Bulgarian Agrarian National Union

The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (Bulgarian: Български земеделски народен съюз, romanized: Bŭlgarski zemedelski naroden sŭyuz, BZNS), is a political party devoted to representing the causes of the Bulgarian peasantry. It was an agrarian movement and was most powerful between 1900 and 1923. Unlike the socialist movements of the early 20th century, it was devoted to questions concerning agriculture and farmers, rather than industry and factory workers. The BZNS, one of the first and most powerful of the agrarian parties in Eastern Europe, dominated Bulgarian politics during the beginning of the 20th century. It is also the only agrarian party in Europe that ever came to power with a majority government, rather than merely as part of a coalition. It is a founding member of the former International Agrarian Bureau.
An Agrarian Union was first organized in Bulgaria in 1899. It was to be a professional organization open only to peasants and was at first not meant to become a political party. The Union initially won widespread peasant support by mobilizing peasants throughout Bulgaria to peaceful demonstrations against the government's unfair taxation policies. While condemning the government's suppression of peasant protests against the tithe, the Union remained politically unaligned. However, at its third congress, motivated by upcoming elections for the Bulgarian National Assembly, the Union leaders, who were not peasants themselves but a group of teachers, voted to become a political party. Thus, in 1901, the Agrarian Union became the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, Bulgaria's official peasant party. BZNS candidates subsequently ran for positions in local and national elections.
Over the next twenty years, the BZNS remained a part of Bulgarian politics, but it began to falter for lack of a concrete ideological base. Aleksandar Stamboliyski saved the party from that plight by first publishing a series of theoretical articles on the peasants’ role in the state and history, and finally taking control of the BZNS party. In 1909 he wrote the book Political Parties or Estatist Organizations, which laid the foundations for the ideology of the BZNS. Stamboliyski rose through the ranks of the BZNS and by 1918 had become the leader of the party. World War I left Bulgaria in a state of severe social and economic crisis, and after a series of worker and peasant strikes and uprisings between 1918 and 1920, the Bulgarian army and all old political parties were essentially discredited. In 1920, by a combination of major popular support and some coercive methods, Stamboliyski was able to create a BZNS controlled government. The party also formed a militia, the Orange Guard.
The chief rival of Stamboliyski's BZNS was the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP). After World War I, the BZNS and the BKP were the two leading parties in Bulgarian politics. Though the BZNS initially beat the Communist Party for political power, its authority quickly began to wane because, according to the communists, the BZNS wavered in its support between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Although most of them were not rich, peasants still participated in an old bourgeois economic system, which was, from the Communist point of view, destined to fail.
Though the BKP was always opposed to certain BZNS policies, most other factions became dissatisfied with Stamboliyski and the BZNS because of growing corruption within the party, and an increasingly oppressive rule over the Bulgarian people. On 9 June 1923 a bloc of military factions staged a coup d'état and deposed the Stamboliyski regime. Though the Communists ultimately gained control of the Bulgarian government, the BZNS remained in existence (as a member of the Fatherland Front), and participated in agricultural policy in Bulgaria until the fall of communism in 1989.
Stamboliyski believed that over time, new groups which were more attuned to modern political and economic needs would replace old political parties. He detailed this view in the 1909 book Political Parties or Estatist Organizations. In this vein, the BZNS was supposed to be more than a political party. It was meant to retain its original function as a professional organization for peasants, and also involve itself in politics in order to guarantee the protection of the peasant classes. The BZNS was a populist party, and as such supported the rights of the individual peasant over those of the corporation or large-scale landowner.
Stamboliyski believed that mechanized agriculture would never replace the individual peasant, but also that peasant agriculture need not be backward or inefficient. Therefore, he stressed the importance of education in peasant communities. He also emphasized the need for social welfare, and believed that if the state could distribute arable land equally to each family and lower the tax burden on the peasantry, the condition of the Bulgarian peasantry would naturally improve.
After Stamboliyski came to power, the BZNS organized campaigns for redistribution of land and rural education. These campaigns were largely successful, and the BZNS enjoyed widespread support in the immediate post-war period.
In the international sphere, the BZNS was strictly anti-imperialist in its policies. Stamboliyski thought that the new groups which would supposedly replace the old political parties had the possibility to become international organizations. He hoped for and encouraged an agrarian alliance that would spread outside of Bulgaria to the entire Balkan region. He did not pursue territorial expansion, and generally neglected the army. These policies contributed to the dissatisfaction that led to the overthrow of Stamboliyski and the BZNS in 1923.