Kingdom of Bulgaria - The Interwar Years

The Interwar Years

In September 1918, the Serbs, British, French, Italians and Greeks broke through on the Macedonian front and Tsar Ferdinand was forced to sue for peace. Stamboliyski favoured democratic reforms, not a revolution. In order to head off the revolutionaries, he persuaded Ferdinand to abdicate in favour of his son Boris III. The revolutionaries were suppressed and the army disbanded. Under the Treaty of Neuilly (November 1919), Bulgaria lost its Aegean coastline to Greece and nearly all of its Macedonian territory to the new state of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and had to give Dobruja back to the Kingdom of Romania (see also Dobruja, Western Outlands, Western Thrace). Elections in March 1920 gave the Agrarians a large majority, and Stamboliyski formed Bulgaria's first genuinely democratic government.

Although it had not lost large amounts of territory, the nation had again struggled hard for nothing. The lost territories, especially the Dobroujea and Macedonia, were considered integral parts of Bulgaria and the pressure to retake them became an ultimately fatal obsession that drove the country into the arms of Nazi Germany. However, unlike the other defeated Eastern European state, Hungary, Bulgaria continued with essentially the same government as before.

Stamboliyski faced huge social problems in what was still a poor country inhabited mostly by peasant smallholders. Bulgaria was saddled with huge war reparations to Yugoslavia and Romania, and had to deal with the problem of refugees as pro-Bulgarian Macedonians had to leave the Yugoslav Macedonia. Nevertheless Stamboliyski was able to carry through many social reforms, although opposition from the Tsar, the landlords and the officers of the much-reduced but still influential army was powerful. Another bitter enemy was the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO), which favoured a war to regain Macedonia for Bulgaria. Faced with this array of enemies, Stamboliyski allied himself with the Bulgarian Communist Party and opened relations with the Soviet Union.

Interwar Bulgaria was highly backwards from an economic standpoint. Heavy industry was almost nonexistent due to a lack of major natural resources, and whatever manufacturing did exist consisted almost exclusively of textiles and handicrafts. Even these required extensive tariff protection to survive. Some natural resources did exist, but bad internal communications made it impossible to exploit them and nearly all important manufactured implements were imported. Farm machinery and chemical fertilizers were nearly unheard of. Agricultural products were almost the only thing Bulgaria could export and after 1929 it became very hard to do this.

Bulgaria was fortunate in lacking a native landowning class since historically the landowners had all been Turks displaced after independence in 1878. As such, Bulgarian agriculture was almost entirely one of small farmers and peasants. Plots were small and almost exclusively under 50 acres, but they were worked intensively and even the tiniest 5-acre farms often produced crops for market sale. Bulgarian peasants also had a better work ethic than their counterparts in Romania or Hungary due to historical reasons. The Turkish landowners in olden times were often cruel and corrupt, but they also rarely bothered to visit their estates. And since they usually demanded payment from the peasants in the form of money or crops rather than labor, this created an added incentive to work hard that was lacking elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Bulgarian peasants traditionally grew grains for their landowners which after the war could not be effectively marketed due to competition from the United States and Western Europe. However, they were able to switch with little difficulty to garden crops and tobacco in contrast to other countries where the peasantry suffered harder due to continued reliance on corn and wheat.

While more successful than the rest of Eastern Europe, Bulgarian agriculture still suffered from the handicaps of backwards technology and especially rural overpopulation and scattered plots (due to the traditional practice of a peasant dividing his land equally among all surviving sons). And all agricultural exports were harmed by the onset of the Great Depression. On the other hand, an underdeveloped economy meant that Bulgaria had little trouble with debt and inflation. Just under half of industry was owned by foreign companies in contrast to the nearly 80% of Romanian industry.

Since the population was 85% ethnic Bulgarian, there was relatively little social strife aside from the conflict between the haves and have-nots. Most inhabitants of Sofia (the only real city in Bulgaria) maintained close ties to the countryside, but this did not prevent a rift between the peasants and urban class (i.e. Sofia versus everyone else), although some was the result of deliberate manipulation by politicians seeking to take advantage of traditional peasant distrust of the "effeminate city slicker". Mostly however, it was due to a quarrel between the rulers and the ruled. Around 14% of the population were Muslims, mostly Turks (i.e. the remnant of the landowning class), but also a handful of so-called "Pomaks" (ethnic Bulgarians who practiced Islam). The Muslim population was alienated from the dominant Orthodox Christians both due to religious and historical reasons. They neither pressed for minority rights or tried to set up their own schools, and instead asked nothing more than to be left alone to mind their own business. The Bulgarian government obliged except for a great willingness to assist them in emigrating back to Turkey.

By comparison to economics, Bulgaria's educational system was highly successful and less than half the population were illiterate. Eight years of schooling were required and over 80% of children attended. For the few special students who went past elementary school, the high schools were based on the German gymnasium. Competitive examinations were used to judge college applicants, and Bulgaria had a number of technical and specialized schools in addition to the University of Sofia. Many Bulgarian students also went abroad, primarily to Germany and Austria (educational ties with Russia ended in 1917). Overall, education reached more of the lower classes than anywhere else in Eastern Europe, but on the downside all too many students obtained degrees in the liberal arts and other abstract subjects and could not find work anywhere except in the government bureaucracy. Many of them gravitated towards the Bulgarian Communist Party.

The Bulgarian government had the same handicap as most constitutional monarchies, which was not drawing a clear line between what powers were granted to the king and what were granted to Parliament. The 1879 constitution was intended to put power in the hands of the latter, but still allowed a clever enough monarch to gain control of the machinery of government. Such was the case with the wily Tsar Ferdinand, who however had been forced to abdicate after the back-to-back losses of the Balkan Wars and WWI. His son Boris then succeeded him to the throne, but the young king could not replace the power his father had built through decades of intrigue. As such, Parliament came to dominate after Boris appointed Alexander Stamboliyski as prime minister. Stamboliski's Agrarian Party soon dominated Parliament with over half the seats. The rest of the seats were taken by the Bulgarian Communist Party, which (interestingly enough) was the country's second largest political party and the only other one of any significance (there were a dozen or so minor parties, but they had no representation in Parliament or any real significance). The Agrarian Party chiefly represented peasants, and especially those who were disgruntled with the government in Sofia since Ferdinand's reign saw extensive corruption and theft of money from the peasantry. Also while most of the lower classes in Bulgaria supported annexation of Macedonia, they were disgruntled about the heavy bloodshed incurred in two unsuccessful wars to retake it. Indeed Stamboliyski actually spent the war years in jail due to his vociferous criticism of it. As for the BCP, it was mainly staffed by intelligensia and urban professionals, but its chief constituents were the poorest peasants and other minorities. The AP by comparison represented better-off peasants. Under this climate, Stamboliyski hastily enacted a land reform in 1920, which was designed to break up some state properties, church lands, and the holdings of wealthier peasants. Predictably, it gave him widespread support and forced the BCP into an alliance with the AP mainly to gain a voice in Parliament.

However, Stamboliyski was a convinced anti-communist and sought to create an international movement to combat Marxism. This was his so-called "Green International", a counter to the communist "Red International". He traveled to Eastern European capitals promoting his view of a peasant alliance. But trouble began when he tried to spread it in Yugoslavia, a country that had very similar conditions to Bulgaria (i.e. very little industry and a large communist presence). Stamboliyski was well-liked in Belgrade because of supporting a peaceful solution to the Macedonia problem. He also advocated uniting all the Slavic-speaking nations in Eastern Europe into one large Yugoslav confederation. But he got into trouble because of the militant IMRO faction at home. Many Macedonian leaders had lived in Sofia since the failed 1903 revolt against the Ottoman Empire, and now they were joined by others who fled the Yugoslavian government (which maintained as its official position that Macedonians were ethnic Serbs). Since Bulgaria had been forced to limit the size of its armed forces after WWI, IMRO chieftains gained control of much of the border area with Yugoslavia.

In March 1923, Stamboliyski signed an agreement with Yugoslavia recognizing the new border and agreeing to suppress VMRO. This triggered a nationalist reaction, and on 9 June there was a coup organized by IMRO after the AP controlled 87% of Parliament in the elections that year. The Bulgarian government could only muster a handful of troops to resist, and even worse was a peasant mob with no guns rallied by Stamboliyski. Despite this, the streets of Sofia erupted in chaos and the hapless prime minister was lynched in addition to attacks on unarmed peasants. The whole affair seriously tarbrushed Bulgaria's international image. A right wing government under Aleksandar Tsankov took power, backed by the Tsar, the army and the VMRO, who waged a White terror against the Agrarians and the Communists. The Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov fled to the Soviet Union. There was savage repression in 1925 following the second of two failed attempts on the Tsar's life in the bomb attack on Sofia Cathedral (the first attempt took place in the mountain pass of Arabakonak). But in 1926 the Tsar persuaded Tsankov to resign and a more moderate government under Andrey Lyapchev took office. An amnesty was proclaimed, although the Communists remained banned. The Agrarians reorganised and won elections in 1931 under the leadership of Nikola Mushanov.

Just when political stability had been restored, the full effects of the Great Depression hit Bulgaria, and social tensions rose again. In May 1934 there was another coup, the Agrarians were again suppressed, and an authoritarian regime headed by Kimon Georgiev established with the backing of Tsar Boris. In April 1935 Boris took power himself, ruling through puppet Prime Ministers Georgi Kyoseivanov (1935–40) and Bogdan Filov (1940–43). The Tsar's regime banned all opposition parties and took Bulgaria into alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Although the signing of the Balkan Pact of 1938 restored good relations with Yugoslavia and Greece, the territorial issue continued to simmer.