National Awakening of Bulgaria - Background

Background

The Bulgarian national revival started with the work of Saint Paisius of Hilendar, who opposed Greek domination of Bulgaria's culture and religion. His work Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya ("History of the Slav-Bulgarians"), which appeared in 1762, was the first work of Bulgarian historiography. It is considered Paisius' greatest work and one of the greatest pieces of Bulgarian literature. In it, Paisius interpreted Bulgarian medieval history with the goal of reviving the spirit of his nation.

His successor was Saint Sophronius of Vratsa, who started the struggle for an independent Bulgarian church.

The first nationwide movement was for enlightenment. Educated Bulgarians started to finance the building of Bulgarian schools. In spite of Ottoman resistance, Bulgarians founded their own schools and started publishing textbooks. The Greek revolt against the Ottomans in 1821 also influenced the small Bulgarian educated class. But Greek influence was limited by the general Bulgarian resentment of Greek control of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria. It was the struggle to revive an independent Bulgarian church which first roused Bulgarian nationalist sentiment. When some Bulgarians threatened to abandon the Orthodox Church altogether and form a Bulgarian Uniate church loyal to Rome, Russia intervened with the Sultan. In 1870 a Bulgarian Exarchate was created by an edict of the Sultan, and the first Bulgarian Exarch (Antim I) became the natural leader of the emerging nation. The Patriarch of Constantinople responded by excommunicating the Bulgarian Exarchate, which reinforced their will for independence.

Another source of the Bulgarian national revival was the Romantic nationalist vision of a people sharing oral traditions and practices. These ideas were stimulated by the work of Johann Gottfried Herder in particular, and were reinforced by Russian Slavophiles and the model Serbian nationalism under the stimulus of scholar-publicists such as Vuk Karadžić. In Bulgaria, the scholar and newspaper editor Lyuben Karavelov played an important role in collecting and publishing oral traditions, and comparing them with the traditions of other Slavic peoples.

The "Big Four" of Bulgaria's independence struggle were Georgi Rakovski (Subi S. Popovich), Vasil Levski (Vasil Ivanov Kunchev), Lyuben Karavelov, and Hristo Botev. Rakovski outlined the first plan for Bulgaria independence, but died before he could put his plan in action. Levski, Karavelov, and Botev formed the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee, the first real independence organization, with a clear plan for revolution. But Levski was killed in 1873, and the committees inside Bulgaria broke down. A later dispute between Karavelov and Botev led to the end of the organization.