I have long seen Bulgaria as just a small, insignificant, and now former communist country in Eastern Europe. We went there primarily because it is one of the two EU countries we had not visited. Now that I have been there, my curiosity has been aroused, and I have learned more about this country and the forces that complicate its functioning. The following complicating factors are in no particular order.
1: The United States has has just two neighbors to deal with, Canada and Mexico, and Spain has just France and Portugal, to give two examples. Many countries have similar situations. But Bulgaria is bordered by Romania to the north, Greece and Turkey to the south, North Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo to the west. Some of these are Islamic, some Orthodox Christian, with ethnic Turk, Slav and Roma and other populations. War and natural disasters could bring waves of immigrants into Bulgaria.
2: Bulgaria is in the Balkans. Many wars have been fought in this area, most recently in the 1991 and 2001 involving the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In the First Balkan War (1912-13), Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria declared war on the Ottoman Empire. In the Second Balkan War (1913), Bulgaria attacked the countries it was aligned with in fighting the Ottomans! Then Romania attacked from from the north, and the Ottomans regained some of the territory they lost to Bulgaria. Going back in time we see the area conquered by the Ottomans. In the 6th to 3rd century BC, the region was a battleground for ancient Macedonians, Thracians, Persons and Celts before the arrival of the Pax Romana. The latter is recorded on Trajan’s column in Rome.
3: I have long been confused by the term ‘The Balkans,” and it’s not just me. In fact there is good reason for the confusion: the term is ambiguous. The word itself comes from the Balkan mountain range that extends through the entirety Bulgaria and into Serbia. The term “The Balkans” usually includes Albania, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, European Turkey, oddly just the coast of Romania, and strangely most but not all of Serbia and, weirdly, large parts of Croatia but not all of it. Sometimes it includes all of Romania, Serbia and Croatia, and just the southern parts of Slovenia. Then there are references to something called the Balkan peninsula, a quasi geographical term. It adds Albania and Greece to the list. To add even further to the confusion, the Balkan Peninsula is not a peninsula, say the geographers, and even if it were, most of these countries are not on it. And in lieu of the term Balkans, some just say “Southeastern Europe.” But who knows exactly where that is?
4: Bulgaria sits precisely in the path between Turkey and the rest of Europe. The Ottomans marched to the gates of Vienna before being turned away for the final time in the 18th century. To get to Vienna the Ottomans had to have control first of all of the country we now call Bulgaria. While the Turks are now confined to its borders, Bulgaria is still are motivated to keep an eye open to its south. And the north. And the west. And the Russians. They are looking intently at what is happening in Ukraine and what the EU and the US are doing, and not doing. None of these countries can fend off Russian on its own.
5: The Bulgarians have been under foreign control since the Roman era at least, except for 68 years in the early 20th century (1878-1946) and between 1989 and the present. That just 101 years out of around 6000. Bulgaria became a principality in 1878, with full independence coming in 1908.. Ottoman control meant the suppression of Bulgarian culture. For example, churches had to look like ordinary buildings. To achieve a higher status you had to convert to Islam, which helped your tax situation as well. Many “Islamified” their names to fit in better with the predominant power. The country fell under the Russian yoke in 1946, a domination that lasted until 1989. Bloc
Given all this foreign domination and the cultural cross currents implied by its history and geography, it is no wonder that the Bulgarians find self government to be difficult. Since 2021 they just keep holding election after election when the latest coalition falls apart. The Italians have done the same since the end of WWII, the Belgians were without a government for years, France has a delicate arrangement keeping out Le Pen, so these unstable coalitions need not ruin everything, nor bring the end of democracy let alone self-rule. The bureaucrats keep things going. And no one said democracy was easy, nor perfect, just better than dictatorship and foreign domination or outright rule.
