Bulgaria
Background
Bulgarian history at a glance
Bulgaria has a history both under the Byzantine Empire, the Mongols and the Ottoman Turks. The latter epoch lasted for nearly five centuries, from 1396 to 1878, a period that has been regarded as an era of cultural and national decline. Ottoman rule was also marked by the brutal oppression of Bulgarian Christians.
The national revival in the mid 1800s brought about socioeconomic development and national integration in Ottoman Bulgaria. The revival was manifested in the April 1876 anti-ottoman uprising. Whereas unsuccessful with overthrowing the Ottoman regime, the uprising drew the attention of the Great Powers towards the situation of the Bulgarians. Finally, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in 1877, partly to free its Orthodox Slav brothers. The war ended with Ottoman defeat in 1878. The San Stefano treaty (1878) provided for the establishment of a Greater Bulgaria, however, owing to discontent among the Great Powers, the borders were revisited in the Berlin treaty the same year. The treaty divided Great Bulgaria in three: the autonomous principality of Bulgaria (stretching from the Danube in the north to the Balkan mountain range in the south); the autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia (south of the Balkan mountain range); and the Macedonian and eastern Thracian lands which were returned to the sovereignty of the Sultan. Bulgaria adopted a democratic constitution and liberal policies were implemented. In 1885, Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia were united.
In the first Balkan war (1912-1913), the Balkan League (comprising Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Montenegro) fought the Ottoman Empire over the Macedonian and Thrace lands. In the second Balkan war (1913), the Greeks and Serbs had united against the Bulgarians to divide Macedonia between them and to prevent a Bulgarian hegemony in the area. The Romanians and the Ottomans took advantage of the situation and occupied Bulgarian lands. The war ended with an armistice in which Bulgaria was forced to give up most of the territories it had gained in the first Balkan war.
The political situation made Bulgaria align with Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. The lost lands were in the hands of Serbia, Greece and Romania which allied with Britain and France, and Germany promised to restore the Bulgarian boundaries of the San Stefano treaty. In 1918, the Macedonian front was broken and Bulgaria was forced to sue for peace. In the treaty of Neuilly (1919), the country was again forced to give up lands won in the course of the war.
The 1920s were marked by political chaos. Upon the acceptance of the new borders and the agreement to suppress Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), a coup was organized in 1923 in which Stamboliyski, the prime minister and leader of the Agrarian Party, was killed. A right-wing government was installed that terrorized both the Agrarians and the Communists. After the 1931 election, the Agrarians again formed government, but economic hardship and the Great Depression led to another coup in 1934 thus again suppressing the rule of the Agrarian Party. An authoritarian regime was established and in the years that followed, all opposition parties were banned and Bulgaria was brought into an alliance with Germany and Italy.
In World War II, Bulgaria fought Greece and Yugoslavia and was allowed by its allies to again occupy Macedonian and Thrace lands. In 1944, as it became clear that Germany would eventually be defeated, Bulgaria withdrew from Greek and Yugoslav territory and started negotiating with the Allied forces. Notwithstanding these developments and the fact that Bulgaria declared war on Germany, the Soviet Union (SU) declared war on Bulgaria in September 1944, and only a few days later Soviet troops entered Sofia. A coalition government – comprising parties of the resistance movement Fatherland Front – was installed but before long, most anti-communists were purged. The royal family was taken into arrest and deported in 1946.
In the initial years of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria, the country aimed to maintain close links with the south Slavs of Yugoslavia and Tito. With Tito’s expulsion from Cominform, Bulgarian “titoists” were hunted down. Todor Zhivkov, head of the Communist Party, took charge in Bulgaria in the following thirty years; first as secretary of the Communist Party (1954) and then as president of the country (1971). Throughout the Zhivkov period, which lasted until 1989, Bulgaria remained loyal to the SU. In the 1980s, Zhivkov’s regime grew increasingly corrupt and autocratic. In 1984-1985, a campaign to assimilate the Turks was carried out that drew significant attention from the international community. In November 1989, street demonstrations in Sofia, led by Ecoglasnost and other groups later forming the Union of Democratic Forces, were followed by legalization of opposition parties, and Zhivkov resigned. In 1990, the Communist Party gave up its claim to power and transformed into the Bulgarian Socialist Party. Free elections were organized the same year.
Politics in the new era
Prior to 1989, there was little organized opposition to the communist regime in Bulgaria. National sentiment could not be directed in an anti-Soviet direction because many Bulgarians remembered that the very existence of their country was due to Russia’s victory over the Ottoman Empire in 1878. The former communist party thus had a stronger position in the Bulgarian post-Cold War political climate than in many other former communist regimes.
In the 1990 Grand National Assembly elections 40 different political associations contested the ballot, but only four parties cleared the 4 percent threshold. The restyled communist party (now named the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP) won the elections. Bulgaria’s democratization was challenged by failure of half-hearted economic reforms that precipitated a major crisis in 1996-97. The collapse of the banking system took away the savings of millions of people as inflation soared to 310 percent in 1996. Among other challenges to democratization was widespread corruption, especially in connection with the first stages of privatization. Popular dissatisfaction spurred massive street demonstrations in late 1996- early 1997 and the resulting early elections gave a majority to a coalition led by the United Democratic Forces (UDF), opposing the BSP. After forceful Bulgarian support for NATO during the Kosovo war, Bulgaria was invited to start negotiations for membership with both the EU and NATO. Bulgaria became a member of the NATO alliance in March 2004 and of the EU in January 2007.
In 2001 the former king, now known as Simeon Sakskoburggotski, returned from Spain and organized a new political movement (National Movement Simeon the Second, NDSV) that won the most seats at the 2001 assembly election and thus effectively changed the two-pole party system of Bulgarian politics. Analysts explained the unique windfall for a newcomer as resulting from widespread disappointment in current political elites, rather than through ideological sympathy or insight. The 2005 election added to the instability of Bulgarian politics. With voter turnout at an unprecedented low, the election returned seven parties to parliament and created the most unstable political situation in the 16-year long Bulgarian democracy. In addition, the anti-system Ataka party was suddenly the fourth biggest political party. No party emerged as a clear winner, but the BSP emerged as the leading party. After two months of negotiations the BSP, NDSV and DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) finally agreed to form a coalition government.
Sources
Spirova, M. 2006. The Parliamentary elections in Bulgaria , June 2005. Election Studies, Vol. 25(3), 616-621.
Rose, R. and Neil Munro (2003). Elections and Parties in New European Democracies . Washington: CQPress.
Dryzek, J. S. and Holmes L.T. (2002). Post-Communist Democratization: Political discourses across thirteen countries . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
