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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 (present-day İstanbul, Turkey), 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’état 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 Kastoría. 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.
By a plebiscite in September 1946, the Bulgarians ousted King Simeon and ended the monarchy; a week later Bulgaria was proclaimed a people’s republic. The constitution drawn up by the Fatherland Front, which won an overwhelming victory in the elections to the National Assembly, held in October, provided for freedom of the press, assembly, and speech. The National Assembly, which gained full control of state affairs, then elected the premier and also the president. The first president was Vasil Kolarov, a Communist Party leader. Georgi Dimitrov, a former key figure in the Communist International, was elected premier in November 1946. In February 1947 the peace treaty formally ending Bulgarian participation in World War II was signed in Paris. It provided for reparations to be paid to Greece in the amount of $45 million and to Yugoslavia in the amount of $25 million; severe limitation of military strength, with partial demilitarization along the Greek frontier; and the retention of southern Dobruja. (The borders with Greece were returned to their status as of 1941.) In December 1947 the National Assembly adopted a new constitution modeled on that of the USSR; this document replaced the presidency with the presidium, an executive committee. That September, Nikola Dimitrov Petkov, leader of the opposition to the Fatherland Front, had been executed after being convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government. Under pressure from the USSR, Bulgaria renounced its treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia after the Soviet-Yugoslavian rift in 1948; relations with the country and its successor states have since continued to fluctuate, as have those with neighboring Greece and Turkey. Diplomatic ties with the United States, broken in 1950 but restored in 1959, have frequently been marred by Bulgarian accusations of U.S. espionage activities. The U.S. ministry was raised to the status of an embassy in 1966. During most of the Communist period, under the leadership of Todor Zhivkov—secretary of the Communist Party from 1954, the country’s premier from 1964 to 1971, and head of state from 1971 to late 1989—Bulgaria was one of the most restrictive societies among the former Soviet satellites. As a member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and the Warsaw Pact, Bulgaria long remained among the USSR’s most dependable allies. During the 1970s the country received substantial financial aid from the USSR, which was used for industrialization. During the mid-1980s the Zhivkov government launched a campaign to assimilate members of Bulgaria’s Turkish minority by forcing them to take Slavic names, prohibiting them from speaking Turkish in public, and subjecting them to other forms of harassment; during 1989 alone, more than 300,000 Bulgarian Turks crossed the border into Turkey to escape persecution. Late in 1989, Zhivkov was ousted from power and expelled from the Communist Party; replacing him as general secretary was the foreign minister, Petur T. Mladenov. Under Mladenov’s leadership, Bulgaria restored the civil rights of Bulgarian Turks and began to institute a multiparty system. In June 1990 the Communists, running as the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), won the nation’s first free parliamentary elections since World War II. Mladenov, who had become president in April, resigned in July over a scandal regarding the use of force in the suppression of student demonstrations. The parliament replaced him with Zhelyu Zhelev of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). The collapse of the Bulgarian economy led to the resignation in November 1990 of Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov of the BSP. Despite being replaced by an independent candidate, Dimiter Popov, new elections were scheduled. The UDF won the elections of 1991 by a narrow margin. Filip Dimitrov, head of the UDF, became the prime minister. Under a new constitution providing for direct presidential voting, Zhelyu Zhelev won reelection in January 1992. In September 1992, after an 18-month trial, Todor Zhivkov was found guilty of corruption while in office and sentenced to seven years in prison. In 1996 the Bulgarian Supreme Court overturned Zhivkov’s conviction.
Following the 1991 elections, the government slowly began initiating economic and industrial reforms. Among the reforms were laws allowing foreign investment, privatization of state-owned companies, and the return of land seized by the Communists to its original owners. However, public dissatisfaction with the social effects of the reforms led to the overthrow of Dimitrov’s government in October 1992. The following two years were characterized by volatile and ineffective political alliances with parliament unable to enact key legislation. When the BSP and the UDF refused to form a new government, President Zhelev of the UDF dissolved parliament in October 1994. He then appointed a caretaker government until parliamentary elections were held in December. The BSP won a clear majority, capturing 125 of the 240 seats. Zhan Videnov, the 35-year-old chairman of the BSP, was appointed prime minister. In 1996 Zhelev lost his party’s nomination to Petar Stoyanov for the November presidential elections. Stoyanov won 60 percent of the vote in the elections, defeating Ivan Mazarov, the BSP candidate. Faced with Mazarov’s defeat, a collapsing economy, and an intraparty rebellion against his leadership, Videnov resigned his posts as prime minister and chairman of the BSP in December. The BSP parliamentary majority then appointed the interior minister, Nikolay Dobrev, as their choice for prime minister. The UDF objected vigorously to continuing the BSP mandate and demanded an early parliamentary election, but the BSP refused, insisting that its mandate from 1994 be continued. Meanwhile, the national economy suffered a collapse; the currency plunged in value and inflation soared, leaving the country in a state of near-bankruptcy. In January 1997 tens of thousands of Bulgarians began to hold daily protests, calling for early elections and an end to the country’s economic crisis. On January 10 the UDF and other opposition parties—angered that the BSP refused to consider the UDF’s motion for new elections—walked out of a National Assembly session and began a boycott of parliament. Protesters immediately stormed the parliament building, trapping more than 100 BSP deputies inside until police broke through and enabled the deputies to escape. The next day, President Zhelev announced he would not give the BSP’s newly appointed prime minister the mandate, as required by the constitution, to form a new government. In the face of this political standoff, president-elect Stoyanov took office on January 22. After the mass protests and strikes succeeded in paralyzing the economy, the BSP conceded to the opposition’s demands on February 4, and Stoyanov appointed a caretaker government led by Sofia mayor Stefan Sofianski. The economy began to recover somewhat in March, in part because the interim government was able to attract support from international lenders and donor governments. In the April 19 general election, the United Democratic Forces (ODC)—an electoral alliance of the UDF and several smaller parties—swept into power, winning 137 parliamentary seats. The leader of the alliance, Ivan Kostov of the UDF, was unanimously chosen to be prime minister. He immediately established a currency-board system, required by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for aid. Kostov promised to battle organized crime and corruption and institute rigorous economic reforms. In April 2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg, Bulgaria’s former king Simeon II, reentered Bulgarian politics by creating a political organization that promised to improve living standards and combat political corruption. Exiled in 1946, Saxe-Coburg had spent much of his life as a businessman in Madrid, Spain. Saxe-Coburg’s organization, the National Movement for Simeon II, emerged as the largest party in the June 2001 general election. His party formed a coalition government with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, an ethnic Turkish party, and he became Bulgaria’s prime minister in July. In November presidential elections BSP leader Georgi Parvanov edged out incumbent candidate Peter Stoyanov.
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