ng to remain in
power. His supporters, on the other hand, commend him for his loyalty to
the Soviet Union, pointing out the historical affinity between the
Bulgarians and the Russians that dates back to the nineteenth-century
Russian role in the liberation of Bulgaria from 500 years of Turkish
rule. Whether he should be condemned or praised for it, the fact is that
Zhivkov has guided his ship of state in very close conformity with
directions first taken by the Soviet Union.

Bulgaria, motivated mainly by irredentism, fought on the German side
during both world wars. The lands that Bulgaria coveted and pressed
ancient claims for were Macedonia (which had become part of Yugoslavia)
and parts of Thrace (which had become Greek territory). Its claims to
these lands date back to the glorious days of Bulgarian kingdoms in the
Middle Ages, when its territory stretched from the Black Sea in the east
to the Adriatic Sea in the west and from the Carpathian Mountains in the
north to the Aegean Sea in the south. Five hundred years of Turkish rule
failed to erase the Bulgarian ideas of territorial grandeur.

The 1877-78 Russo-Turkish war that liberated Bulgaria ended in the
Treaty of San Stefano, which reestablished a Bulgarian kingdom using the
ancient boundaries; but the treaty was never put into effect because the
European powers feared a large Russian client-state in the Balkans.
Meeting in the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the powers nullified the
Treaty of San Stefano and decreed Bulgarian boundaries that drastically
reduced the size of the newly liberated country. Bulgaria seethed with
irredentism and fought wars over the so-called lost territories until
World War II, from which it emerged with a communist-dominated coalition
government but confined to almost the same boundaries. After the
Communists took complete control, irredentism was overshadowed by
Marxist ideas of internationalism; but the dream of a greater Bulgaria
did not die, and irredentist opinions were commonly expressed until
1972, when they were muted, probably on the insistence of the Soviet
Union.

The original Bulgars were of an Asian tribe that moved into the Balkan
Peninsula as conquerors during the seventh century A.D. The occupants of
the area at the time were mostly Slavs who had been migrating to that
region for more than a century, absorbing former inhabitants as they
settled. Within about two centuries of their conquest, the Bulgars also
had been co