Bulgarisation

Bulgarian Exarchate

In 1870, Sultan Abdulaziz authorized the establishment of an autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate. The Bulgarian Exarchate exercised authority over northern Bulgaria, most of Thrace and 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]

Rodina Movement

Assimilation efforts in the Tsardom of Bulgaria increased in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The "Homeland" or "Rodina" (Bulgarian: Родина) movement, originally founded in part by ethnic-Bulgarian Muslims,^[13] was associated with particularly acute assimilation efforts in the Tsardom. The movement focused on Bulgarianising "Bulgaro-Mohammedan" people in the country.^[13]

While the origins of the Rodina movement were popular, the Tsardom eventually provided financial support for the movement.^[13] The Bulgarian language was introduced into Muslim worship,^[14] and the wearing of traditional clothing among "Bulgaro-Mohammedan" people was curtailed.^[14][15] Eventually, the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to appoint "Bulgaro-Mohammedan" Muftis.^[16]

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,^[14] though prior to 1942 name-changes were officially voluntary.^[16] Following the passage of the "Bulgarianization of the Mohammedan Names of Bulgaro-Mohammedans" law, 60,000 were compelled to change their names,^[16] though many were able to revert to their non-Bulgarian names following the fall of the regime.^[17]

Modern Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia

The region of present-day North Macedonia was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1912. 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.^[18] However, the majority of local peasants did not have a clear sense of national identity,^[19] while clear national identity was espoused mostly by a small social class of educated people – intelligentsia.^[20][21] Immediately after annexation of Vardar Macedonia to the Kingdom of Serbia, during the Balkan wars (1912–1913), Macedonian Slavs were confronted with a state-policy of forced Serbianisation.^[22][23] An anti-Bulgarian cultural campaign was carried out in the areas under Serbian control, in which Bulgarian schools and churches were closed, while clergy and teachers were expelled.^[24]

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 and assimilating the other Slavs.^[25][26] The Bulgarian occupations were administered by both military and civilian officials, almost all of whom were brought in from Bulgaria.^[25][27] In a report to his supreme command, the Austro-Hungarian colonel Julius Lustig wrote that the Bulgarian authorities were ruthless and brutal in introducing their new administration, and that Bulgarianisation was implemented through the destruction of the local intelligentsia and by the enforced introduction of the Bulgarian language.^[28] Shops, libraries and church archives were raided, and schools and churches closed or destroyed.^[25] The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was also prohibited in schools. In Macedonia, Bulgarian clerks, teachers, and priests opened schools, organized associations, and published materials, often alongside coercive measures. Similar policies were applied to Albanians and Turks in Kosovo and Macedonia.^[27][29]

The occupation authorities in Macedonia sought to impose Bulgarianisation by force, employing measures that were regarded by people from outside as ridiculous.^[30] Religious paintings, icons, saints and inscriptions were replaced with Bulgarian ones, and traces of Serbian rule in medieval Macedonia were erased. Attendance at Bulgarian schools and participation in national and religious events were made compulsory, with economic penalties for noncompliance.^[31] Individuals who refused to comply with the authorities and become Bulgarian faced severe repression, including torture, internment, and gruesome killings.^[26][32] Historian Andrej Mitrović stated that the Bulgarianisation in Macedonia assumed the character and proportions of psychological terror.^[33] The Austro-Hungarian supreme command in Kosovo reported:^[29]

As in the case throughout Macedonia, the basic principle is that the land must become purely Bulgarian, even at the cost of transforming it into a Bulgarian desert.

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^[22][34] and de-Bulgarisation occurred.^[35][36] At the same time the Bulgarian government promoted Bulgarisation by supporting pro‑Bulgarian organizations in Macedonia to advance its territorial claims.^[37] The Bulgarian authorities considered the Macedonian Slavs as no more than unruly Bulgarians.^[38]

Soon after the occupation began, the authorities realized that only some of the Slavic Macedonians felt Bulgarian or were pro-Bulgarian. Consequently, they initiated a program of intense Bulgarisation in all occupied areas.^[39] Some researchers describe this process as "re-Bulgarisation" and "de-Serbianisation".^[40] Schools and libraries were closed, and cultural institutions, archives, cemeteries, and churches were destroyed. Measures were taken to eliminate Serbian and Macedonian identity markers, including personal and place names, language use, and national symbols. These actions were accompanied by repression and despotism.^[41] Shortly after, 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. Those who were not suitable were transferred to administrative jobs outside of the school system or dismissed. Serbian personnel in banking, industry, and commerce were removed and replaced with Bulgarians from Bulgaria or Macedonian Bulgarians. The majority of those who identified as Macedonians either resisted the policies or remained passive. Remaining forests and grazing lands that had not been nationalized before were also nationalized.^[42]

Harsh treatment by occupying Bulgarian troops further reduced pro-Bulgarian feeling among Macedonian Slavs.^[43] The intensive Bulgarisation policies generated significant discontent in Macedonia, leading even anti‑Yugoslav Macedonians who returned from exile to seek allies among the communists.^[44] All of these events confirmed to the Macedonians that the Bulgarian regime behaved in the same oppressive manner as the previous Serbian-dominated Yugoslav one. So, the Bulgarisation campaign ultimately failed.^[42][38] The German historian Björn Opfer drew parallels between Nazi Germany's Germanisation campaigns and the Bulgarianisation effort in Macedonia. He wrote that Bulgarian authorities acted considerably more repressively compared to the other Axis states, such as Romania, Hungary and Finland.^[45]

Greek Macedonia and Thrace

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 resulted in the expulsion of many Bulgarians from the region.^[46] 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 advocated for the settlement of hundreds of thousands of "New Greeks" in the newly-conquered areas.^[47] 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.^[48] Less formally, the Greek government expelled 5,000 alleged subversives and their family members to Bulgaria.^[49]

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.^[50] Most of these 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.^[51] From May 1941, Bulgaria incorporated the newly-conquered areas into the national education system.^[51]

From the very beginning of the occupation, Bulgarian officials also condoned and encouraged the emigration of Greeks from the occupied areas.^[52] They also carried out targeted expulsion. By August 1941, nearly all Greek scientists, in particular, had been expelled from the region.^[53] By June 1943, 110,000 had left the region occupied by Bulgaria.^[54] In their place, around 100,000 Bulgarian colonists were settled.^[55]

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

Initial Changes

The Soviet Union initially forced Bulgaria to recognize many minority ethnic groups in the country and change its practices towards its Muslim minority.^[16][56] 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.^[16] 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.^[16] Notably, around 160,000 were even compelled to leave Bulgaria between 1950 and 1951.

Change in Direction

Following the death of Stalin, Todor Zhivkov rose to the 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.^[17]

Notably, the idea that Bulgarian Muslims shared a Slavic and Christian origin with the Bulgarians originated in the 1960s during Zhivkov's rule,^[57] though claims that "Bulgaro-Mohammedans" were essentially Bulgarian originated earlier.^[58] The regime in Sofia often fell back on claims that the Ottoman Empire had planned and executed the "Islamization" and "Turkification" of Bulgaria.^[57] In 1985, a senior Bulgarian Communist Party official proclaimed that “The Bulgarian nation has no parts of other peoples and nations”.^[59]

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 their previous names or adopt new names as they wished.^[60] Regardless, some of those who had been made to adopt a "Bulgarian" name continued using both it and their restored name.^[61]