A Concise History of Bulgaria Read online

  The war lessened Russian power and influence and it left the Bulgarians with a choice between pressing ahead on their own or finding an alternative sponsor. The former was always the more popular strategy. And it was one encouraged by the Hatt-i-Humayoun, the Porte’s declaration of intent, issued at the conclusion of the war, to further reform the imperial administration.

  In 1856 enthusiasts for the Bulgarian church cause decided to act alone, and presented the sultan with a petition asking for a separate church; the petition claimed to represent the 6.5 million Bulgarians living in the empire. In the same year, the Bulgarian communal council in Constantinople circulated a letter to all large Bulgarian communities asking them to send elected delegates to Constantinople to join in pressing for an independent church. These delegates, when they met in the imperial capital, constituted the first remotely representative body in modern Bulgarian history, and included in their number were many who were to achieve prominence in Bulgarian national affairs both before and after the liberation of 1878.

  In 1857 the Porte ordered the patriarchate to institute a reform programme. In 1858 the patriarch agreed to call a council which was to include three Bulgarians; it was the first of seven such councils, all of them equally unproductive, to meet between 1858 and 1872. The Bulgarians suffered from a number of disadvantages. Despite the overwhelming popularity of their cause amongst the Bulgarian laity there were small but powerful elements in the Bulgarian clergy who were not prepared to split the Orthodox church; they included the abbot of the Rila monastery and two of the four Bulgarian bishops recently nominated by the patriarchate. Secondly, no official body created by the patriarchate would ever contain anything but an overwhelming Greek majority, and reform through official channels was therefore an illusion. Thirdly, the recognition of this truth strengthened for a while the minority who had always favoured the alternative strategy of seeking new forms of foreign sponsorship.

  In 1860 matters came to a head. It was a time of further change in Europe, the Balkans and the Ottoman empire, a time which saw the emergence of a unified Italy, the unification of the Danubian provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia into Romania, and the intervention of the great powers to secure autonomy for the rebellious Ottoman provinces in Syria and Lebanon. In Constantinople 1860 witnessed a virtual declaration of ecclesiastical independence by the Bulgarian church. It happened on Easter Sunday in St Stephen’s. According to a pre-arranged plan the congregation interrupted the priest, Bishop Ilarion Makariopolski, at that point in the service where he was to pray for the patriarch. The patriarch’s name was omitted and Ilarion prayed directly for the sultan’s welfare; this direct prayer was an implicit rejection of the patriarchate which was still legally the body through which all Orthodox Christians were represented to the imperial ruler. In the evening service, for which the customary patriarchal permission had not been secured, the Gospels were read in eleven different languages; Greek was not one of them.

  Ilarion’s bold move won widespread support amongst the Bulgarian communities. Thirty-three towns petitioned the sultan in support of Ilarion, as did over seven hundred merchants who had gathered for the annual fair in Uzundjovo. A number of bishops immediately aligned with the Constantinople church, including Gideon of Sofia who, though Greek, dared not offend the feelings of his flock. The events of Easter 1860 undoubtedly emboldened the Bulgarians. Veles broke away from the patriarchate, whilst the towns of Lovech, Samokov, Shumen, Preslav and Vidin all rejected bishops nominated by the patriarchate, even though those bishops were Bulgarian; in later years many Bulgarian communities refused to pay taxes to the patriarch, and by 1870 almost all the dioceses in Thrace, Macedonia and Bulgaria had committed some act of disobedience towards the patriarch.

  Plate 4.5 Ilarion Makariopolski.

  The Easter declaration of independence in 1860, despite the widespread support it rapidly gained, did not bring official recognition of a separate Bulgarian church. The Porte did not wish to hasten to a conclusion a dispute which conveniently divided two of its major subject groups; the Russians remained reluctant to see any division in the patriarchate; and the patriarch himself was as adamantly opposed as ever to the loss of his Bulgarian flock, and, of course, the revenue he derived from it. Much more important, however, was the impact recognition of the Bulgarian church would have upon other non-Greek Orthodox communities. The Ottoman millet system had made cultural identity a consequence of religious affiliation; the Bulgarians wanted to reverse that order and make religious affiliation a consequence of national allegiance. Such a doctrine, if accepted, would fragment the Orthodox church in the Ottoman empire with Romanians, Vlachs and Albanians, as well as Serbs, making similar claims. Understandably, the status of the Bulgarian church now became the central theme in the seemingly endless councils and other discussions held in the higher ranks of the Orthodox church.

  Those amongst the Bulgarians who had advocated internal action, the Bulgarian fara da sè, had hoped that a bold move such as that Ilarion had made would cut the Gordian knot, force St Petersburg to come off the fence, and free the Bulgarian church from its ties with the patriarchate. That Russia still did not back the call for an independent Bulgarian church inevitably strengthened the confidence of those who all along had believed that the Bulgarians would be better off finding alternative foreign sponsorship. The sponsor they had in mind was the Roman Catholic church; behind the Roman church stood the Habsburg empire and, more significantly, the France of Napoleon III whose taste for foreign adventures and entanglements had not yet been dulled by the Mexican fiasco. The association with Rome would be achieved by joining the Uniate church, which allowed former Orthodox communities to worship in their own language with rites identical to those of the Orthodox church; in return those communities would acknowledge the pope as head of the church.

  Uniate propaganda had grown steadily in the 1850s, encouraged in part by Polish refugees in Constantinople and in part by the French and Sardinian successes in the Crimean war, and also by the support of Dragan Tsankov, an influential Bulgarian activist and Ottoman civil servant. In December 1860 a group of Bulgarians in Constantinople signed an act of union with Rome, and nominated as their leader an illiterate octogenarian, Josef Sokolski, who was soon to be personally invested with his new office by Pope Pius IX in Rome. It did not last. Within a few months Sokolski had reneged on his flock, reverting to Orthodoxy and taking ship at dead of night for Odessa. By June 1861 there was no-one in Constantinople who could perform the Bulgarian Uniate services, a situation not remedied until 1863 when Raphael Popov was appointed to the vacancy. He was thirty-five years of age.

  The Uniate option was in later decades to be chosen by some Bulgarian communities in Macedonia but after 1861 it was a non possumus in Constantinople. The Sokolski fiasco forced the former advocates of Uniatism back to the conclusion that they had to find some form of compromise between the Bulgarians and the patriarchate. After years of hopeless debate a breakthrough came in 1867 when Patriarch Gregory VI offered the Bulgarians an autonomous church within the patriarchate; the church would be headed by an exarch, an ecclesiastical rank between that of archbishop and patriarch. For the first time the patriarch had recognised the Bulgarians’ right to a church of their own and the settlement would have found favour with them but for its territorial provisions. The 1867 proposal confined the Bulgarian exarchate to the area north of the Balkans, and it made no mention of where the exarch would have his headquarters. This was an issue of cardinal importance because if the exarch were confined to the area north of the Balkans he and his church would have no influence amongst the Bulgarians of Macedonia and Thrace. The plan was rejected by the Bulgarians. It seemed like a return to square one.

  The situation had however changed, primarily because of external developments which alarmed the Porte. There had been signs in the early and mid-1860s of an emergent Bulgarian political movement which was prepared to resort to arms to achieve its goals; the Austro-Prussian war had created instability
which could easily spread into the Balkans and Prince Michael Obrenovi of Serbia was busy trying to fashion a Balkan alliance in case it did; should the war spread that projected alliance might easily be founded on the territorial ambitions of Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, many of which could be fulfilled only at the cost of the Ottoman empire. Most important of all, however, was the 1866 insurrection in Crete. This fanned Greek territorial aspirations and rapidly led to a serious deterioration in Greek–Ottoman relations. This factor more than any other pushed the Porte towards the Bulgarians, whilst Russia moved reluctantly in the same direction because of its own worsening position in Athens and its fear that if the Bulgarians were much longer left unsatisfied they would turn again to Uniatism. In February 1870 the sultan issued a firman, or declaration of intent, to recognise a separate Bulgarian church headed by an exarch.

  The rights of the new Bulgarian church, the exarchate, were not unlimited. Its liturgy still had to mention the patriarch, to whom it had to defer in matters of doctrine, and whose right to procure Holy Oil it had to respect. The territorial division was also of great importance. In 1869 Gavril Krûstevich, a prominent Constantinople Bulgarian who worked in the Ottoman civil service, had submitted a plan for the division of the dioceses between the two churches. According to his scheme the exarchate would take twenty-five of them whilst the rest would remain within the patriarchate. The Bulgarian dioceses were generally to be larger than the patriarchist and were to cover almost all of Macedonia. Though Krûstevich’s scheme was used as the basis for the divisions contained in the 1870 firman the Bulgarian share had by that time been reduced to fifteen, namely Rusé, Silistra, Shumen, Tûrnovo, Sofia, Vratsa, Lovech, Vidin, Nish, Pirot, Kiustendil, Samokov, Veles, Varna, and Plovdiv, although the latter two cities (the Virgin Mary quarter of Plovdiv excepted) were to remain within the patriarchate. Of the remaining fifty-nine dioceses fifty-one were to stay in the patriarchate and eight were to be divided. The 1870 settlement provided that a diocese should be allowed to transfer to the exarchate if two-thirds of its population voted in favour of such a move, but it said nothing on the question of where the exarch was to reside and have his headquarters. The Bulgarians, not for the last time in their modern history, could not rejoice over the territorial terms of a major settlement.

  The 1870 declaration was rejected by the patriarch. Impasse had returned and it was to remain until 1872. In that year the patriarch called a patriarchal assembly to condemn the Bulgarians. In response the latter set about choosing an exarch, the choice falling on Bishop Antim of Vidin who was to reside in Constantinople. On 23 May 1872 he celebrated the liturgy in St Stephen’s and then read a long proclamation of the independence of the Bulgarian church. In September the patriarch proclaimed a schism. The exarchate was condemned for the sin of phyletism, that is maintaining that ecclesiastical jurisdiction is determined not territorially but ethnically; the kernel of the problem was the seat of the exarchate because canon law contained the principle of there being only one prelate in any city.

  In the struggle for the establishment of a separate Bulgarian church the modern Bulgarian nation had been created. The process had begun when, in conformity with the then largely unknown injunction of Paiisi, Bulgarians began to know their own nation and to study in their own tongue. They had since then developed a nation-wide educational system, they had produced their own intelligentsia, and they had pitted themselves against the Greek-dominated clerical hierarchy. The exarchate could now represent the interests of the Bulgarian nation in the Ottoman corridors of power; more importantly it could defend Bulgarian Orthodoxy against the patriarchate and against Uniatism in Macedonia, and sponsor Bulgarian churches and schools in the mixed dioceses and even in some which were still in the patriarchate.

  Yet as the cultural revival moved towards its culmination in 1870 there was already a small body of Bulgarian activists for whom the political struggle had already become supreme. For them the goal was not simply the creation of a Bulgarian cultural nation represented in its church. Their aspirations were towards a political nation represented by its own political institutions within its own political borders.

  The Struggle for Political Independence and the Liberation of 1878

  When Patriarch Gregory VI made his proposals for an autonomous Bulgarian church in 1867 he noted, ‘With my own hands I have built a bridge to the political independence of the Bulgarians.’ It was a prescient remark but one which would have puzzled his contemporaries, including the Bulgarians amongst them, because the political side of the Bulgarian national movement was little developed.

  There had been political action by Bulgarians in the past. A number of Bulgarian volunteers fought with the Serbs between 1804 and 1814, and even more joined with Greeks in their war of independence in the 1820s. In May 1835 there was a small outburst against the Ottoman authorities in the Tûrnovo region but this so-called ‘Velchov Rising’ was easily suppressed and left little legacy behind it. In the 1840s and 1850s there were outbursts of social unrest in the north- and south-west of the Bulgarian lands, with serious clashes in Nish in 1841 and around Vidin a decade later, but again the outbursts were contained.

  It was not until the 1860s that the first real signs of concerted political action were discernible. In 1862 the Serbs used force to drive the last Ottoman garrison, that in Belgrade, from their country. Taking part in the action was a small Bulgarian Legion led by Georgi Rakovski. Born in Kotel in 1821, Rakovski had attended a local cell school before receiving higher education in Constantinople. By the early 1840s he was already trying to form secret societies first in Athens and then in Braila. For the latter the Romanians sentenced him to death, but he escaped. In the Crimean war he tried to raise a Bulgarian force to assist the Russians but had little success, though during this period he did begin writing and publishing, fields in which he was soon to be prolific. After the Crimean war he wandered through Hungary, Romania and southern Russia before settling for a while in Belgrade. There he continued writing, particularly for the periodical Dunavski Lebed (Danubian Swan), and scheming to bring political liberation to the Balkan Christians; his vision was of a Balkan Christian federation. At the same time he formed the Bulgarian Legion which, however, was disbanded by the Serbs after the action against the Ottoman garrison in 1862.

  Rakovski then moved to Bucharest where he continued his journalistic activities and also began organising small armed bands, cheti, of dedicated revolutionaries. His belief had always been that Ottoman power in the Balkans would be destroyed only by an armed uprising by its Christian subjects; the cheti would in the meantime harass Ottoman officials and raise national consciousness. In 1867 Rakovski also established a second Bulgarian Legion but it was to have little success, not least because Rakovski himself died that year, struck down by tuberculosis.

  A more lasting creation of Rakovski’s was the Bulgarian Secret Central Committee (BSCC) founded in 1866. The BSCC made the first sustained attempts to organise and equip cheti and early in 1867 two such bands crossed the Danube under the leadership of Panaiot Hitov and Filip Totiu. In 1868 more followed, this time led by Hadji Dimitûr Asenov and Stefan Karadja. They were soon dispersed. The BSCC meanwhile combined political pressure with military action. In 1867 it submitted a petition to the sultan suggesting a Bulgarian–Ottoman compromise on the model of that just reached between the Austrian and Hungarian components of the Habsburg monarchy. It was this combination of attempted military action and political sophistication which alarmed the Porte and made it more anxious to conclude a settlement of the Bulgarian church question.

  Rakovski’s greatest achievement was to establish the practice of conspiracy for political rather than cultural or ecclesiastical objectives. He left behind some accomplished followers, and leadership of the nascent revolutionary movement passed eventually to three of them: Liuben Karavelov, Vasil Levski and Hristo Botev.

  Liuben Karavelov arrived in Bucharest in 1869. Born in 1834 in Koprivshtitsa he was educated there and
in Plovdiv before making his way to Russia where he attended lectures in Moscow on history. In 1866 his association with the narodniks or ‘populists’ brought about his expulsion from Russia; in 1868 he fell foul of the Habsburg authorities who locked him up on suspicion of involvement in the murder of the pro-Austrian Prince Michael Obrenovi of Serbia. By this time Karavelov had established himself as one of the foremost Bulgarian men of letters, having published numerous tracts and essays as well as a number of novels. Like Rakovski, Karavelov dreamed of a Balkan republic, and, again following Rakovski, he believed that Ottoman power could only be removed by a revolution of the Balkan Christians, but he dissented from Rakovski’s view that the cheti would be the means by which that revolution would be brought about. Following the precepts of some Russian narodniks Karavelov argued that before a successful rising the people had to be educated, and this task could only be performed by a small number of trained and dedicated ‘apostles’.

  Vasil Levski not only shared this view; he acted upon it. Levski was a native of Karlovo in the foothills of the Balkan mountains where he was born in 1837. After initial schooling in his home town he went to Stara Zagora where he received training for the priesthood; in 1858 he entered a monastery. He remained there scarcely two years and after a short period as a teacher went to Belgrade where he joined the Bulgarian Legion and took part in the action of 1862. After the dissolution of the Legion he reverted for a short while to the monastic life, before resuming teaching and then returning to revolutionary activity as the standard bearer in Hitov’s cheta. At the end of the 1860s he had become one of the most experienced and influential of the small group of Bulgarian political revolutionaries. By now he had also formulated his ideas clearly. He followed Karavelov in urging the need for apostles to prepare the people for their historic task, but he differed from most of his contemporaries when he insisted that it was hopeless to dream of foreign sponsorship or assistance: Bulgaria’s liberation could be achieved only by the Bulgarians. Levski became a leading member of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC) when it was established in April 1870, and he spent the next two years primarily occupied in setting up a network of secret organisations in Bulgaria. In 1872 he was arrested together with an accomplice. The latter, in an effort to prove he was a political prisoner, revealed details of the conspiracy in which he and Levski were involved. In February 1873 Levski was hanged in Sofia. He had once written, ‘If I succeed, I shall succeed for the whole nation: if I fail, then I alone shall die’, words which are now carved in huge letters on the monument outside the National Cultural Centre (NDK) erected in Sofia in the 1980s.