Bulgaria. Information.
BULGARIA (Республика България), officially called the Republic of Bulgaria. Country in southeastern Europe, situated in the Balkan Peninsula. The area of Bulgaria is 110,994 sq km (42,855 sq mi). население - 8,47 млн. человек (1993) The capital and largest city is Sofia. Bulgaria is bounded on the north by Romania, on the east by the Black Sea, on the south by Turkey and Greece, and on the west by Serbia and Montenegro and by Republic of Macedonia. Some 33 percent of Bulgaria is forested, and half this area supports tall trees suitable for timber. About 30 percent of the timber trees are conifers. The Balkan Mountains and their foothills support forests of various trees. Conifer, beech, and oak trees are found in the timber zone of the Rhodope Mountains and their western extensions. Most wildlife is confined to the mountainous southwestern portion of the country, where there are bears, wolves, elks, foxes, and wildcats. The region that is now Bulgaria was at one time included in the Roman Empire as part of the provinces of Thrace and Moesia. Slavic and Turkic tribes settled in the area between about the 4th and 6th centuries ad. One branch of people known as Bulgars, who had established a large state near the Volga River on the east side of the Black Sea, invaded the Balkan Peninsula in the 7th century. They set up a state between the Danube River and the Balkan Mountains, an area that was then claimed by the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine armies failed repeatedly to dislodge the invaders during the 8th and early 9th centuries. By the end of the 9th century the Bulgarians had annexed considerable additional territory and laid the foundations for a strong state under Khan Krum, who reigned from 803 to 814. The Krum armies inflicted a devastating defeat on an invading Byzantine force in 811 and, assuming the offensive, nearly succeeded in 813 in taking Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. Bulgarian-Byzantine relations were thereafter relatively peaceful and continued to be so during the first half of the 9th century. The immediate successors of Krum enlarged their dominions, mainly in the region of Serbia and Macedonia. In 860, however, during the reign of Boris I, Bulgaria suffered a severe military setback at the hands of the Serbs. Four years later Boris, responding to pressure from the Byzantine emperor Michael III, made Christianity the official religion. Boris accepted the primacy of the papacy in 866, but in 870, following the refusal of Pope Adrian II to make Bulgaria an archbishopric, he shifted his allegiance to the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Bulgaria became the strongest nation of Eastern Europe during the reign of Boris’s son Simeon. A brilliant administrator and military leader, Simeon introduced Byzantine (Greek) culture into his realm, encouraged education, obtained new territories, defeated the Magyars (Hungarians), and conducted a series of successful wars against the Byzantine Empire. In 925 Simeon proclaimed himself tsar (emperor) of the Greeks and Bulgars. He conquered Serbia in 926 and became the most powerful monarch in contemporary Eastern Europe. Simeon’s reign was marked by great cultural advances led by the followers of the brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. During this period Old Church Slavonic, the first written Slavic language, and the Cyrillic alphabet were adopted. Weakened by domestic strife and successive Magyar raids, Bulgarian power declined steadily during the following half-century. In 969 invading Russians seized the capital and captured the royal family. The Byzantine Emperor John I Tzimisces, alarmed over the Russian advance into southeastern Europe, intervened in 970 in the Russo-Bulgarian conflict. The Russians were compelled to withdraw from Bulgaria in 972, and the eastern part of the country was annexed to the Byzantine Empire. Samuel, the son of a Bulgarian provincial governor, became ruler of western Bulgaria in 976. Samuel’s armies were annihilated in 1014 by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, who incorporated the short-lived state into his empire in 1018. Led by the noble brothers Asen and Peter, the Bulgarians revolted against Byzantine rule in 1185 and established a second empire. It consisted initially of the region between the Balkan Mountains and the Danube; by the early 13th century it included extensive neighboring territories, notably sections of Serbia and all of western Macedonia. Ivan Asen II, the fifth ruler of the Asen dynasty, added western Thrace, the remainder of Macedonia, and part of Albania to the empire in 1230. Feudal strife and involvement in foreign wars caused gradual disintegration of the empire after the death of Ivan Asen II. The Bulgarian armies were decisively defeated by the Serbs in 1330, and for the next quarter century the second empire was little more than a dependency of Serbia. Shortly after 1360, armies of the Ottoman Empire began to ravage the Maritsa Valley and by 1396 they controlled all of Bulgaria. During the next five centuries the political and cultural existence of Bulgaria was almost obliterated. After a century of terrorism and persecution, Ottoman administration improved, and the economic condition of the remaining Bulgarians rose to a level higher than it had been under the kingdom, although unsuccessful revolts against Ottoman rule occurred from time to time. With the revival of a Bulgarian literature glorifying the history of the country, in the latter half of the 18th century and the early part of the 19th century, Bulgarian nationalism became a powerful movement. In 1876 the Bulgarians revolted against the Ottomans, but were quelled; in reprisal, the Ottomans massacred an estimated 30,000 Bulgarian men, women, and children. In 1877, prompted by the desire to expand toward the Mediterranean Sea and by Pan-Slavic sentiment, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire and defeated it in 1878. As a result of the war, a part of Bulgaria became an autonomous principality; another part, Eastern Rumelia, was made an autonomous Ottoman province. Elected by a Bulgarian assembly in 1879, the first prince of the new Bulgaria was a German, Alexander of Battenberg, also a prince and a nephew of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. Eastern Rumelia revolted against the Ottoman Empire in 1885 and was united with Bulgaria. Russia, whose relationship with Prince Alexander had deteriorated, refused to recognize the union. The Russian emperor demanded the abdication of the prince and withdrew all officers who had been detailed to train the Bulgarian army. Serbia then declared war on Bulgaria but was quickly defeated. In 1886 a group of Russian and Bulgarian conspirators abducted Prince Alexander and established a Russian-dominated government. Within a few days the government was overthrown by the Bulgarian statesman Stepan Stambolov, but the Russians compelled Prince Alexander to abdicate. The new ruler, chosen in 1887, was Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Taking advantage of a revolution in the Ottoman Empire, in 1908 Ferdinand declared Bulgaria independent and assumed the title of King, or Tsar, Ferdinand I; he reigned from 1908 to 1918. In the First Balkan War (1912-1913), Bulgaria, allied with Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece, defeated the Ottoman Empire. Division of the reconquered Balkan territories, however, resulted in the Second Balkan War in 1913, which Bulgaria lost to Serbia, Montenegro, Greece, the Ottoman Empire, and Romania; as a consequence, Bulgaria lost considerable territory. Bulgaria entered World War I in 1915 on the side of the Central Powers, but was forced to agree on an armistice with the Allies in September 1918. King Ferdinand abdicated in October and was succeeded by his son, Boris III. By the Treaty of Neuilly on November 27, 1919, Bulgaria lost most of what it had gained in the Balkan Wars and all of its conquests from World War I. It was also required to abandon conscription, reduce armaments, and pay large reparations. The Agrarian Party government under Aleksandr Stambolisky, who became premier in 1919, attempted to improve the condition of the large peasant class and maintain friendly relations with the other Balkan countries. Stambolisky’s dictatorial regime, unpopular with the army and the urban middle class, was overthrown by a coup d’etat in 1923; he was captured and killed while seeking to escape. Internal dissension continued under the new government, which represented all political parties except the Agrarians, Communists, and Liberals. Bulgaria and Greece again came into conflict in 1925, and the Greek army invaded Bulgaria. The Council of the League of Nations brought the conflict to an end and penalized Greece. In 1934 King Boris staged a coup of his own and established a royal dictatorship. In September 1940 Germany compelled Romania to cede southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. In March 1941, under German pressure, Bulgaria joined the Axis powers, agreeing to immediate occupation by German forces. Bulgaria declared war on Greece and Yugoslavia in April, shortly afterward occupying all of Yugoslav Macedonia, Grecian Thrace, eastern Greek Macedonia, and the Greek districts of Florina and Kastoria. Bulgaria signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in November and the following month declared war on the United States and Britain. Although allied with Nazi Germany, King Boris and his government resisted German demands for the persecution of Bulgarian Jews, most of whom survived the Holocaust, the near destruction of European Jews by the Nazis. When the tide of war turned against the Germans in 1943, German dictator Adolf Hitler attempted to force Bulgaria to declare war on the USSR. In August 1943, after returning from a meeting with Hitler, King Boris died under mysterious circumstances and was succeeded by his six-year-old son, Simeon II, and a pro-German government under Dobri Bozhilov. An anti-German resistance movement organized by the Communists and the Agrarians opposed the Bozhilov regime, which fell in May 1944. The succeeding government severed its ties with Germany, but it was too late. The USSR formally declared war on Bulgaria on September 5. No fighting occurred, and the Bulgarian government subsequently asked the USSR for an armistice; Bulgaria, moreover, declared war on Germany on September 7. The armistice was agreed to by the USSR on September 9, and under the protection of Soviet forces a government subservient to the USSR was immediately established. The armistice, signed by the USSR, the United States, and Britain in October 1944, provided for the control of Bulgaria, until the signing of final peace treaties, by the Allied Control Commission under the chairmanship of the Soviet representative, who was also the commander of the Soviet occupation forces. The armistice provided also that the Bulgarians evacuate Yugoslav Macedonia and territories they had taken from Greece. Soviet pressure in the Bulgarian election engaged the attention of Britain and the United States in the fall of 1945. National elections originally scheduled for August were postponed because of U.S. protests concerning the nature of Soviet political maneuvers within Bulgaria. The opposition parties boycotted the elections held on November 18, and a single list of candidates of the Communist-dominated Fatherland Front won 85 percent of the vote. Currency: 1 Bulgarian Lev (BGN) = 100 stotinki .
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Bulgaria
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