tively
encouraged, and literature flourished once again.

Financial burdens, however, escalated rapidly between 1886 and 1911. In
1911 the national debt was actually more than three times the size of
the national budget. At the same time, as industry increased, two
antagonistic groups developed: the urban middle class--composed of
merchants and white-collar workers--and the poor, who were generally
laborers or peasants. Working conditions in factories were nearly
intolerable, causing factory workers to interest themselves in the cause
of socialism, while on the farms the peasants began to organize a
movement known as the Bulgarian Agrarian Union (also called the Agrarian
Party), which was designed to offset the growing power of the urban
groups. In 1891 the Social Democratic Party was established; this party
later formed the base of the communist party in Bulgaria.

The Macedonian Issue

By the early twentieth century the country was once again embroiled in
war; the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 impeded economic and social
development in the country. Once again, as in the case of eastern
Rumelia, irredentism was the Bulgarian motive for war. Both eastern
Thrace and Macedonia, the lands ceded to Bulgaria by the Treaty of San
Stefano, were still under Turkish rule. The lands had not only large
Bulgarian populations but also strategic and economic significance.
Macedonia, more than Thrace, was of extreme importance to Bulgaria;
Bulgarians believed the population of Macedonia to be composed almost
exclusively of Bulgarians. The issue of Macedonia was, in fact, a focal
point around which Bulgarian political life revolved after 1878, because
that issue was seen by the Bulgarians as involving the territorial
integrity of their nation.

Between the tenth and fourteenth centuries Macedonia was alternately
occupied by the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and the Turks. At the time of
liberation Macedonia was ceded to the Bulgarians by the Treaty of San
Stefano, only to be returned to the Turks by the Treaty of Berlin. In
1893 the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) was
founded. This terrorist organization, with the battle slogan "Liberty or
Death for Macedonia," fought a continual underground war of terrorism
against the Turks. In 1903 there was a major Macedonian uprising in
which two factions participated. Although the predominant faction
favored Bulgarian annexation of Macedonia, another group favored
complete au