DZ
DefZone.Net

Kien thuc cong nghe & giai tri

Wiki Article

Bulgarisation

Nguồn dữ liệu từ Wikipedia, hiển thị bởi DefZone.Net

Xem trên WikipediaBài ngẫu nhiên khác

Bulgarisation (Bulgarian: българизация), also known as Bulgarianisation (Bulgarian: побългаряване) is the spread of Bulgarian culture beyond the Bulgarian ethnic space carried out through educational and ecclesial campaigns, and, at times, policies of forced assimilation and emigration. Within the borders of modern-day Bulgaria, historic Bulgarianisation efforts were primarily, but not exclusively, directed at Muslims. There were also Bulgarianisation campaigns in present-day Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia, particularly during the First and Second World Wars.

History

[edit]

Ottoman rule

[edit]

Under Ottoman rule, much of the expansion of the Bulgarian ethnic group was reversed. While the Ottoman Empire provided for some cultural and religious autonomy under the "Millet System", and Bulgarians were briefly granted their own Bulgarian Millet, Bulgarians were no longer politically dominant in their own lands. While the Ottomans did not generally require Bulgarians to convert to Islam,[1] the empire did enforce the Jizya tax and other forms of discrimination and practices on non-Muslims (such as the Devshirme). Those Bulgarians who converted to Islam but retained their Slavic language and customs became known as Pomaks.[2] A sub-set of these converts to Islam also assimilated into the Turkish ethnic group.[2] Between that assimilation and the settlement of many Turkish people in Bulgaria, much of modern-day Bulgaria had an ethnic Turkish Muslim majority prior to Bulgarian independence.

Bulgarian Exarchate

[edit]
Further information: Bulgarian Exarchate

In 1870, Sultan Abdulaziz granted the right for establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate. The Bulgarian Exarchate exercised authority over northern Bulgaria, most of Thrace, and most of Macedonia.[3] The establishment of the Exarchate, meant official recognition of a separate Bulgarian millet,[4][5] and in this case the religious affiliation became a consequence of national allegiance.[6] Shortly after its establishment, the Exarchate launched educational campaigns which managed to implant Bulgarian national ideology in the Macedonian Slavs.[7]

The Principality and Tsardom

[edit]

Following the decisive defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), Bulgaria at last regained independence, though initially it remained under limited Ottoman suzerainty.[1] Following the Ottoman defeat, both Russian occupation authorities during and immediately after the war as well as Bulgarian administrators, attempted to remove traces of Ottoman rule from the area where possible.[8] The Bulgarian nation was ideally to consist of Slavic Orthodox Christians.[8] In spite of treaty obligations requiring Bulgaria to protect its Muslim subjects, Islamic buildings of many kinds were destroyed (including mosques, schools, and homes).[9]

Assimilation efforts continued thereafter, and many Muslims left Bulgaria in response. In the first post-independence census conducted by the Principality of Bulgaria 26.3% of respondents declared their mother tongue to be Turkish/Gagauz,[10] but by 1934 (the final census conducted by the Tsardom of Bulgaria) only 9.7% of respondents declared themselves to be ethnically Turkish and information on the Turkic Gagauz population was not collected.[11] This precipitous drop in the Turkish population of Bulgaria meant that by the time of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, many formerly Turkish-majority areas had become majority ethnically Bulgarian.

Rodina Movement

[edit]

Assimilation efforts in the Tsardom of Bulgaria increased in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The "Homeland" or "Rodina" (Bulgarian: Родина), originally founded in-part by ethnic-Bulgarian Muslims,[12] of that time was associated with particularly acute assimilation efforts in the Tsardom. The movement focused on Bulgarianising "Bulgaro-Mohammedan" people in the country.[12]

While the origins of the Rodina movement were popular, the Tsardom eventually provided financial support for the movement.[12] The Bulgarian language was introduced into Muslim worship,[13] and the wearing of traditional clothing among "Bulgaro-Mohammedan" people was curtailed.[13][14] Eventually, the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to appoint "Bulgaro-Mohammedan" Muftis.[15]

Most notable, however, was the name-changing drive, which was mandated by the Tsardom from 1942. Those identified as ethnic-Bulgarian Muslims were made to change their names,[13] though prior to 1942 name-changes were officially voluntary.[15] Following the passage of the "Bulgarianization of the Mohammedan Names of Bulgaro-Mohammedans" law, 60,000 were made to change their names,[15] though many were able to revert to their non-Bulgarian names following the fall of the regime.[16]

Modern Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia

[edit]
Further information: Bulgarian occupation of Serbia (World War I) and Bulgarian rule of Macedonia, Morava Valley and Western Thrace (1941–1944)

The region of present-day North Macedonia until 1912 was part of the Ottoman Empire. At that time, most independent European observers viewed the Slavs of Macedonia as Bulgarians or as Macedonian Slavs, while their association with the Bulgarian cause was almost universally accepted by Western scholars.[17] However, the majority of the peasants did not have a clear sense of national identity,[18] while Bulgarian identity was espoused by most of the local intelligentsia.[19][20] Immediately after annexation of Vardar Macedonia to the Kingdom of Serbia, during the Balkan wars (1912-1913), the Macedonian Slavs were faced with the policy of forced Serbianisation.[21][22] An anti-Bulgarian campaign was carried out in the areas under Serbian control where Bulgarian schools and churches were closed, while the clergy and the teachers were expelled.[23]

During both the First and Second World War, Bulgaria administered occupation zones in the modern-day state of North Macedonia as well as parts of Kosovo and Serbia. During both occupations, Bulgarian authorities implemented policies aimed at the Bulgarianisation of the local population.

In 1915, Bulgaria came to occupy half of the Kingdom of Serbia. The goal of the Bulgarian government was to create pure Bulgarian territories by denationalising the other Slavs.[24] The Bulgarian language was introduced and the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was prohibited in schools. Serbian historian Milan Ristović writes: "Clerks, teachers and priests were brought to Macedonia from Bulgaria. They organized propaganda, opened Bulgarian schools, held public lectures, expanded the number of different Bulgarian associations, and printed publications – all in tandem with the use of coercive measures. These policies were also used on Albanians and Turks in Kosovo and Macedonia."[25] Individuals who refused to comply with the authorities and become Bulgarian faced severe repression, including torture, internment, and gruesome killings.[24]

Resistance to the occupation and Bulgarianisation led to the Toplica Uprising of 1917 in Southern Serbia.

During the Second World War, Bulgaria occupied most of Vardar Macedonia, then officially called Vardar Banovina. Until then, the Serbian authorities had carried out a state-policy of Serbianisation[21][26] and de-Bulgarisation occurred.[27][28] The Bulgarian authorities considered the Macedonian Slavs as no more than unruly Bulgarians.[29] Soon after the occupation, the authorities realized that only part of the Slavic Macedonians felt Bulgarian or were pro-Bulgarian. Because of that, the they initiated a program of intense Bulgarisation in all occupied areas.[30] Some researchers describe this process as "re-Bulgarisation" and "de-Serbianisation".[31] Schools at all levels were reorganized, and large numbers of teachers were imported from Bulgaria while the Macedonian teachers who were suitable were sent to Bulgaria for study and indoctrination, and those who were not suitable were transferred to administrative jobs outside of school system or dismissed.[32] Harsh treatment by occupying Bulgarian troops reduced the pro-Bulgarian orientation of the Macedonian Slavs even more.[33] The intensive Bulgarisation policies generated significant discontent in Macedonia, leading even anti‑Yugoslav Macedonians who returned from exile to seek allies among the communists.[34] As a matter of fact all of the previous confirmed to the Macedonians that the Bulgarian regime behaved the same as the oppressive Yugoslav (Serbian) before, and the Bulgarisation campaign ultimately failed.[32][29]

Greek Macedonia and Thrace

[edit]
Further information: Axis occupation of Greece § Bulgarian occupation zone, and Greece during World War I § Central Powers offensives and the Bulgarian invasion of eastern Macedonia

At the beginning of the 20th century, Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace were ethnically diverse. Greeks, Slavs, Turks, and others could be found throughout the region. The Tsardom of Bulgaria gained most of what is now the Greek administrative region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in the Balkan wars. It further occupied some of the Greek-assigned portion of Eastern Macedonia around the cities of Drama and Kavala for half of the First War.

As a result of its defeat in the war, Bulgaria was made to cede the region to Greece and also enter into a population exchange with Athens that affected the expulsion of many Bulgarians from the region.[35] Augmented by an influx of Greek refugees from the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere in the Balkans, the Greek government carried out additional expulsions and settled Greeks in the region. For example, in 1923 the Governor General of Salonica advocted for the settlement of hundreds of thousands of "'New Greeks'" in the newly-conquered areas.[36] By 1929, the League of Nations estimated that 92,000 Slavs had left the area for Bulgaria and 46,000 Greek speakers had been settled in their stead.[37] Less formally, the Greek government expelled 5,000 alleged subversives and their family members to Bulgaria.[38]

Greece also implemented a number of policies aimed at the assimilation of remaining non-Greeks. For example, it closed down all "Exarchist" schools in areas under its control,[39] most of which were Bulgarian-medium institutions, owing to their historic association with the Bulgarian Exarchate.

During World War II, Bulgaria gained control over most of the lands it had ceded to Greece as well as some lands which had been assigned to Greece following the Second Balkan War. In these areas, Bulgaria implemented a number of assimilationist policies. In education, Bulgarian authorities attempted to replace the Greek language with Bulgarian as a medium of education.[40] From May 1941, Bulgaria incorporated the newly-conquered areas into the national education system.[40]

From the very beginning of the occupation, Bulgarian officials also condoned and encouraged the emigration of Greeks from the occupied areas.[41] They also carried out targeted expulsion. By August of 1941, nearly all Greek scientists, in particular, had been expelled from the region.[42] By June 1943, 110,000 had left the region occupied by Bulgaria.[43] In their place, around 100,000 Bulgarian colonists were settled.[44]

Opposition to initial occupation and assimilation policies led to the Drama Uprising of 1941.

People's Republic of Bulgaria

[edit]
Todor Zhivkov and Georgi Dimitrov at a congress of the Fatherland Front in 1946.

Initial Changes

[edit]

The Soviet Union initially forced Bulgaria to recognize many minority ethnic groups in the country and change its practices towards its Muslim minority.[15][45] The Bulgarian Communist Party was made to bring Bulgarian Muslims into the party, promote the development of the nation's Turkish minority, and attempt to "incite" that minority to bring the Socialist revolution to Turkey.[15] The communist regime in Sofia, however, continued to carry out some Bulgarianisation policies directed at Bulgarian Muslims and Turks, including bringing Muslim elites into the fold of the state.[15] Most notably, around 160,000 were even made to leave Bulgaria between 1950 and 1951.

Change in Direction

[edit]

Following the death of Stalin, Todor Zhivkov rose to leadership of the Bulgarian Communist Party and the country by extension. Under Zhivkov, the conception of the Bulgarian nation was further developed and "Bulgarianisation" campaigns were carried out vigorously. By the 1960s, new versions of the Bulgarianisation campaigns of the pre-communist era were implemented.[16]

Notably, the idea that Bulgarian Muslims shared a Slavic and Christian origin with the Bulgarians originated in the 1960s during Zhivkov's rule,[46] though claims that "Bulgaro-Mohammedans" were essentially Bulgarian originated earlier.[47] The regime in Sofia often fell back on claims that the Ottoman Empire had planned and executed the "Islamization" and "Turkification" of Bulgaria.[46] In 1985, a senior Bulgarian Communist Party official proclaimed that “The Bulgarian nation has no parts of other peoples and nations”.[48]

Revival Process

[edit]
Further information: Revival Process

Notable among the Bulgarianisation campaigns of the Zhivkov era was the "Revival Process", a 1980s attempt to assimilate the Muslim population of Bulgaria. During the "Revival Process" assimilation efforts increased and those Muslims who had not already been made to adopt new sufficiently Bulgarian names in place of their original Turkish or Islamic names were made to do so. The "Revival Process" was followed by the "Big Excursion" which saw the expulsion of over 300,000 Bulgarian Turks from the country (and subsequent return of some of the victims). Following the fall of Todor Zhivkov, the "Revival Process" was reversed and people were free to revert to previous names or adopt the names they wished.[49] Regardless, some of those who had been made to adopt a "Bulgarian" name continued using both it and their restored name.[50]

Republic of Bulgaria

[edit]

The Republic of Bulgaria is a member of the Council of Europe, European Union, and European Court of Human Rights. It is additionally party to a number of international treaties aimed at the protection of national minorities and human rights, such as the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities.

Fully commensurate with these policies and treaties and despite historic tensions with its Muslim minority, Bulgaria's current constitution provides for freedom of religion, though it does recognize the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as the "traditional religion" of Bulgaria.[48] Bulgaria has further reformed funding schemes for religious groups to the benefit of its Muslim community.[51][52] In summary, as the Council of Europe wrote in 2020, "authorities are making efforts to promote inter-ethnic and interreligious tolerance but these are regularly undermined by xenophobic, anti-Romani, Islamophobic and antisemitic statements by high-level politicians and media reporting of a similar nature..."[51]

Bulgaria has employed policies of passportization and cultural diplomacy aimed to attract and Bulgarise members of the Macedonian community.[53] In 2018 Bulgaria faced a scandal over alleged sale of citizenship documents. Former Citizenship Council director Katya Mateva exposed a scheme in which the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad issued thousands of falsified certificates of Bulgarian origin to Macedonians and Albanians in exchange for bribes.[54]

Bulgarisation has also affected the Romanians in Bulgaria, who were largely assimilated.[55]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b Crampton 1997.
  2. ^ a b Apostolov 2018.
  3. ^ Petrov & Temelski 2003, Chapter 4.
  4. ^ Crampton 2006, p. 74.
  5. ^ Daskalov 2004, p. 1.
  6. ^ Perry 1993, p. 7.
  7. ^ Gounaris 1995.
  8. ^ a b Kamusella 2019, p. 17.
  9. ^ Kamusella 2019, p. 17-18.
  10. ^ Kapitan 1897.
  11. ^ NSI 2011.
  12. ^ a b c Neuburger 2000, pp. 184.
  13. ^ a b c Eminov 2007, pp. 10.
  14. ^ Neuburger 2000, pp. 185.
  15. ^ a b c d e f Neuburger 2000, pp. 186.
  16. ^ a b Neuburger 2000, pp. 187.
  17. ^ Demeter & Bottlik 2021, p. 114.
  18. ^ Danforth 1997, pp. 58–66.
  19. ^ Roth & Brunnbauer 2008, p. 129.
  20. ^ Livanios 2008, p. 23–24.
  21. ^ a b Poulton 2003, p. 123.
  22. ^ Crampton 2003, p. 20.
  23. ^ Banac 1984, p. 317.
  24. ^ a b Mojzes 2011, p. 41-42.
  25. ^ Ristović 2017, p. 7.
  26. ^ Papavizas 2015, p. 92–93.
  27. ^ Groueff 1998, p. 302.
  28. ^ Drezov 1999, pp. 47–59.
  29. ^ a b Heraclides 2020, p. 87.
  30. ^ Murzaku 2009, p. 199.
  31. ^ Troebst & Dabrowski 2017, pp. 465–506.
  32. ^ a b Tomasevich 2002, p. 163–165.
  33. ^ Kaufman 2001, p. 193.
  34. ^ Pavlowitch 2021, p. 101.
  35. ^ American Journal of International Law 1920, p. 356–360.
  36. ^ Carabott 2005, p. 33.
  37. ^ Carabott 2005, p. 30.
  38. ^ Carabott 2005, p. 30-31.
  39. ^ Carabott 2005, p. 34-35.
  40. ^ a b Kotzageorgi-Zymari 2001, p. 115-116.
  41. ^ Kotzageorgi 1996, pp. 134.
  42. ^ Kotzageorgi 1996, pp. 135.
  43. ^ Kotzageorgi 1996, pp. 141.
  44. ^ Kotzageorgi 1996, pp. 157.
  45. ^ Kamusella 2019, p. 19.
  46. ^ a b Kamusella 2019, p. 23.
  47. ^ Neuburger 2000, pp. 181.
  48. ^ a b IHRC 2003.
  49. ^ UNHCR 2021.
  50. ^ Mediapool 2009.
  51. ^ a b Advisory Committee 2020, p. 1.
  52. ^ United States Department of State 2023, p. 1.
  53. ^ Pietrobon 2021, p. 80.
  54. ^ Deutsche Welle 2019.
  55. ^ Tîrcomnicu 2011.

Bibliography

[edit]
  • Advisory Committee (26 May 2020). Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities: Fourth Opinion on Bulgaria (Report). Council of Europe. ACFC/OP/IV(2020)001. Retrieved 19 January 2026.
  • Apostolov, Mario (2018). Religious Minorities, Nation States and Security: Five Cases from the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-351-78441-2.
  • Heraclides, Alexis (2020). The Macedonian Question and the Macedonians: A History. Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 978-0-429-26636-2.
  • Papavizas, George C. (2015). Claiming Macedonia: The Struggle for the Heritage, Territory and Name of the Historic Hellenic Land, 1862–2004. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-1019-1.
  • Pavlowitch, Stevan (2021). Hitler's New Disorder: The Second World War in Yugoslavia. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197580530.
  • Perry, Duncan M. (1993). Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870–1895. Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-1313-8.
  • Petrov, Petar; Temelski, Hristo (2003). Църква и църковен живот в Македония [Church and Church Life in Macedonia] (in Bulgarian). София: Македонски научен институт. Retrieved 19 January 2026.
  • Pietrobon, Emanuel (2021). "The Eagles Belt: The Unsuspected Stage of the Great Power Competition". Academicus: International Scientific Journal. 12 (24).
  • Poulton, Hugh (2003). "Macedonians and Albanians as Yugoslavs". In Djokić, Dejan (ed.). Yugoslavism: Histories of a Failed Idea, 1918–1992. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. ISBN 978-1-85065-663-0.
  • Simpson, Neil (1994). Macedonia: its Disputed History. Aristoc Press. ISBN 0-646-20462-9.
  • Sperling, James; Kay, Sean; Papacosma, S. Victor (2003). Limiting institutions?: the challenge of Eurasian security governance. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6605-4.