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77 bul g ar ia / MaCedo nia Long a part of the Ottoman Turkish empire, like Albania, Bulgaria—with Russian support—wrenched free of Ottoman control in 1908.1 World War I was just a few years away. When it erupted, the Bulgarians threw their lot in with the Central Powers—Austria-Hungary and Germany—rather than with their staunchest backer before the war, Russia, with whom they shared close ties of language and religion. The motivation was simple enough—the ultimate enlargement of the Bulgarian state through territorial acquisition. Notwithstanding the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, sizeable South Slavic and Greek communities were still under Turkish rule. In order to liberate them, Bulgaria had joined Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece in a war against the Turks in 1912. This became known as the First Balkan War. Its successful outcome still left the Bulgarians dissatisfied with their gains, and a year later they turned on their former allies in what became known as the Second Balkan War.2 This time, however, the Bulgarians fared badly. Besides losses to Serbia and Greece, they were also invaded by Romanian and Turkish forces anxious to carve pieces of the Bulgarian pie for themselves . By allying themselves with the Central Powers during World War I, the Bulgarians anticipated the defeat of those who held territories the Bulgarians believed were rightfully theirs. The defeat of the Central Powers, however, again smashed hopes for a Greater Bulgaria at the expense of its neighbors and set the stage for the Bulgarian entry into World War II on the side of the Axis forces. Frustration over the calamities of the Second Balkan War and World War I laid the foundation for considerable instability in interwar Bulgaria and made the country ripe for a strong Communist presence. Within just a few years after the end of World War I, Bulgaria was rocked by two uprisings. The able and democratically inclined prime minister Aleksandar Stamboliyski (1879–1923), who drew his greatest support from the Agrarian Union Party, held his office from 1919 to 1923 but was toppled by an essentially right-wing coup d’état led 78 | bulgaria / MacEdonia by Aleksandar Tsankov (1879–1959) on 9 June 1923. Stamboliyski was captured, brutally tortured, and murdered. The September Uprising of 1923 was an attempted takeover of the state by the Bulgarian Communist Party, which had been established as recently as April 1919. Hoping to capitalize on the unrest, the Communist Party, egged on by the Comintern, mounted its own coup in September of that same year. The Communists called for a government of workers and peasants in opposition to the business class and landowners. But their support was weak and the so-called September Uprising was easily crushed. The Communist leaders, Vasil Kolarov (1877–1950), the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, and Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949), both fled to Yugoslavia and from there to the Soviet Union. A Soviet protégé, Dimitrov was entrusted with the responsibility of organizing Comintern activities in Western Europe, with his base in Berlin. However, his stay in the German capital was cut short by his arrest on the charge of instigating the notorious Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933. Dimitrov won international renown for his vigorous, defiant stand at his trial and was soon allowed to leave for the Soviet Union, where he sat out most of World War II. A staunch supporter of Stalin, he returned to Bulgaria on the heels of the invading Red Army poised to facilitate a Communist takeover of the country. His comrade-in-arms, Vasil Kolarov, also returned to Bulgaria in 1945. The following year he became provisional president of the country. With Soviet political and military backing , Dimitrov formed the government in 1947, Kolarov becoming deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Even by this time several thousand real, presumed, or potential enemies of communism had been executed, resettled in remote areas of the country, or placed in de facto concentration camps euphemistically referred to as Work Education Centers (TVO in Bulgarian) and officially established in early 1945. Dimitrov’s international celebrity in the Reichstag affair, and his close ties with the Soviet Union, made him the strong man of Bulgaria until his death in 1949. He was replaced by Kolarov who himself died a few months later. By 1954, the country was in the hands of Todor Zhivkov (1911–1998), a prominent opponent of Bulgaria’s alliance with Nazi Germany in World...

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