Bulgars

“ History.—The country now known as Bulgaria was originally inhabited by Thracians, and under the Romans formed the province of Mœsia. The Bulgars originally came from the banks of the Volga and crossed the Danube in the sixth century, and occupied the East. They overcame the Slavs, adopted their language and customs, and thus became a great Slav power; but by 1186 they had split up into three principalities, and from 1393 fell under the domination of the Turks. For close upon five hundred years the Bulgars were subject to the rule of the Ottoman Empire. ”

“ Of course it is very difficult to say positively whether Bulgars were or were not present in the welter of Asiatic nations which swept westwards into Europe with little intermission throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, but even if they were, they do not seem to have settled down as early as that anywhere south of the Danube; it seems certain that they did not do so until the seventh century, and therefore that the Slavs were definitely installed in the Balkan peninsula a whole century before the Bulgars crossed the Danube for good. ”

“ One meets many partisans of Bulgaria. English people naturally like the Bulgars at first sight. The Bulgar is a good fighting man, and that makes a strong appeal to the man of the world. He is simple, not bumptious, gives himself no airs of traditional culture or modern education, and therefore recommends himself. The cynical and false opinion of 1914-15 regarding Bulgaria—that she would come in to the war on the side that bid most money—is forgotten. And the disloyalties of Bulgaria, disloyalty to the Russia who set her free and to her erstwhile ally Serbia, are overlooked. ”

“ Whatever may seem good to Balkan controversialists, let us of the West rather try, for their sake and for ours, to bring these two people together. We have good foundations on which to build; every Bulgar will tell you that he is full of admiration of the Serbian army, and the Serbs will speak in a similar strain of the Bulgars. Also the Serbs will tell you that, no matter what else they may be able to do, they are, as compared with the Bulgars, quite incompetent in the diffusion of propaganda; while the Bulgars will explain to you that in propaganda the Serbs are immensely their superiors. ”

“ They formed a community of considerable strength and importance, known as Great or White Bulgaria. These Bulgars fused with later Tartar immigrants from Asia and eventually were consolidated into the powerful kingdom of Kazan, which was only crushed by the Tsar Ivan IV in 1552. According to Bulgarian historians, the basins of the rivers Volga and Don and the steppes of eastern Russia proved too confined a space for the legitimate development of Bulgarian energy, and expansion to the west was decided on. ”

“ While the Serbs were flourishing, ecclesiastically, in the Banat, the Bulgars had been painfully keeping alive, until 1767, their lonely Patriarchate at Ochrida. Time and again the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople had tried to suppress it, at first on account of cupidity and afterwards, say the Bulgars, for fear lest it should help to arouse the Bulgarian national spirit ”

“ They came as conquerors, but in time were absorbed in the more stable Slavonic type.
Without a doubt the Bulgars were racially nearly akin to the Turks—first cousins at least. Mingling with the Slavs they adopted their [45] language and many of their customs. But something of the Turk survives to this day in the character of the Bulgarian people. It shows particularly in their treatment of their women. Though the Bulgarian is monogamic he submits his wife to an almost harem discipline. Once married she lives for the family alone. ”

“ They were considerably influenced by contact with Roman civilization. It was reserved for a foreign race, altogether distinct in origin, religion and customs, to give unity and coherence to the scattered Slavonic groups, and to weld them into a compact and powerful state which for some centuries played an important part in the history of eastern Europe and threatened the existence of the Byzantine empire.
The Bulgars.—The Bulgars, a Turanian race akin to the Tatars, Huns, Avars, Petchenegs and Finns, made their appearance on the banks of the Pruth in the latter part of the 7th century. ”

“ We go with ten times more joy to fight the Bulgars; they are our worst enemies." And they would listen to no remonstrance. So strong were they on this that I could only think Greece and Serbia had a secret understanding on the subject, and that Greece, like Serbia, knew that Russia had no use for a Big Bulgaria. ”

“ This discovery was made in a region which for centuries was believed to be given over to Greeks and Turks. It came as a shock to the Russians to find that the supposed extinct race of the Bulgars had survived through the five hundred years that separated them from any historical mention.
Then was revived the story of ancient Bulgaria and its ambitious Czars, who threatened the Greeks at the very gates of Byzantium a century before the Turk came to Europe. The newly-discovered race was descended from the very desperadoes of the old one ”

“ The Bulgars, a Central Asian Turkic tribe, merged with the local Slavic inhabitants in the late 7th century to form the first Bulgarian state. In succeeding centuries, Bulgaria struggled with the Byzantine Empire to assert its place in the Balkans, but by the end of the 14th century the country was overrun by the Ottoman Turks. ”

“ Servia has acquired a population which is mostly Bulgar and Albanian, though of the latter she has massacred and expelled many thousands. Bulgars have been captured by Greeks, Greeks by Bulgars, Albanians by Greeks, and not one of these races has as yet shown signs of being capable to rule another justly. The seeds have been sown of hatreds that will grow and bear fruit [543] ." Especially lamentable were the recovery of the Adrianople district by the Turks and the unprovoked seizure of the purely Bulgar district south of Silistria by Roumania. ”

“ On October 5, 1908, Prince Ferdinand sprang on an astonished continent the news that he renounced the Turkish suzerainty (ever since 1878 the Bulgarian principality had been a tributary and vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, and therefore, with all its astonishingly rapid progress and material prosperity, a subject for commiseration in the kingdoms of Serbia and Greece) and proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, with himself, as Tsar of the Bulgars, at its head. Europe had not recovered from this shock, still less Belgrade and Athens, when, two days later. ”

“ The Bulgarian people in Bulgaria consisted entirely of peasants; there was no Bulgarian upper or middle or ‘intelligent’ or professional class; those enlightened Bulgars who existed were domiciled in other countries; the Church was in the hands of the Greeks, who vied with the Turks in suppressing Bulgarian nationality.
The two committees of Odessa and Bucarest which promoted the enlightenment and emancipation of Bulgaria were dissimilar in composition and in aim ”

“ The qualities they have shown in their short life as an independent nation are those which deserve to be encouraged and preserved. And if it were true that this war were being fought to establish the right of little nations to live, one of the tasks it ought to accomplish, it seemed then, was to give the Bulgars back at least part of what was taken from them. ”

“ This is practically what happened in Bulgaria, and it is only by taking into account the exceptionally difficult conditions in which the Principality found itself on the morrow of its liberation that one will be able to appreciate the efforts displayed and the result obtained."
In one particular there is to a British observer a marked failing in the Bulgarian character: the Bulgars are very nervous to "keep up appearances" and that makes them appear snobbish and deceitful at times. They are ashamed of poverty, a little ashamed, too, of their natural manners. ”

“ The Bulgars, who descend from a fusion of the Slavonic element with a later Ugro-Finnish immigration, inhabit the kingdom of Bulgaria (including Eastern Rumelia) , parts of the Dobrudja and the greater part of Macedonia, except Old Servia and the Aegean littoral. Apart from their colonies in Bessarabia and elsewhere, they may be reckoned at 4,400,000. Only a portion of the widely-spread Ruman or Vlach race, which extends over a great part of Transylvania, south Hungary and Bessarabia, as well as the Rumanian kingdom, falls within the limits of the Peninsula. ”

“ Later, when the Slavs and Bulgars succeeded in forming a united state, the country was still besieged by both Byzantium and Rome. [Pg 10] Although the Romans eventually lost their hold over Bulgaria, the Byzantine Empire took both political and religious control of the country for two centuries. When Bulgaria managed to reassert its autonomy in the time of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom, independence was short lived, and the country again fell under alien control, this time to the Ottoman Turks. ”

“ The East Roman emperors were compelled to cede to them the province of Moesia and to pay them an annual tribute. The invading horde was not numerous, and during the next two centuries it became gradually merged in the Slavonic population. Like the Franks in Gaul the Bulgars gave their name and a political organization to the more civilized race which they conquered, but adopted its language, customs and local institutions. Not a trace of the Ugrian or Finnish element is to be found in the Bulgarian speech. This complete assimilation of a conquering race may be illustrated by many parallels. ”

“ Their dreaded chief, Krum, celebrated his triumphs with sanguinary rites, and his followers yielded in no respects to the Huns themselves in coarseness and brutality. Yet an almost complete moral if not physical transformation had been effected by the middle of the ninth century, when the Bulgars were evangelised by Byzantine missionaries, exchanged their rude Ugrian speech for a Slavonic tongue, the so-called "Church Slav," or even "Old Bulgarian," and became henceforth merged in the surrounding Slav populations. ”

“ The Turks for various reasons never succeeded in subduing Serbia and the various Serb lands as completely as they had subdued, or rather annihilated, Bulgaria. The Serbs were spread over a far larger extent of territory than were the Bulgars, they were further removed from the Turkish centre, and the wooded and mountainous nature of their country facilitated even more than in the case of Bulgaria the formation of bands of brigands and rebels and militated against its systematic policing by the Turks. ”

“ The modern Serb and the modern Bulgarian nations are closely akin in language and in blood, although the Bulgars have a certain Turanian strain in them, while the Serbs boast of being ‘pure Slavs.’ Sprung from substantially the same stock, the two nations have throughout their history vied with each other in trying to draw to themselves as large as possible a part of their kinsmen ”

“ Serbia was partially free by 1826, and Greece achieved complete independence in 1830, when the Russian troops, in order to coerce the Turks, occupied part of Bulgaria and advanced as far as Adrianople. Bulgaria, being nearer to and more easily repressed by Constantinople, had to wait, and tentative revolts made about this time were put down with much bloodshed and were followed by wholesale emigrations of Bulgars into Bessarabia and importations of Tartars and Kurds into the vacated districts. ”

“ That any one of them is arrayed against us to-day is not to be laid entirely or chiefly at its own door. They are all fine peoples who have not obtained their proper places in the sun. The best of the Osmanli nation, the Anatolian peasantry, has yet to make its physical and moral qualities felt under civilized conditions. As for the rest—the Serbs and the Bulgars, who have enjoyed brief moments of barbaric glory in their past, have still to find themselves in that future which shall be to the Slav. The Greeks, who were old when we were not as yet, are younger now than we. ”

“ During the fifteenth century they were allowed to practise their religion and all their vocations in comparative liberty and peace. But from the sixteenth century onwards the control of the Sultan declined, power became decentralized, the Ottoman Empire grew ever more anarchic and the rule of the provincial governors more despotic.
But the Mohammedan conquerors were not the only enemies and oppressors of the Bulgars. The rôle played by the Greeks in Bulgaria during the Turkish dominion was almost as important as that of the Turks themselves. ”

“ If they got what they wanted without fighting for it, they were not anxious to throw away another generation of young men as they had thrown them away for nothing in the Balkan War.
By this negative policy—the pressure, that is to say, of not going to war—Bulgaria had induced Turkey, by the time I came through Sofia again three months later, to turn over enough territory on the east so that the Bulgars could own the railroad down to Dedeagatch and reach the Aegean without being obliged to go into Turkey and out again. ”

“ It has prevented a welding together of the people into one whole, has facilitated the rise of numerous political units at various times, and generally favoured the dissipation of the national strength, and militated against national organization and cohesion. In the course of history this process has been emphasized rather than diminished, and to-day the Serb race is split up into six political divisions, while Bulgaria, except for those Bulgars claimed as ‘unredeemed’ beyond the frontier, presents a united whole. ”