Modernism: The Creation of Nation-States

Tarnovo Constitution

TARNOVO CONSTITUTION Title: Конституция на Българското княжество (Constitution of the Bulgarian Principality) Originally published: Voted on 16 April 1879 Language: Bulgarian The excerpts used are from the anthology: Veselin Metodiev and Lachezar Stoyanov eds., Български конституции и конституционни проекти (Sofia: Изд. Д-р Петър Берон, 1990), pp. 25–28. Context The modern Bulgarian state was founded in the aftermath of the 1877– 1878 Russian–Ottoman war. The Treaty of San Stefano, signed by Russia and the Ottoman Empire, declared the creation of a large Bulgarian state which included Macedonia and Thrace. The unwillingness of the other European powers (Austria-Hungary in particular) to accept the creation of a large Russian-dominated state in Europe resulted in the Berlin Congress of 1878, in accordance with which Macedonia and Thrace remained Ottoman provinces . A smaller Bulgarian principality in the north was granted political autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. The ephemeral Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia was created in the south, with Plovdiv (Tur. Filibe, Gr. Filipoupolis ) as its administrative center. Eastern Rumelia was annexed by the Bulgarian principality in 1885. Even though the suzerainty of the Sublime Porte remained nominal throughout the period of autonomy, in the wake of the Young Turk constitutional movement of 1908, Bulgaria was eventually declared an independent kingdom by Prince Ferdinand. In 1879, in Veliko Tarnovo, the medieval capital of Bulgaria, a Constituent Assembly (Grand National Assembly) was convened, with the purpose of establishing the main state institutions and drawing up a constitution for the new state. The preliminary agenda of the deputies (leading figures of the period of ‘National Revival’) essentially relied on the Russian proposal entitled the ‘Pro- TARNOVO CONSTITUTION 141 ject for the Organic Charter of the Bulgarian principality.’ This project took as its model the Prussian constitution of 1850, on which the Serbian constitution of 1869 had also been based. The Prussian constitution mirrored the European constitutional monarchic model in the period after 1848. First was the formation of a constitutional commission which produced the ‘Report of the Commission on the Basic Principles of the Constitution of the Bulgarian Principality .’ In the initial project, elements from the Belgian constitution were also introduced , which had also served as a model for the Romanian and the Greek constitutions. The parliamentary debate took this report as its starting point. The two rival groups reproduced, in a sense, the main opposition factions of the 1870s: the ‘old’ and the ‘young,’ the conservatives and the liberals. The leaders of the conservative trend were Dimitar Grekov, Konstantin Stoilov and Grigor Nachevich; the liberals’ figureheads, on the other hand, were Dragan Tzankov, Petko Slaveykov, Petko Karavelov and Stefan Stambolov. The etatism permeating the text was the focal point of the liberals’ critique , which defended the freedom of the nation as opposed to the state power celebrated in the conservative ‘Report.’ This was, for instance, Petko Slaveykov’s position, in which he claimed that the ‘Report’ portrayed the Bulgarian people as too immature for freedom. This attitude revealed the populist basis of the liberals’ ideology. In other words, even in the liberal camp, the concept of the nation remained privileged over that of the citizen. It should be emphasized, though, that the final result of the work of the Grand National Assembly did not reflect the rhetoric of these populist claims. In the end, the Tarnovo Constitution devised a framework for modern liberal political values. Although it was seemingly underestimated during the discussions, the ‘citizen’ became the key notion of the document, and in this sense the Tarnovo Constitution represented a rupture with the populist rhetoric of the ‘Revival’ period. However, the liberals’ attempt to transform the constitutional monarchy promoted by the ‘Report’ into a parliamentary monarchy was not entirely successful as the monarch was endowed with extensive prerogatives.1 The Constitution stipulated separation of powers, even though the autonomy of the judiciary power was not guaranteed. The monarch was endowed with extensive legislative and executive prerogatives, and, as a result, the German nobleman Alexander Battenberg was elected the Prince of Bulgaria. The Con1 This transition was analyzed in detail in the first chapter of Ivan Elenkov’s influential book Родно и дясно [Populism and Right Wing] (Sofia: LiK, 1998). 142 SELF-DETERMINATION, DEMOCRATIZATION, AND THE HOMOGENIZING STATE stitution also established a universal manhood suffrage (the voting age limit being 21), a one-chamber system, strong municipal government and guaranteed civic freedoms. The Tarnovo Constitution was de facto suspended by the military coup in 1934, resulting in the personal regime of king Boris III. The new...