Figure 1.--

Bulgaria after World War I experienced a series of often unstable political coalitions, slow economic growth, and a serious Macedonia problem. There was considerable social unrest. King Boris ptoved to be a stabilizing influence. Bulgaria held general elections quickly after the War (1919). The pubic expressed displeaure with the resuklts of the peace imposed upon the country and the results, including war reparations, inflation, and rising taxes. This in effect prolonged the adverse living conditions that developed during the War. And unlike its Central Power allies, the monarch did not fall. The socialist/communist and agrarian parties gained ground in the elections. BANU emerged as the country's largest political party. BANU led by Alexander Stamboliiski won nearly 30 percent of the 1919 votes. This gave it a plurality but not a majority in the new subranie. Stamboliiski as a populist with notable political skill. He was certainly a man of principle, determined on doing good for Bulgaria. He is described as remarkably prescient, usually pragmatic, but some tims misjudging both people and events. [Crampton] The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) finished second in the 1919 election. Primeminister Stamboliiski attempted to form a grand coalition government. He wanted to include both the BCP and the Bulgarian Workers' Socialist-Democratic Party (BWSDP) in the colition as he planned major reforms. (The BCP and the BWSDP were both Communist parties, but separate factions. Both had broken off from the main-line Social Democratic Party founded in 1891. They were never able to reach agreement, even during the World War II crisis. Stalin ordered the BWSDP disbanded after occupying the counrry at the end of World War II.) Stamboliiski ofered the two parties a role in Government, but not the level of control that they desired. Both thus refused to participate. , however, so they refused participation. As a result, Stamboliiski's postwar governing coalition included limited left-wing support. The left-wingb partiesimmediately tested the Government. The communists and social democrats organized a transport strike (December 1919-February 1920). They achieved some support from urban workers as well as the middle-class. The Government eventuially broke the strike by force with the Army and the Orange Guard. The Orange Guard was para-military group Stamboliiski organized to face off the mass demonstrations organized by the left-wing parties. His success in suppressing the trabnsport strike, mobilizing the peasant vote, and intimidating voters at polls allowed BANU to win the parliamentary election of 1920, significantly out polling the Communists. As a result, Stamboliiski was able to form aNY government without the need of coalition government. Tsar Boris was supported by the Bulgarian middle class and tended to side with BANU and the other agrarians having observed the Social Democrats and Communists in the Soviet Union. Stamboliiski immediately launched ground-breaking economic and social reforms. He abolished the merchants' trade monopoly on grain which had held down prices. The merchan's monoply was replaced with a government consortium. He also divided the large urban and rural landholdings. Tracts were sold to the poor on attractive terms. He pushed through an obligatory labor law in an effort to ease the country post-war labor shortage. He then pased the country's first progressive income tax. A major effort was made ineducation. The Government made secondary school attendance compulsory at a time that many children in Europe did not attend secondary schools. Many of the reforms had a strong socialist tinge. Ojnly the spectre of the Communists brought the Governmrnt royal support. Stamboliiski radical reforms were designed to rid Bulgarian society from 'harmful' groups incluing lawyers, usurers, and merchants. He sought to redistribute both wealth and obligations. He was particularly intent on raising the living standards of the countruy's landless and poor peasants. Attemps to limot free markets and disregard for property rights probably affected economic griowth. Stamboliiski also launched major foreign policy inititives. This involved an ideological shift against hypo-nationalism that had led to a a seies of debilitating wars ultimnately leading to the disaster of World war I. There was also a relaistic assessment of the country's military capabilities. He officially abandoned Bulgaria's territorial goals, including the desire to recoup the losses in the World War I peace settlement. He saw pursuit of these claims as leading to a large and expensive standing army, monarchy, unecessary government expenditures, and other political phenomena that had led to the war and that the agrarians with their socialist leanings saw at anachronistic. After the War, not only had the Bulgarian Army been smashed, but there was no major power interested in championing Bulgarian interests in the Balkans. Thus Stamboliiski sought a rapprochement with all European powers, including the Allied countries as well as the Turkish government of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey. They joined the new League of Nations. And they sought friendship with their former arch enemy--Serbia. The Serbs were in the processof creating the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes / Yugoslavia. Relations with Turkey, another former arch enemy, but World War I partner were also improved. Stamboliiski supported Atatürk's revolutionary Turkish Republic (1920). Stamboliiski's vision was a multi-ethnic Balkan peasant federation. A correct relationship with Yugoslavia required confronting the powerful Macedonian extremist movement which wanted ab independent country. Stamboliiski began a 2-year effort to supress IMRO (1921). Yugoslavia and Bulgaria agreed at the Nis Convention to cooperate in supressing extremist groups. Complicating this was Bulgaria's relationship wuth Grrce.Stamboliiski was less sucessful in developing a new relationship with Greece. A serious border incident developed requiring League of Nations adjudication (1925).i

Sources

Crampton, T.J. Alexander Stamboliiski .

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