A Concise History of Bulgaria Read online

  The battle of Slivnitsa was a remarkable achievement for an untested army shorn of its senior officers. It was equally an achievement of the nation as a whole, and it is worth recalling that the highest incidence of medals for gallantry was amongst Muslim troops. More than any other event the battle of Slivnitsa welded the Bulgarians north and south of the Balkan mountains into one nation.

  The diplomatic settlement of the union crisis was effected in the treaty of Bucharest of April 1886. It was a distinct disappointment for the Bulgarians. It stated that the governor general of Rumelia should henceforth be the prince of Bulgaria, but it recognised no more than the personal union of these two offices, and the governor general of Rumelia was still required to seek reapproval every five years from the sultan and the powers; nor was any mention made in the text of Prince Alexander. The Russians were leaving the door open for his removal.

  Plate 5.4 A contemporary woodcut showing Prince Alexander’s forced abdication in 1886.

  Alexander did little to help his own cause. He placed no check on the insensitive treatment of Eastern Rumelia by officials in Sofia. This naturally caused resentment, particularly in Plovdiv which, even in 1885, was a larger and more sophisticated city than Sofia. Even worse, Alexander frittered away the support the war had given him in the army. A large number of the Russian trained officers had always been suspicious of Alexander’s German origins and his attempts, most of them futile, to subject the army to German methods of training and organisation. After 1885 Alexander committed the fatal error of promoting only those whom he thought politically reliable, even though this meant discrimination against some of the heroes of the recent war.

  The prince could ill afford to alienate so powerful a group. By the spring of 1886 he was being criticised in public meetings for the meagre rewards offered by the treaty of Bucharest and for the deterioration in relations with Russia. In May a new sûbranie was elected in which many of these criticisms were energetically voiced. Even more important in the new assembly was the reappearance of the Rusé–Varna railway question. The recent upheavals had delayed consideration of this issue and in the interim the British shareholders had raised the asking price. When Karavelov, who was still prime minister, announced that he was now willing to pay a sum much higher than that which he had denounced as exorbitant in 1884, there was pandemonium in the assembly.

  The Russians watched all this with relish. Their agents had for some months let it be known that they would not be opposed to the removal of the prince. In August 1886 a group of army officers acted and deposed Alexander who fled across the Danube. Stambolov, however, was not prepared to tolerate such intervention by the military and their Russian backers. He rallied loyal garrisons, seized Sofia, and induced Alexander to return to Bulgaria. He did not stay long. He was not willing to hold office in the face of Russian hostility and he therefore telegraphed to St Petersburg asking for Alexander III’s endorsement of his return to Bulgaria. This the tsar refused. He could not forgo the chance to be rid of Battenberg at the latter’s own suggestion. The prince had sacrificed himself. On 7 September 1886 he left Bulgaria for the last time. He died in 1893 aged only thirty-six, and was buried in Sofia.

  The Regency and the Election of Prince Ferdinand, 1886–1887

  After Alexander had left Bulgaria the country was governed by a regency of Karavelov, Stambolov and Stambolov’s brother-in-law, Mutkurov, who had done much to rally loyal troops in August. A government was formed under Vasil Radoslavov, a young liberal who had no russophile inclinations. The strongest force in the land was Stambolov.

  Stambolov’s priority was to find a new prince. The first step towards this goal was to call a Grand National Assembly. There were immediately problems with the Russians. The tsar decided to send a special advisor to Bulgaria, appointing General Nikolai Kaulbars, brother of the former minister of war, to the post. Kaulbars demanded the release of those imprisoned for their part in the coup of August, the lifting of the state of siege Stambolov had declared, and the cancelling of the elections for the GNA. The elections could not be valid, Kaulbars insisted, because they were called by the regency which itself had not come to office through due constitutional process. Kaulbars carried his message around the country in a rather shambolic attempt to discredit Stambolov and the regents. There were more sinister threats. In October Kaulbars talked of Russian warships being sent to Varna to protect Russian subjects, and this was widely but incorrectly seen as opening the way to a military coup which would depose Stambolov. The latter made a number of concessions, releasing most of those imprisoned and lifting the state of siege, but he would not give way over the elections to the GNA which took place in September.

  The convening of the GNA did not bring about any immediate improvement. For Kaulbars the fact that the assembly had met was a severe rebuff and in November he left Bulgaria, citing as his justification an alleged insult to a Russian consular official in Plovdiv. Relations between Bulgaria and its liberating power were completely severed and were not to be restored for almost a decade.

  If the convocation of the GNA had been a defeat for Kaulbars it was hardly an immediate victory for Stambolov because it made no progress towards the election of another prince; in fact most delegates would have reappointed Alexander of Battenberg had that option been open to them. To make matters worse there was an almost constant threat of subversion by Russia or its supporters. In 1887 a Russian adventurer, Nabokov, made a second incursion into Bulgaria with the hope of raising a revolt; as on the first occasion he had no success and was soon captured, only to be released because, as a Russian subject, he enjoyed protection under the Capitulations. He was to return for a third pathetic attempt at the end of 1887 but this time the Bulgarian forces of law and order made sure that he was killed rather than captured.

  In March of the same year a much more serious threat to Bulgarian stability had been discovered. Dissident officers seized the garrison in Silistra and those in Varna and Rusé soon joined them; the rebels also had support in the country’s largest military base, that in Shumen. The plot was suppressed but only with great brutality. Eight of the leaders were shot and in disaffected regiments one in twenty of the compliment were chosen at random to be executed by their comrades. Another victim of the Silistra affair was Karavelov who was clapped in jail without any hard evidence that he had been involved in the conspiracy.

  Stambolov’s ruthlessness had understandable causes. He needed to attract a prince to Bulgaria but this could hardly be done unless it could be shown that he could guarantee that prince internal order and security. The GNA had nominated a three-man delegation to tour Europe in search of a new prince and any sign of internal instability would make their task much more difficult. Nor had Stambolov or the delegation been helped by the fact that shortly before the latter’s appointment Karavelov had left the regency having come to the conclusion that the crisis could be overcome only by accepting whatever terms Russia chose to dictate.

  It was not until the mid-summer of 1887 that Stambolov or the delegation had any reason for celebration. It then became known that Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was considering taking the Bulgarian throne. His main concern was over the attitude of Russia. Adequate assurances were given on this account, another GNA was convened in July to elect him, and on 26 August he arrived in Bulgaria. The tsar, however, refused to recognise him as the lawfully elected prince and the other powers, not wishing to endanger their relations with Russia over a state as small as Bulgaria, followed suit.

  The Stambolovshtina*, 1887–1894

  Ferdinand was to stay in Bulgaria for thirty-one years. That he survived his first three years there was largely due to the man who had brought him to the country: Stambolov. Ferdinand immediately appointed Stambolov as prime minister, Stambolov having in the meantime formed his own National Liberal Party on which he could rely for support in parliament. But despite the assurances given to Ferdinand, Russian opposition to him continued, and there were strong fears t
hat Russian agents, particularly after the failure of Nabokov’s third and fatal incursion, might sponsor conspiracies by Bulgarian politicians in exile. Foremost amongst these was Tsankov who had taken refuge in Constantinople and Russia before moving to Belgrade. His move to the Serbian capital had been made possible by political changes in Serbia which brought a pro-Russian monarch to the throne and gave the Russians, for the first time in years, a secure base in the Balkans. From Belgrade Tsankov could easily intrigue in his homeland.

  Plate 5.5 Stefan Stambolov. A young revolutionary in 1876–8, he became speaker of the sûbranie in the early 1880s. After the deposition of Alexander Battenberg he became the strong man of Bulgaria who resisted Russian intrigues and secured Prince Ferdinand upon the Bulgarian throne.

  There was little Stambolov or Ferdinand could do. They expanded the army, nearly doubling its size, in the hope that this would give them more protection and would cauterise discontent amongst the officer corps by enhancing promotion prospects. Ferdinand also made empty and rather foolish boasts about raising Macedonia to a man if the Porte did not reform the administration there in accordance with article 23 of the treaty of Berlin. The first crumb of comfort for Ferdinand and his prime minister came from Britain which at the end of 1888 agreed to lend Bulgaria 46.7 million francs. The loan was to enable the Bulgarians to purchase the Rusé–Varna railway and therefore did not bring real economic benefit to Bulgaria, but it broke the financial ice and other more substantial loans from German and Austrian banks soon followed. At much the same time as agreeing to the loan the British began tariff negotiations with Bulgaria, an agreement being signed in January 1889. In a few months similar agreements were concluded with Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium. Once again the agreements were of little intrinsic economic value to Sofia but a number of European states had dealt with Bulgaria as if it were a fully independent and recognised state.

  The turning point for Ferdinand and Stambolov came in 1890. The year began badly. In 1889 another military conspiracy was hatched, this time around the central figure of Major Kosta Panitsa, a talented but flamboyant young officer of Macedonian origin and a hero of the 1885 war. Panitsa had been a close friend of Alexander Battenberg, the prince being godfather to Panitsa’s son. Panitsa had no great affection for Stambolov and, as a Battenbergist, none at all for Ferdinand. More importantly, however, Panitsa had by 1889 come to the conclusion that Bulgaria had no hope of advancing its cause in Macedonia as long as it remained estranged from Russia. He therefore resolved to assassinate the prince; the deed was to be done at a court ball on 2 February 1890. Panitsa was far too indiscreet a character to make an effective conspirator. The police were soon informed of the plot, much of their information coming from Panitsa’s own valet. The day before the ball all leading conspirators were arrested. Once again retribution was fierce. After due investigation and legal process Panitsa was tied to a tree and shot by a firing squad drawn from Macedonians amongst his own regiment. The government’s victory, however, was hedged with anxiety because the investigations into the plot revealed that it had been far more widespread and popular than Stambolov and his associates had originally thought.

  Despite this Stambolov used the plot to great effect. In doing so he concentrated on the Macedonian aspects of the conspiracy’s origin and strength. If he could do something to advance the Bulgarian cause in Macedonia he would greatly weaken his opponents and greatly bolster his own and Ferdinand’s position. He therefore insisted in Constantinople that Ferdinand was in danger from further conspiracies which were likely to use the Macedonian issue as one of their chief recruiting arguments. Should one of those conspiracies succeed, its architects would have to pay off its supporters by demanding concessions in Macedonia. This could only destabilise the Balkans and weaken the Ottoman empire. It would be much better, said Stambolov, if the Porte voluntarily granted concessions to the Bulgarians in Macedonia; this would increase Ferdinand’s internal standing and thereby lessen the dangers of an anti-Ottoman faction seizing power in Sofia. The argument worked. In the summer of 1890 it was announced that the Porte intended to issue decrees promising the exarchate the three major Macedonian bishoprics of Skopje, Ohrid and Bitola. The exarchate was also to be allowed to publish a newspaper in the Ottoman capital, and to establish direct relations with the Bulgarian communities of the Adrianople province.

  These were the most important concessions received by the exarchate since 1872 and they greatly increased Stambolov’s and Ferdinand’s popularity. Since 1885 and the union with Rumelia the Porte had tended to favour the Greek and Serbian churches in Macedonia at the expense of the exarchate with the result that a number of dioceses which had originally voted to join the Bulgarian church were still under patriarchist control and many of their parishes were without priests. Matters had been made worse by a breach between the church in Bulgaria and the government, a breach which had led the government in Sofia to suspend the subsidies it had previously given to the exarchate.

  Stambolov had never been on good terms with the higher clergy who feared his radicalism; they had good reason to do so because in 1886 he prevented a meeting of the holy synod and adjusted clerical salaries – downwards. By the time Ferdinand arrived in Sofia matters had worsened. Ferdinand made few attempts to underplay his Catholicism; his mother, who came with him and exercised great influence over him, made fewer. The Bulgarian clergy refused to pray for him in their services and it was for this that Stambolov suspended the annual payments from the Bulgarian government to the exarchate. The low point in church–state relations came in January 1889 when Stambolov closed a meeting of the holy synod which had produced a series of complaints against the prince. Gendarmes were used to escort the bishops back to their sees.

  The concessions of 1890 in Macedonia transformed the situation. The church agreed that prayers for Ferdinand should now be included in the liturgy in Bulgaria, and a synod in November 1890 settled nearly all outstanding issues between church and state; Ferdinand even felt able to invite four leading bishops to his palace, and, equally surprisingly, they accepted. Meanwhile the government had agreed to provide three million leva a year for exarchist schools in Macedonia.

  Stambolov’s victory was consolidated in general elections held later in 1890. A certain amount of influence was used at the polls but Stambolov would have achieved his victory without it. Even the seemingly irreconcilable tsankovists now recognised that the new regime must be accepted; henceforth their criticism was directed not at its existence but at its methods of governing.

  These had of necessity been harsh but any hopes that they might be relaxed were dashed by continuing violence on the part of the regime’s enemies. In March 1891 the minister of finance was gunned down in mistake for Stambolov and a little under a year later the Bulgarian representative in Constantinople was murdered. Not even the secret police network, greatly expanded after the Panitsa plot, could prevent such outrages.

  Stambolov believed that Ferdinand might be safer if he were married and produced an heir; then, even though an assassin might remove the prince, the Russians would not be in a position to nominate his successor. A suitable bride was found in Princess Marie-Louise of Bourbon Parma who, however, would consent to marry Ferdinand only if any children of the union were brought up as Roman Catholics. This would contravene the article of the constitution which demanded that all but the first prince belong to the Orthodox church, an article which according to some commentators Ferdinand had already breached. In February 1893 Stambolov convened a Grand National Assembly and secured the changes in the constitution necessary to satisfy Princess Marie-Louise’s conditions, though he did so only at the cost of renewed and serious disagreement with the church hierarchy.

  Stambolov had rightly believed that popular enthusiasm for the marriage would outweigh displeasure at the changes in the constitution, and his belief was reinforced by the rejoicing which followed the birth of a son, Boris, nine months after the royal marriage.
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  By now Stambolov’s own position was weakening. He had in effect fulfilled his function: he had brought Ferdinand to Bulgaria and established him on his throne. Despite these successes he was unable to go further and achieve the international recognition for which the prince now craved. That no movement in the Russian position followed the defeat of Panitsa and the granting of the Macedonian bishoprics in 1890 convinced Ferdinand that Stambolov would never secure recognition; this being so Stambolov had to be replaced, and by 1893 the prince was moving towards open conflict with his prime minister. In that year a new opposition group, soon to be known as the Nationalist Party, was formed of dissident liberals, some conservatives, and unionists from southern Bulgaria; they were led by Konstantin Stoilov, a former secretary of Alexander Battenberg. The new opposition exploited the mounting social unrest caused by the decline in world agricultural prices, a danger which the Stambolov regime found difficult to comprehend or contain; the Greek minority was offended by educational laws which forced all Christian, but not Muslim, children to receive their primary education in Bulgarian; and most important of all in 1894, Ferdinand secured the appointment of his own nominee to the war ministry. That nominee was also chief of the general staff and by his appointment Ferdinand secured greater control over the military in Bulgaria than anyone had yet enjoyed.

  Plate 5.6 Stambolov was brutally attacked in the streets of Sofia in 1895, dying a few days later. His assailants severed his hands.

  Shortly after this Stambolov was accused of having an affair with the wife of a ministerial colleague, something which Stambolov vehemently denied. It was no use. In May Stambolov was engineered into a position in which he had to resign. A year later he was brutally murdered in the streets of Sofia.