser to the tsar. Other defendants received long prison sentences. According to official statistics, by the time the people's courts completed their work in April 1945, they had tried 11,122 people, of whom 2,730 were condemned to death, 1,305 to life imprisonment, and 5,119 to terms of up to 20 years. Unofficial estimates suggested that as many as 30,000 political opponents were killed.

The army, which was under overall Soviet command but was not yet under direct communist control, was engaged in the final stages of the campaign against Germany. The communists insisted on the immediate appointment of officers drawn from the partisan movement, and, by the time the regular army returned, the party was in a position to carry through a purge of the officer corps.

On Nov. 4, 1945, Georgi Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years of exile. The belligerent tone with which he referred to the opposition in his first public address was a clear indication of his party's intentions.

Given the Communist Party's control of the instruments of power, the hopes of the non-communist opposition rested on the Western democracies. Indeed, during the summer of 1945 the regime postponed parliamentary elections after Great Britain and the United States protested the undemocratic character of the proposed electoral laws. Bulgaria, however, did not have a high priority on the diplomatic agenda of the West. As early as October 1944 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had shown his willingness to consign the country to Soviet control during his "percentages discussion" with the Soviet premier, Joseph Stalin. As the Bulgarian communists and their Soviet sponsors became aware that the Western states were not concerned with events in Bulgaria, they moved more forcefully to eliminate the internal opposition. Elections held in November 1945 returned a substantial majority in favour of the communists and their allies. In September 1946 a referendum decided by a 93 percent majority to proclaim Bulgaria a republic, and Tsar Simeon II and the queen mother were required to leave the country.

Elections for a Grand National Assembly to prepare a new constitution were held on Oct. 27, 1946. Although they produced a large communist majority, the opposition polled more than one million votes, which amounted to 28 percent of the total. When the assembly opened in November, the Agrarian leader Nikola Petkov emerged as the opposition's principal spokesman. He was charged by the police with plotting to overthrow the government and was expelled from parliament along with most of his associates. In June 1947 Petkov was arrested, and on September 23 he was executed. One week later the United States extended diplomatic recognition to the new regime; Great Britain had already done so in February.

The defeat of the political opposition coincided with or was followed by the elimination of nearly all elements of pluralism in Bulgarian society. This seems to have been accelerated after the founding congress of the Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) on Sept. 22–27, 1947, at Szklarska Poredba in Poland, where Andrey Aleksandrovich Zhdanov and Georgy Maksimilianovich Malenkov delivered the message that Stalin desired a more rapid transformation of the socialist camp along Soviet lines. In Bulgaria the "intensification of the revolutionary process" saw increased pressure on the remaining non-communist parties. Some socialists applied to join the Bulgarian Communist Party, and those who remained in opposition were crushed by police repression. The Socialist Party was formally absorbed by the Bulgarian Communist Party in August 1948. The Agrarian leader, Georgi Traikov, repudiated his party's traditional ideology and defined a new role for it as the helpmeet or "little brother" of the Bulgarian Communist Party in the countryside. Zveno and the remaining smaller parties announced their "self-liquidation" by the beginning of 1949. They were dissolved into the Fatherland Front, which in turn was converted into a broad patriotic organization under communist control.

In the Grand National Assembly a team of Soviet jurists assisted in the preparation of the "Dimitrov Constitution," which went into effect on Dec. 4, 1947. Modelled closely on the Soviet constitution of 1936, it provided a legal foundation for the reconstruction of the state on communist principles.

The Fatherland Front regime had launched an assault on private property almost immediately after the coup of Sept. 9, 1944, employing a variety of legislative measures aimed at confiscating the wealth of "fascists" or "speculators." The Dimitrov Constitution provided for even larger measures of nationalization. All large-scale industries, banks, and insurance companies were nationalized, and government monopolies were established over the major items of retail trade. By the end of 1948 approximately 85 percent of industrial production was in the hands of the state, with another 7 percent carried on by cooperative organizations. The party also sponsored a reorganization of the country's trade unions, creating the General Workers' Trade Union and gradually forcing all workers' organizations into it. Similarly, the youth organizations of the various parties were incorporated into the Dimitrov Communist Youth League.

Exarch Stefan, head of the Bulgarian Orthodox church, sought to adapt to the new political regime, but he resisted the efforts of the Bulgarian Communist Party to control church affairs directly. In September 1948 Stefan resigned his office under mysterious circumstances and retired to a monastery. His successor offered no resistance to legislation adopted in March 1949 that subjected all religious orders to state supervision. At the time this law was adopted, 15 pastors from evangelical Protestant churches were arrested, tried, and executed for espionage on behalf of the United States and Britain and for other alleged crimes. Soon afterward a number of Bulgarian Catholic clergy were tried for spying for the Vatican and for disseminating anticommunist propaganda. The nearly 50,000 Bulgarian Jews who survived the war were encouraged to emigrate to Israel. The regime also attempted to deport ethnic Turks and Gypsies, causing the Turkish government to seal the border.

Traicho Kostov, who had been instrumental in supervising the defeat of the opposition, was accused of treason and of collaborating with Yugoslavia's communist leader Josip Broz Tito against Stalinism. Kostov's execution in December 1949 was followed by the purge of thousands of "Kostovites" and others alleged to be criminals and spies.

Georgi Dimitrov died in office in July 1949. His immediate successor, Vasil Kolarov, died early in 1950 and was followed by Vulko Chervenkov. Known as Bulgaria's "Little Stalin," Chervenkov followed policies aimed at developing Bulgaria according to the Soviet model. These included rapid industrialization, with an emphasis on heavy industry, the forced collectivization of agriculture, heavy reliance on the police and security apparatus to control the country, and isolation from nations outside the Soviet bloc.

Stalin's death in 1953 and the inauguration of the "New Course" in the Soviet Union had repercussions in Bulgaria. In 1954 Chervenkov accepted the Soviet model of collective leadership, remaining prime minister but yielding his post as party leader to Todor Zhivkov. The government also released several thousand political prisoners and moderated its economic policies in favour of raising living standards. The beginning of open de-Stalinization at the Soviet Union's 20th Communist Party Congress in February 1956 was followed in Bulgaria by the April Plenum of the Bulgarian Communist Party, at which Chervenkov was accused of having created a personality cult and of having violated the norms of legality. Chervenkov was removed from the premiership, there was some relaxation of censorship, and the victims of the Kostovite trials, including Kostov himself (posthumously), began to be rehabilitated.

In the years after the April Plenum, the party leader, Zhivkov, became the dominant figure in political life. In 1962 he became prime minister, and he continued to hold the positions of head of state and head of party until 1989. An attempted putsch led by General Ivan Todorov-Gorunya in 1965 was easily put down, and Zhivkov consistently managed to purge or undercut party leaders regarded as potential rivals.

During the era of Zhivkov's ascendancy, Bulgaria modelled its domestic policies on those of the Soviet Union. Treaties linked Bulgaria's economic development with that of the Soviet Union through the end of the 20th century. Bulgaria gave the highest priority to participation in the modern scientific-technological revolution and pursued policies aimed at industrialization and the development of a population with the education and skills appropriate to an industrial state. In 1948 approximately 80 percent of the population drew their living from the soil. In 1988 the government reported that 19 percent of the labour force was engaged in agriculture, with the rest concentrated in industry and the service sector.

In its foreign relations after the 1950s, Bulgaria abandoned the isolationism that characterized the Chervenkov period. Although remaining steadfast in its commitments to the Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Bulgaria improved relations with its Balkan neighbours, particularly Greece, and expanded its economic and cultural relations with most Western states. Relations with Yugoslavia remained strained, however, over the persistence of the Macedonian issue. In 1979 Bulgaria proposed a treaty with Yugoslavia that would guarantee the inviolability of the borders established after World War II; this proposal was rejected, however, because of Bulgaria's refusal to admit the existence of a distinct Macedonian nationality. From the Bulgarian point of view, such an admission would both fly in the face of historical reality and legitimize Yugoslav claims on the Pirin region.

During the 1970s, in spite of the country's economic growth, serious concern developed over the low birth rate of the ethnic Bulgarian population. Numerous measures were adopted to encourage larger families, but without apparent effect. In late 1984 the government began a major campaign to "Bulgarize," or assimilate, the country's ethnic Turks. Measures aimed at the Turkish population, estimated to number approximately 800,000, included the abandonment of Turkish-language publications and radio broadcasts and the requirement that Turks adopt Bulgarian names. The ethnic Turkish population, however, resisted assimilation, and clashes with the authorities continued. During the spring and summer of 1989, when the government of Turkey offered to accept refugees from Bulgaria, more than 300,000 ethnic Turks fled or were driven from the country in a wave of violence.

The era of reforms launched by Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union had a major impact on Bulgaria, inspiring greater demands for openness and democratization. The growth and greater aggressiveness of Bulgarian dissidents, a declining economic situation, and internal party rivalries led Zhivkov's colleagues to force his resignation on Nov. 10, 1989. He was soon subjected to intense criticism for corruption and abuse of power, placed under detention, and held while a state commission prepared formal charges against him.

Zhivkov's successors endorsed a policy of openness, pluralism, and respect for law, halted repression of the ethnic Turks, and took the first steps toward separating the Bulgarian Communist Party from the state. Article One of the constitution, guaranteeing the party a monopoly of power, was repealed. After some shuffling of positions, Petar Mladenov was named head of state, Andrey Lukanov prime minister, and Alexander Lilov head of the Bulgarian Communist Party. In early 1990 the party held an extraordinary congress that enacted significant changes in party structure. To symbolize its break with the repressive policies of the past, the party renamed itself the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP).

In the meantime, dissident groups took advantage of the country's new freedoms to organize opposition political parties. Many of these joined the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), a coalition led by the sociologist Zheliu Zhelev. By the spring of 1990 the UDF and the socialists had agreed to free elections for a Grand National Assembly that would prepare a new constitution for the country. In these elections and subsequent runoffs, held June 10 and June 17, the socialists won a narrow majority of seats in the assembly. In July 1990 Mladenov resigned after unsuccessfully attempting to conceal the fact that he had recommended a military crackdown on protesters in late 1989. Because their majority was too small to allow them to govern alone, the socialists supported the election of the opposition leader Zhelev in August.

The National Assembly adopted a new constitution on July 12, 1991, which proclaimed Bulgaria as a parliamentary republic and promised citizens a broad range of freedoms and equality before the law. During the summer several parties withdrew from the UDF coalition, and those that remained split into two factions: UDF (liberals) and UDF (movement). In elections for the National Assembly held in October 1991, the UDF (movement) won a narrow majority of seats over the BSP, with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF; primarily representing the country's Turkish minority) gaining a small number of seats; no other party managed to score the required minimum percentage of the vote to qualify for participation in parliament. The UDF, with the support of the MRF, formed a government under Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov that had no socialist participation. Zhelev was returned to the presidency for a five-year term in elections held in January 1992.

The new government, faced with severe economic difficulties, began by seizing the property of the old Bulgarian Communist Party and its satellite organizations and by adopting a law regarding restitution of property to those from whom it had been taken by the communist government. Economic reforms—including price liberalization and the privatization of industry—began as Bulgaria sought to meet the conditions outlined by Western nations as a prerequisite for extending economic aid.

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