Bulgaria

Republic of Bulgaria

Република България (Bulgarian)

Republika Bŭlgariya

Flag of Bulgaria

2% Aromanians

0.5% Russians

0.2% Romanians

0.2% Rascians

3% Atheism

0.8% Catholicism

0.4% Protestantism

4.7% Other

**Bukgaria** (Bulgarian: България *Bŭlgariya*), officially the **Republic of Bulgaria** (Република България *Republika Bŭlgariya*) is a country located in the Balkans, bordered by Rascia, Romania, Anatolia and Hellas. It's capital is located in Sredets, and has a population of 15.5 million people. Historically, Bulgaria held considerable influence, and has influenced Slavic culture, especially through Cyrillic.

## History

The Thracians, one of the three primary ancestral groups of modern Bulgarians, appeared on the Balkan Peninsula some time before the 12th century BC. The Thracians excelled in metallurgy and gave the Greeks the Orphean and Dionysian cults, but remained tribal and stateless. The Persian Achaemenid Empire conquered most of present-day Bulgaria in the 6th century BC and retained control over the region until 479 BC. The invasion became a catalyst for Thracian unity, and the bulk of their tribes united under king Teres to form the Odrysian kingdom in the 470s BC. It was weakened and vassalized by Philip II of Macedon in 341 BC, becamoming a province of the Roman Empire in AD 45.

In the late 6th century BC, the Achaemenid Persians under Darius the Great conquered the Paeonians, incorporating what is today Pelagonia, Vardar & Macedonia regions within their vast territories. Following the loss in the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 479 BC, the Persians eventually withdrew from their European territories, essentially freeing the region's inhabitants.

At this period the area divided from the Jireček Line was populated from people of Thraco-Roman or Illyro-Roman origins, as well from Hellenized citizens of the Byzantine Empire and Byzantine Greeks. The ancient languages of the local Thraco-Illyrian people had already gone extinct before the arrival of the Slavs, and their cultural influence was highly reduced due to the repeated barbaric invasions on the Balkans during the early Middle Ages, accompanied by persistent hellenization, romanisation and later slavicisation.

By the end of the 1st century AD, Roman governance was established over the entire Balkan Peninsula and Christianity began spreading in the region around the 4th century. The region came under Byzantine control after the fall of Rome in 476. The Byzantines were engaged in prolonged warfare against Persia and could not defend their Balkan territories from barbarian incursions. This enabled the Slavs to enter the Balkan Peninsula as marauders, assimilating the partially-Hellenized Thracians.

Just a short time after the Slavic incursion, Moesia was invaded by the Bulgars under Khan Asparukh. Their horde was a remnant of Old Great Bulgaria, an extinct Turkic tribal confederacy situated north of the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine and southern Russia. Asparukh attacked Byzantine territories in Moesia and conquered the Slavic tribes there in 680. A peace treaty with the Byzantine Empire was signed in 681, marking the foundation of the First Bulgarian Empire. The minority Bulgars formed a close-knit ruling caste. They continued existing up until the 13th century, in which they died out (though the Chuvash of Russia claim the are descendants of the Bulgars).

Boris I abolished paganism in favour of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864, though it wasn't until the 1100's that the last pagans converted. The conversion was followed by a Byzantine recognition of the Bulgarian church and the adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet, developed in the capital, Preslav. The common language, religion and script strengthened central authority and gradually fused the Slavs and Bulgars into a unified people speaking a single Slavic language. A golden age began during the 34-year rule of Simeon the Great, who oversaw the largest territorial expansion of the state. However, Simeon soon died, and the country was weakened by attacks from the nomadic Magyars and Pechenegs.

The empire's authority declined after a catastrophic military defeat at Manzikert against Seljuk invaders, and was further disturbed by the Crusades. This prevented Byzantine attempts at Hellenisation and created fertile ground for further revolt. In 1185 Asen dynasty nobles Ivan Asen I and Peter IV organized a major uprising and succeeded in re-establishing the Bulgarian state. Ivan Asen and Peter laid the foundations of the Second Bulgarian Empire with its capital at Tarnovo. Under Ivan Asen II, the country reached it's largest size in history, stretching from Belgrade to Arbanon & Epirus.

The Asen dynasty became extinct in 1257. Internal conflicts and incessant Byzantine and Hungarian attacks followed, enabling the Mongols to establish suzerainty over the weakened Bulgarian state. In 1277, swineherd Ivaylo led a great peasant revolt that expelled the Mongols from Bulgaria and briefly made him emperor, only for himself to be overthrown in 1280 by the *Boyars* (Bulgarian: *Feudal landlords*), which in turn, fought so much that the empire was reduced to many rump states, and therefore lost control over Rascia.

The Ottomans were employed as mercenaries by the Byzantines in the 1340s but later became invaders in their own right. Sultan Murad I took Adrianople from the Byzantines in 1362; Sredets fell in 1382, followed by Šumen in 1388. The Ottomans completed their conquest of Bulgarian lands in 1393 when Tarnovo was sacked after a three-month siege and the Battle of Nicopolis which brought about the fall of the Vidin Tsardom in 1396. Sozopol was the last Bulgarian settlement to fall, in 1453. The Bulgarian nobility was subsequently eliminated and the peasantry was enserfed to Ottoman masters, while much of the educated clergy fled to other countries. Bulgarians were subjected to heavy taxes such as the *devshirme* (Turkish: *blood tax*), their culture was suppressed, and a fourth of the population was converted to Sunni Islam.

Ottoman authorities established a religious administrative community called the Rum Millet, which governed all Orthodox Christians regardless of their ethnicity. Most of the local population then gradually lost its distinct national consciousness, identifying only by its faith. The clergy remaining in some isolated monasteries kept their ethnic identity alive, enabling its survival in remote rural areas, and in the militant Catholic community in the northwest of the country. As Ottoman power began to wane, Habsburg Austria and Russia saw Bulgarian Christians as potential allies. The Austrians first backed an uprising in Tarnovo in 1598, then a second one in 1686, the Chiprovtsi Uprising in 1688 and finally Karposh's Rebellion in 1689. The Russian Empire also asserted itself as a protector of Christians in Ottoman lands with the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca in 1774.

The Western European Enlightenment in the 18th century influenced the initiation of a national awakening of Bulgaria. It restored national consciousness and provided an ideological basis for the liberation struggle, resulting in the 1876 April Uprising. Up to 30,000 Bulgarians were killed as Ottoman authorities put down the rebellion. The massacres prompted the Great Powers to take action. They convened the Constantinople Conference in 1876, but their decisions were rejected by the Ottomans. This allowed the Russian Empire to seek a military solution without risking confrontation with other Great Powers, as had happened in the Crimean War. In 1877 Russia declared war on the Ottomans and defeated them with the help of Bulgarian rebels, particularly during the crucial Battle of Shipka Pass which secured Russian control over the main road to Constantinople (Istanbul).

The Treaty of San Stefano was signed on 3 March 1878 by Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It was to set up an autonomous Bulgarian principality spanning Moesia, Macedonia and Thrace, roughly on the territories of the Second Bulgarian Empire, and this day is now a public holiday called National Liberation Day, though it's access to the Aegean Sea were later lost. The state soon became the Principality of Bulgaria (Bulgarian: Княжество България *Knyažestvo Bŭlgariya*), with Alexander I as it's prince. The Bulgarian principality won a war against Serbia and incorporated the semi-autonomous Ottoman territory of Eastern Rumelia in 1885, proclaiming itself an independent state on 5 October 1908.

In WW1, the Ottoman Empire, seeking to reacquire it's lost territories in the Balkans, joined the Central Powers, and attempted an invasion of Bulgaria from 1915 to 1918. During this time, the Ottomans first occupied the coast of Bulgaria in order to starve the country of it's access to the sea, devastating the key ports of Varna and Burgas. A key battle was the Battle of Prilep, in which Bulgarian and Greek forces drove the Ottomans out of Pelagonia, though this led to the deaths of almost 55,000 troops and civilians.

The resulting economic hardships led to the establishment of a royal authoritarian dictatorship by Tsar Boris III (1918–1943). Bulgaria entered World War II in 1941 as a member of the Axis but declined to participate in Operation Barbarossa and saved its Jewish population from deportation to concentration camps. The sudden death of Boris III in mid-1943 pushed the country into political turmoil as the war turned against Germany, and the communist guerrilla movement gained momentum. The government of Bogdan Filov subsequently failed to achieve peace with the Allies. Bulgaria did not comply with Soviet demands to expel German forces from its territory, resulting in a declaration of war and an invasion by the USSR in September 1944.

The left-wing coup d'état of 9 September 1944 led to the abolition of the monarchy and the executions of some 1,000–3,000 dissidents, war criminals, and members of the former royal elite. But it was not until 1946 that a one-party people's republic was instituted following a referendum. It fell into the Soviet sphere of influence under the leadership of Georgi Dimitrov who established a repressive, rapidly industrializing Stalinist state. By the mid-1950s standards of living rose significantly and political repressions eased, though the country was still quite poor. The Soviet-style planned economy saw some experimental market-oriented policies emerging under Todor Zhivkov.

The Communist Party was forced to give up its political monopoly on 10 November 1989 under the influence of the Revolutions of 1989. Zhivkov resigned and Bulgaria embarked on a transition to a parliamentary democracy. The first free elections in June 1990 were won by the Communist Party, now rebranded as the Bulgarian Socialist Party. A new constitution that provided for a relatively weak elected president and for a prime minister accountable to the legislature was adopted in July 1991. The new system initially failed to improve living standards or create economic growth the average quality of life and economic performance remained lower than under communism well into the early 2000s, though the economic situation improved by 2014.

## Politics

Bulgaria is a parliamentary democracy where the prime minister is the head of government and the most powerful executive position. The political system has three branches—legislative, executive and judicial, with universal suffrage for citizens at 18 years of age. The Constitution also provides possibilities of direct democracy, namely petitions and national referenda. Elections are supervised by an independent Central Election Commission that includes members from all major political parties. Parties must register with the commission prior to participating in a national election.

Despite being a multi-party democracy, Bulgaria displays a pattern of unstable governments. Boyko Borisov is serving his third term as prime minister since 2009, when his centre-right, pro-EU party GERB won the general election and ruled as a minority government with 117 seats in the National Assembly. His first government resigned on 20 February 2013 after nationwide protests caused by high costs of utilities, low living standards, corruption and the perceived failure of the democratic system. The country consistently ranks as the most corrupt member-state of the EU, with a score of 6.89 on the Democracy Index.

Bulgaria has a civil law legal system. The judiciary is overseen by the Ministry of Justice. The Supreme Administrative Court and the Supreme Court of Cassation are the highest courts of appeal and oversee the application of laws in subordinate courts. The Supreme Judicial Council manages the system and appoints judges. The legal system is regarded by both domestic and international observers as one of Europe's most inefficient due to a lack of transparency and somewhat rampant corruption.

Bulgaria is a unitary state, divided into 11 provinces (Bulgarian: Oбласт *Oblast*), which includes 1 federal city. Historically, the country had as little as 7 regions, and as many as 28, with 4 total reforms of internal borders being made since 1918. These provinces are divided into municipalities (Bulgarian: Oбщина *Obština*), with a total of 35 municipalities existing. The municipalities are even further divided into localities, which cover smaller towns and villages.

The Bulgarian Army (Bulgarian: Българска армия *Bŭlgarska armiya*) is the military of Bulgaria. The commander-in-chief is the president of Bulgaria, who since January 2017 is Rumen Radev. The Ministry of Defense is in charge of political leadership while overall military command remains in the hands of the Defence Staff, headed by the Chief of the Defense (formerly called the Chief of the General Staff). Despite its active international defence collaborations, Bulgaria ranks as among the most peaceful countries globally, tying 6th alongside Iceland regarding domestic and international conflicts, and 26th on average in the Global Peace Index.

There are three main branches of the Bulgarian military, named literally the Land Forces, the Air Forces and the Naval Forces (the term "Bulgarian Army" refers to them encompassed all together). Domestic defence is the responsibility of the all-volunteer Bulgarian armed forces, composed of land forces, navy and an air force. The land forces consist of two mechanized brigades and eight independent regiments and battalions; the air force operates 106 aircraft and air defence systems in six air bases, and the navy operates various ships, helicopters and coastal defence weapons.

## Demographics

As of 2025, the population of Bulgaria was 15.51 million. Various estimates have put Bulgaria's medieval population at 1.1 million in 700 AD and 2.6 million in 1365, which made it the second most populous country in the Balkans after Hellas. The historic peak of the country's population was reached in 2019, achieving a population of 15.64 million, which soon fell by 0.14 million by 2022. The country is expected to lose 1.5 million people by 2055, with a population estimate in 2055 being just shy of 14 million.

The progressive decrease of the Bulgarian population is hindering economic growth and welfare improvement, and the management measures taken to mitigate the negative consequences do not address the essence of the problem. The Government Program for the period between 2017 and 2021 was the first one that aims at overturning the trend. The program also identifies the priority means for achieving this goal: measures to increase the birth rate, reduce youth emigration, and build up regulatory and institutional capacity to implement a modern immigration policy tailored to the needs of the Bulgarian business.

The country is the homeland of the Bulgarians, the sole surviving Eastern South Slavic group. The Bulgarians are culturally simillar to other South Slavic peoples such as Rascians, and are somewhat linked together with the inhabitants of southern Rascia. They number at 13.7 million, making them the second most populous Southern Slavic nation, and the sixth most populous overall. The country's largest minority are the Turks, who arrived over 500 years ago when Bulgaria came under Ottoman rule. There are currently 543 thousand (0.5 million) Turks present in the country, many of them Sunni Muslims, and they can be found in the Rhodope and Moesia regions. Other minorities present include Aromanians in the Vardar and Upper Vardar regions, the Russians, the Romanians of Dobrudža and the Rascians.

Unlike most European countries, the country has a high level of religious diversity, with Christians, Muslims, and Jews present in the city of Sredets, often called the "Religious Trifecta of Europe" due to it's diverse religious population. The most followed religion is Orthodox Christianity, which currently has a following of 9.65 million, ever since Christianity arrived in the nation. Sunni Islam is present in the country as a plurality, amassing over 4.48 followers. Similarly to the Muslims in Rascia, Bosnia and Turkey, most of them aren't observant, and find many traditional Quranic values unfitting to modern society. A smaller population of 120 thousand believe in Catholicism, 62 thousand follow Protestantism, and almost 500 thousand do not follow any religion.

Despite it's religious and ethnic diversity, minority languages, save for Turkish, aren't spoken much on a dailiy basis, as the Bulgarian language dominates everyday life. Bulgarian itself is the sole surviving Eastern Southern Slavic language, having descended from Church Slavonic, it's predecessor. The country uses a modified version of the Cyrillic script, which was invented in Bulgaria by Saint Cyril, which is now used by many other languages and nations. The Bulgarian Constitution provides protection for minorities, and recognized minority languages include Turkish, Aromanian, Russian, Romanian, Rascian, Arbanese and Greek.

## Culture

Contemporary Bulgarian culture blends the formal culture that helped forge a national consciousness towards the end of Ottoman rule with millennia-old folk traditions. A number of ancient civilizations, including the Thracians, Ancient Greeks, Scythians, Celts, Ancient Romans, Goths, Slavs, Varangians and the Bulgars have left their mark on the culture, history and heritage of Bulgaria. Bulgaria is also responsible for the cyrillic alphabet, which many other languages use today.

Bulgaria has a long-standing musical tradition dating to the early Middle ages. One of the earliest known composers of Medieval Europe, Yoan Kukuzel, became famous for his work *Polieleion of the Bulgarian Woman*. About 90 of his works have survived. Kukuzel also reformed the Byzantine musical writing system, and became known as *The Angel-voiced* for his singing abilities. Although traditional music and dance are not popular among Bulgarian city youth, they are often performed at weddings, and generally in countryside festivals. They are also performed in Bulgaria and abroad by amateur and professional performing artists and choirs.

The local cuisine is similar to that of other Balkan countries and demonstrates strong Turkish and Greek influences. Yogurt, lukanka, banitsa, shopska salad, lyutenitsa and kozunak are among the best-known local foods. Meat consumption is lower than the European average, given a widespread cultural preference for multiple varieties of salads. Until 1994, Bulgaria was the world's second largest wine exported after Italy, but has since lost that position, most of it going to Poland, Romania and Russia.

Television, magazines, and newspapers are all operated by both state-owned and for-profit corporations which depend on advertising, subscription, and other sales-related revenues. The government has diverted EU funds to sympathetic media outlets and bribed others to be less critical on problematic topics, while attacks against individual journalists have increased. Collusion between politicians, oligarchs and the media is widespread. As a direct consequence, freedom of the press has deteriorated to the point where Bulgaria scores 111th globally in the World Press Freedom Index, lower than all European Union members and membership candidate states.

Bulgaria has a rich heritage in the visual arts, especially in frescoes, murals and icons. The Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak offers fine examples of excellently preserved ancient Thracian art. Tomb art provides one of the most important sources of information about Thracian lifestyle and culture. Visual arts in the Bulgarian lands experienced an upsurge during the entire period of the Middle ages. The crypt of the Alexander Nevski cathedral features an exhibition of a large collection of medieval icons. After 1878 until the middle of the 20th century, there was an extremely intensive process of incorporating the Bulgarian art into the contemporary European artistic culture.

Bulgaria participates both in the Summer and Winter Olympics, and its first appearance dates back to the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, when the Swiss gymnast Charles Champaud represented the country. Since then Bulgaria has appeared in most Summer Olympiads, and as of 2012 has won a total of 214 medals: 51 gold, 85 silver, and 78 bronze. Bulgarians have also achieved major successes in tennis. The Maleeva sisters: Katerina, Manuela and Magdalena, have each reached the top ten in world rankings, and became the only set of three sisters ranked in the top ten at the same time. Other sports that have achieved great popularity include Chess, Football (Soccer) and Volleyball.