Bulgaria's Liberation From Ottoman Domination 1878

The Russian-Turkish war 1877-1878 is reckoned as the direct cause for Bulgaria's autonomy in 1878, although the real reason for the war undeniably could be found in Russia's political interests in Balkan. Russia wanted to take over all the Ottoman possessions in Balkan, either directly or through formally independent vassal states under Russian control. This was in direct opposition to the western power's interests in the same area, and Russia used the Turkish brutality during the April uprising to declare war on the Ottoman Empire without interference from the western powers. About 200,000 Russians fell during this war. Russian tsar Alexander II (1818-1881) who declared and won the war is honoured in Bulgaria as "The Liberator".

Parallel to the mobilization called by Russia, the Bulgarian Central Charity Society (an organization of the Bulgarian national liberation movement) launched a campaign for rallying volunteers, and 7500 Bulgarians responded to its appeal. With them the Russian Command formed the Bulgarian volunteer force under the command of General N. Stoletov. The Russian army crossed the Danube from Walachia at the end of June, 1877. Romanian troops fought in the war together with the Russians. For the next eight months the war followed a path of dramatic ups and downs. The Bulgarians assisted the Russian troops as scouts, guides and aides in the army supply and transport units. Some 50 troops (chetas) and armed peasant detachments disrupted the Turkish rear.

Bulgarian volunteers, headed by general Stoletov, organised a brilliant campaign liberating the old Bulgarian capital Great Tarnovo, crossing the Balkan mountains and continuing South closed to the town of Odrin (Edirne). Only a tiny Russian force was needed to fortify this offensive and the war would be over. Instead of the support from the Russian supreme command an elite Ottoman army from Egypt arrived crossing the Mediterranean Sea and the south Balkan peninsula.

After the bloody battle near the town of Stara Zagora (South Bulgarian) and the complete demolition of the city, the Bulgarian volunteers and the Russian troops retreated at the Shipka Pass of the Balkan Range. At the battle of Shipka Pass the Bulgarian volunteer force (some 6000 men) braved and resisted the 29 assaults of the 27,000-strong elite Ottoman army headed by Suleyman Pasha (French military lecturer servicing Islam). The Russian supreme command continued to highly underestimate the strength and endurance of the elite Ottoman forces trained and disciplined by European (mainly French and German) officers. At the end of August 1877, the valiant fighting of the small Bulgarian force, left isolated and even without ammunitions by the noble and dull Russian generals, stopped the Ottoman offensive and thus decided the issue of the war.

On the western front, being at 7 kilometres from the town of Pleven, Russian aristocrat chief officers wasted 2 weeks thus allowing the bright ottoman general Osman Pasha to cross 270 kilometres and to rescue the city. Afterwards several bloody attacks and the total blockade of Pleven were needed to capture the city. Pleven, the greatest Turkish stronghold in Northern Bulgaria, surrendered in late November 1877. Then the Russian troops pressed to the south of the Balkan Range. At the major battle of Sheinovo (11 kilometres south of Shipka Pass) 22,000 elite Ottoman troops and officers surrendered with 83 cannon, after casualties amounting to thousands.

Thousand Russian servicemen and Romanians perished in the Bulgarian war of liberation, and tens of thousands Bulgarians lost their lives in the course of the military hostilities. Entire villages were razed to the ground and reduced to ashes by the Turkish troops (the most important case is the town of Stara Zagora, completely destroyed and pillaged by Turkish army). This shows the great extent to which the Porte ride to keep its hold on the Bulgarian lands, although in the long run it was forced to go into retreat. From the multiple descriptions of this war here we shall quote but an excerpt from the Memoirs of George Washburne (a long-time Principal of Robert College in Constantinople, at which many Bulgarians received their education).

General Skobelev, the commander of the advance Russian troops, attempted to contact them and to assure them that they had nothing to fear, but they never stopped firing. The general commanded his troops to a stop to let the train of exile carts go on its way in peace. When they continued on their way, however, the Cossacks of General Skobelev came across Turkish infants and young children abandoned by their own parents by the roadside, as a cumbersome burden in their frantic flight. The Russian soldiers took the babies and children and later left them with the people of a roadside Turkish village. The signing of the San Stefano peace treaty, Washburne goes on, 'brought great comfort both to the city and the College, although we had to give sympathy to the exhausted Turkish exiles from Bulgaria. It turned out that we had to feed and clothe those same people who two years before had mercilessly slaughtered the Bulgarians. Multitudinous crowds camped by the College and to this day continue to be our neighbours (Washburne wrote his Memoirs in 1907) relying on our compassion. Most of them bitterly repented the brutal acts they had perpetrated in Bulgaria and thought that their sufferings were but a judgement from on high. The majority of them were kind-hearted people, though extremely ignorant. A certain number of them returned to Bulgaria.'

San Stefano Peace Treaty

The San Stefano peace treaty of 3 March 1878 turned all lands populated mostly by Bulgarians into an autonomous principality. The Great Powers, however, rescinded the treaty and imposed a new one, concocted in Berlin, under which a section of the liberated territory was returned to Turkey, and the rest was split into two: the principality of Bulgaria (the area around Sofia and the territory to the north of the Balkan Range) and Eastern Rumelia (the other part of Bulgaria lying to the south of the Balkan Range) which was made a Turkish tributary. Serbia, in addition, was given lands with purely Bulgarian population and was deprived of pure Serbian territory. Austria-Hungary was given formal rights over Dalmatia, occupied Bosnia, Herzegovina and the district of Novi Pazar, thus adding a total of 55,000 sq. km of new territory of Slav population. Great Britain, with the approval of the Porte, received the Island of Cyprus.

What was won in blood was dismembered in ink. The construction of the new Bulgarian state began with the help of the Provisional Russian Administration. The Russian occupation gave military training to the Bulgarians in the gymnastic societies, an unofficial but efficient way of rendering help towards the self-defence of the Bulgarian nationality in Southern Bulgaria. Owing to this, in 1885, seven years after the Treaty of Berlin, the Bulgarians united at their: own initiative the two parts of the country. The young Bulgarian army heroically defended this act by repulsing the surprise aggression of King Milan.

Treaty of Berlin and dismemberment of Bulgaria

In the Crystal Pace speech in June 1872, Disraeli promised to improve the condition of the people and ‘uphold the Empire of England’. At first glance the record of his ministry to 1880 would seem to show that he succeeded in doing both of these things, thus fulfilling his election promises. Indeed one trade union leader said ‘The Conservatives have done more for the working class in five years that the Liberals have done in fifty’. However, if the record is examined carefully it can be seen that the Conservatives were not very effective in carrying out their pledges. It could be argued that Disraeli had little hope of really improving the condition of the people, as this would have alienated his own party, and so what he could do was limited. It could also be argued that his promises were merely a cynical ploy to gain working-class support and he had no real intention of doing anything concrete to improve their lives.

1876 June: The Bulgarian Atrocities took place but Disraeli questioned the truthfulness of the reports in the Daily News August: Disraeli made his last speech in the House of Commons and moved up to the House of Lords as the Earl of Beaconsfield. September: Gladstone attacked the government's foreign policy in his pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. 1877 The Russo-Turkish War broke out. Queen Victoria was proclaimed as Empress of India . 1878 March: the Treaty of San Stephano was signed between Russia and Turkey which created Bulgaria. June: The Congress of Berlin took place, attended by Disraeli and Salisbury . July: Treaty of Berlin. Disraeli and Salisbury were invested with the Order of the Garter on their return to London. 1879 The Zulu Wars began in South Africa.

Disraeli’s other pledge was to ‘uphold the Empire of England’. Disraeli’s foreign and imperial policy has been described as ‘forward’, in contrast to the previous policy of Gladstone. Again, at first glance he seems to have succeeded in his stated aim, the successful negotiation of the Treaty of Berlin 1878, the purchase of the Suez Canal Shares and the acquisition of the Boer Republics in South Africa. With more analysis, however, the success of Disraeli’s policy can be seen to be mixed.

After the Congress of Berlin, called to discuss the implications of the war between Russia and Turkey, Disraeli claimed he had brought back ‘peace with honour’ in that he had prevented the formation of what he feared would be a Russian dominated ‘Big Bulgaria’ with a Mediterranean coastline. However his policy towards the Eastern Question had to be modified in the light of Gladstone’s attack on the Turks’ handling of the Bulgarians. Also his own Foreign Secretary, Lord Salisbury, said, ‘we have backed the wrong horse’ in that a big Bulgaria would have been a better block to Russian ambitions towards the eastern Mediterranean than three smaller states. He was later proved right.

In its objective results the Russo - Turkish War led to a successful conclusion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the new Bulgarian state, whose territory in 1885 covered 95,346 sq. km and whose population numbered around 3 million. Sofia was named the capital of the country by the Constituent Assembly in Turnovo. The physical terror and plundering of foreign domination had disappeared. The economic situation of the Bulgarians engaged in industrial and agricultural production could not, however, be said to have improved measurably. It soon became apparent that the land obtained through the agrarian reform was in most cases too small and insufficient to support a whole family by. The mass of poor people moved to the towns, while the land was bought up by the wealthier. The crafts collapsed, unable to keep up with West European industrial competition and as a result of restrictive customs tariffs, which cut off the once widely accessible markets of the Balkans and Central Europe. The traditions of the Bulgarian Revival were still alive in the educated Bulgarians who, in the then-prevailing conditions, had no trouble finding employment in the new state apparatus or in educational or cultural work. These public - spirited Bulgarians generally stuck to the ideas of liberalism and had the broad support of the mass of small - time producers. This movement was represented by the Liberal Party, whose most outstanding representatives were P.R.Slaveikov, Petko Karavelov and Dragan Tsankov. In contrast to this the wealthy Bulgarians, the big merchants who had returned to Bulgaria from Constantinople or Bucharest, the new war-rich purveyors and speculators advanced the idea of granting limited rights to the people. The Conservative Party became their mouthpiece (D. Grekov, Todor Ikonomov and Konstantin Stoilov). It was only by the end of the 19th century that the typical ways of the initial accumulation of capital.

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