A Concise History of Bulgaria Read online

  A Concise History of Bulgaria

  Bulgaria is slated to become a member of the European Union in 2007, yet its history is amongst the least well-known in the rest of the continent. R. J. Crampton provides here a general introduction to this country at the crossroads of Christendom and Islam. The text and illustrations trace the rich and dramatic story from pre-history, through the days when Bulgaria was the centre of a powerful mediaeval empire and the five centuries of Ottoman rule, to the cultural renaissance of the nineteenth century and the political upheavals of the twentieth, upheavals which led Bulgaria into three wars. The new and updated edition covers the years from 1995 to 2004, a vital period in which Bulgaria endured financial meltdown, set itself seriously on the road to reform, elected its former king as prime minister, and finally secured membership of NATO and admission to the European Union.

  R. J. CRAMPTON is Professor of East European History at the University of Oxford. He has written a number of books on modern East European history, including Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century – and After (1996) and The Balkans since the Second World War (2002).

  CAMBRIDGE CONCISE HISTORIES

  This is a new series of illustrated ‘concise histories’ of selected individual countries, intended both as university and college textbooks and as general historical introductions for general readers, travellers and members of the business community.

  For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book.

  A Concise History of Bulgaria

  Second Edition

  R. J. Crampton

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

  CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

  Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

  www.cambridge.org

  Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521616379

  © R. J. Crampton 1997, 2005

  This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

  First published 1997

  Reprinted 2000, 2003

  Second edition 2005

  Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

  A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

  Crampton, R. J.

  A concise history of Bulgaria / by R. J. Crampton. – 2nd ed.

  p. cm. – (Cambridge concise histories)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 0 521 85085 1 (cloth) – ISBN 0 521 61637 9 (pbk.)

  1. Bulgaria – History. I. Title. II. Series.

  DR67.C72 2005

  949.9 – dc22 2005045765

  ISBN-13 978-0-521-85085-8 hardback

  ISBN-10 0-521-85085-1 hardback

  ISBN-13 978-0-521-61637-9 paperback

  ISBN-10 0-521-61637-9 paperback

  For my cousin

  ROBERT GRAY

  With affection and in commemoration of our childhoods of long, long ago

  Contents

  List of illustrations

  Preface

  Preface to the second edition

  Note on transliteration

  1 The Bulgarian Lands from Prehistory to the Arrival of the Bulgarians

  2 Mediaeval Bulgaria, 681–1393

  Bulgaria under the Khans, 681–852

  The reign of Boris I (852–888) and the conversion to Christianity

  The reign of Simeon the great (893–927)

  The end of the first empire, 896–1018

  Bulgaria under Byzantine rule, 1018–1185

  The second Bulgarian empire, 1185–1393

  3 Ottoman Rule in the Bulgarian Lands

  Ottoman society and administration

  The Bulgarian population under Ottoman rule

  The Bulgarian church under Ottoman rule

  Protest against Ottoman power

  The decline of the Ottoman empire

  4 The National Revival and the Liberation

  The Awakeners

  Economic, social and political change in the Ottoman empire

  The background to the Bulgarian cultural revival

  The cultural revival: education, literacy and literature

  The struggle for a separate Bulgarian church

  The struggle for political independence and the liberation of 1878

  5 The Consolidation of the Bulgarian State, 1878–1896

  The Constituent Assembly and the Tûrnovo constitution

  Constitutional conflicts, 1879–1883

  The national question and union with Rumelia, 1884–1885

  The war with Serbia and the deposition of Alexander Battenberg, 1885–1886

  The regency and the election of Prince Ferdinand, 1886–1887

  The Stambolovshtina, 1887–1894

  The recognition of Prince Ferdinand

  Ethnic and social change after the liberation

  6 Ferdinand’s Personal Rule, 1896–1918

  Stoilov’s programme for modernisation

  The establishment of Ferdinand’s personal rule

  Social crisis and the emergence of the agrarian movement, 1895–1908

  The Macedonian crisis and the declaration of independence, 1900–1908

  Balkan diplomacy and the Balkan wars, 1908–1913

  Bulgaria and the first world war

  7 Bulgaria, 1918–1944

  The peace settlement of 1919

  Agrarian rule, 1919–1923

  The Rule of the Democratic Alliance, 1923–1931

  The rule of the devetnaiseti, May 1934–January 1935

  The personal rule of King Boris, 1934–1941

  Bulgaria and the second world war, 1941–1944

  8 Bulgaria under Communist Rule, 1944–1989

  The communist takeover, 1944–1947

  Destalinisation and the rise of Todor Zhivkov, 1953–1965

  The zhivkovshtina, 1965–1981

  The decline and fall of Todor Zhivkov, 1981–1989

  9 Post-communist Bulgaria

  Part I Incomplete transition, 1989–1997

  Dismantling the apparatus of totalitarianism, November 1989–December 1990

  Constructing the apparatus of democracy, December 1990–October 1991

  The UDF government, October 1991–October 1992

  The Berov government, December 1992–September 1994

  The failure of economic reform, 1989–1994

  The Videnov government and the catastrophe of 1996

  Part II Real transition, 1997–2004

  The Kostov government and the attainment of stability, April 1997–June 2001

  The government of ‘the king’; the road to the EU and NATO

  Conclusion

  Appendix 1 Bulgarian monarchs

  Appendix 2 Prime ministers of Bulgaria, 1879–2004

  Suggestions for further reading

  Index

  Illustrations

  Plates

  1.1 A Mother Goddess figure, sixth millennium BC

  1.2 A one-handled vase from the Vratsa treasure

  1.3 The Roman theatre in Plovdiv

  2.1 Tsar Simeon defeating the Byzantines, Chronicles of Ivan Skilitsa, MS National Library of Spain, 12–13c.

  2.2 Entrance to a hermit’s cell

  2.3 Detail from the frescoes at Boyana near Sofia, 1259

  2.4 A page from the Ivan Alexander Gospels. Reproduced by permission of the British Library

&
nbsp; 3.1 Christian children taken under the devshirme. From an incunabulum. Reproduced by permission of the Austrian National Library, Vienna

  3.2 Mediaeval Bulgarian peasants. Incunabulum. Reproduced by permission of the Austrian National Library, Vienna

  3.3 Bulgarian church painting of the seventeenth century. Machiel Kiel, Art and Society of Bulgaria in the Turkish Period, Maastricht, Van Gorcum, 1985, p. xviii

  4.1 A page of Paiisi’s great history

  4.2 Sofronii Vrachanski

  4.3 National revival buildings: a clock tower in Zlatitsa

  4.4 National revival buildings: the school in Karlovo

  4.5 Ilarion Makariopolski

  4.6 Vasil Levski

  4.7 A wooden cannon used by Bulgarian insurgents

  4.8 Bashibazouks at work

  5.1 Alexander Battenberg

  5.2 The sûbranie (parliament) building, Sofia

  5.3 Volunteers in the 1885 war against Serbia

  5.4 Prince Alexander’s abdication, 1886

  5.5 Stefan Stambolov

  5.6 Stambolov’s severed hands, 1895

  6.1 Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

  6.2 Signing the armistice, November 1912

  6.3 Bulgarian soldiers in the first world war

  7.1 Aleksandûr Stamboliiski with his father

  7.2 Sveta Nedelya cathedral, Sofia, 16 April 1925

  7.3 Boris III, King of the Bulgarians, 1918–1943

  7.4 Jews detained in Bulgaria, 1943–1944

  7.5 King Boris’s funeral, Sofia, September 1943

  7.6 Sofia welcomes the Red Army in September 1944

  8.1 Nikola Petkov on trial, August 1947

  8.2 Typical communist propaganda

  8.3 Liudmila Zhivkova as patron of the arts

  8.4 The Imaret Mosque, Plovdiv, 1987

  9.1 The fire in the Bulgarian Socialist Party (former Communist Party) headquarters, August 1990

  9.2 Cartoon by Georgi Chaushov showing the loss of public respect for the Bulgarian Orthodox church

  9.3 President Zheliu Zhelev

  9.4 Nadezhda Mihailova

  9.5 Simeon Saxecoburggotski casts his ballot, 17 June 2001

  9.6 A female member of the US Air National Guard’s 150th Fighter Wing

  Maps

  The Bulgarian lands: main rivers and mountains

  1.1 Ancient sites in present-day Bulgaria

  1.2 The Roman empire in the Balkans

  2.1 Bulgaria’s borders during the first kingdom, 681–1018

  2.2 Bulgaria’s borders during the second kingdom, 1185–1393

  3.1 The Bulgarian lands under Ottoman rule

  4.1 The national revival

  4.2 Bulgaria according to the treaties of San Stefano and Berlin

  5.1 Bulgaria, 1878–1912

  6.1 Territorial changes after the Balkan wars

  6.2 The southern Balkan front during the first world war

  7.1 Bulgaria’s borders after the first and second world wars

  7.2 Bulgaria and the second world war

  8.1 Bulgaria in the 1980s

  Preface

  The crowded departure lounge at Gatwick airport on a busy summer Sunday morning may not seem the obvious place to encounter the effects of recent changes in Eastern Europe, but to see young British couples with their children queuing not to go on holiday but to go and work near the Black Sea coast assembling British cars for sale in the Balkans is something which would have been unthinkable ten years ago; it would have been even more of a fantasy in 1967 when I first went to Bulgaria. Bulgaria has opened itself to European and American culture and business.

  This being so it is reasonable to assume that there is a growing need in the west for a concise history of a country which for the last fifty or so years has seldom attracted much attention. It is hoped the present volume will go some way to showing to western readers that Bulgaria has at least as much to offer in terms of historic interest as it does in financial reward.

  All too often in the west we tend to blur the distinction between the nation and the state; when the Portuguese delegate suggested to the first meeting of the League of Nations that the organisation would be better called the League of States he was told that the difference was too insignificant to bother about. No-one who had any connection with the Balkans would make that mistake. And if this book is called A Concise History of Bulgaria it is also to some degree a concise history of the Bulgarians after they had arrived in the Balkans in the seventh century. For the most part the book concentrates on the various Bulgarian states but it cannot ignore the fate of the Bulgarians during the five hundred years when they were part of the Ottoman empire and there was no Bulgaria. Even when a Bulgarian state re-emerged in 1878 there still has to be a distinction between Bulgaria and the Bulgarians. Many who considered themselves to be Bulgarians lived outside Bulgaria; even more numerous were those outside Bulgaria whom the Bulgarians inside Bulgaria described as Bulgarian. Indeed, the difference between the territorial definitions of Bulgaria and the lands inhabited by the Bulgarians is one of the main themes of modern Bulgarian history.

  It is on modern history that this book concentrates, though an attempt is made to illustrate how the Bulgarian nation and the Bulgarian state emerged in the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century. In that process the rebirth of Bulgarian literature and the revivifying of its culture played a vital part. In a general book limited to seventy thousand words it has not been possible to explore these phenomena to the extent which they deserve, but it is hoped that this short introduction to them will excite further interest and lead to further exploration of these fascinating processes.

  For anyone writing on Balkan or East European history there are difficulties with nomenclature, dates and transliteration. In general, when English forms do not exist, I have used the modern Bulgarian name for towns or geographic features. There are however some exceptions. Istanbul seems inappropriate usage before the Ottomans took the city in 1453 and therefore I have preferred Byzantium or Constantinople; in the short chapter on the pre-Bulgarian period I have generally used classical rather than present-day names, though an obvious exception to this is ‘Balkan’ which is a post-classical term. Readers already familiar with Bulgaria might be surprised at the use of ‘Tûrnovo’ rather than ‘Veliko Tûrnovo’; the adjective has been omitted for the sake of brevity and because no mention is made in the text of Malko Tûrnovo. I have, I hope, been more consistent with dates. I have used the Gregorian or western calendar rather than the Julian used by Orthodox Christians; the footnote on p. 130 gives more information on this point. For transliteration I have used the system set out on page xxi.

  It would be impossible to thank directly all those, in Britain and Bulgaria, who have helped me formulate the ideas and amass the information presented in these pages. The librarians of the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Kiril i Metodi Library in Sofia have made my life much easier, and Sasho and Daniella Shûrbanov and Andrei Pantev have always provided human companionship and endless hospitality when I have been in Bulgaria. In Britain teaching with Michael Hurst has been an enormously rewarding experience. I have also learnt much from my students, particularly Kyril Drezov, Ivan Krûstev, Marietta Stankova and Naoum Kaytchev; in addition to intellectual stimulation they have provided the dual satisfaction of seeing intelligent young Bulgarians making their way in a difficult world, and proving that Bulgarian scholarship is amongst the finest in that world. Aglika Markova and Ivan Stanciov transformed the official image of Bulgaria in Britain and for this I thank them, as well as for making it so easy to deal with Bulgaria. Vanya Stoyanova unearthed the gruesome photograph on page 109. Sheila Kane cast an expert and perceptive eye over the text and is responsible for many improvements in it. William Davies’s gentle, civilised guidance made my task immeasurably easier; he is that rare and priceless phenomenon: the ideal editor. But above all I have to thank my wife for over thirty years of patience, understanding and unstinting support.

>   St Edmund Hall, Oxford

  September 1995

  Preface to the Second Edition

  Any observer of the contemporary world knows that much will change in a decade. This has been particularly true in the states of the former socialist bloc, and nowhere more so than in the Balkans. Bulgaria has naturally not been exempt from this process. Since the first edition of this book the country endured a serious social and political crisis after which it has rebuilt its economic foundations and made huge strides towards integration into the Euro-Atlantic structures. With entry into the EU the country also enters an entirely new chapter in its history, one in which it will be bound more tightly than ever in its past to the other states of Europe. How this monumental change affects the country and its people will be for future histories to relate.

  Since the first appearance of this book friends, colleagues, and well-wishers previously unknown to me have helped me with constructive comments and suggestions for any future edition. I would like to thank them all but would also like to mention in particular Professor Martin Minchev of the University of Calgary, Canada. In the years between the publication of the original edition and now, other students have arrived in Oxford and enriched the university and my own life. In addition to those named in the original version I would like to express my thanks also to Teodora Parveva, Dimitûr Bechev, Patricia Curtis, Tressa Gipe, Ivana Gogova, Milena Grizo, Dimitrina Mihaylova, Yavor Siderov, and Matthew Tejada.

  The hospitality and friendship of Sasho and Daniella Shûrbanov have contributed as much to this second edition as to the first. Special mention must also be made of Aglika Markova without whom the illustrations for this book would have been much impoverished and the jacket design non-existent. Her generosity with her time, together with her indefatigable energy, have made me depend on her far more than I should have done; my gratitude to her is enormous.

  I must also mention Isabelle Dambricourt who, in a remarkably short time, has acquired the expertise, the patience, and the good humour which go to make an excellent editor.