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South Slav-Russian Relations in the 
Second Half of the Nineteenth Century 
Intrusion, Resentment, and Mutual Naiveté 
 
 
David Crockett 
University of Minnesota 
 
 
Abstract  
This article examines the myth of “eternal friendship” between Bulgarians and Russians 
and how their mutual failure to understand the other’s motives gave way to resentment, 
estrangement, and mutual naiveté, straining this supposed natural affinity. The article 
begins by examining the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and its aftermath, which 
provides a case study of the ambiguous and changing relationship between Russia and the 
South Slavs.  The second part of the article examines in greater detail the cultural and 
political affinities between two peoples—including Pan-Slavism, a common Orthodox 
religion, and similar languages—and why these commonalities still failed to overcome 
Bulgarian national self-interest and desires for national independence. While this article 
focuses on Bulgaria, many of the arguments can also be applied to Serbia and other South 
Slavic countries.   
 
 
Article 
 

For nearly five hundred years, Russia has been affectionately known as 
Dyado Ivan—“Grandfather Ivan”—by the Bulgarian people, and during the 
long, cruel years of Turkish oppression, they looked towards Moscow with 
hope and longing, in the unshakable belief that their Russian elder brothers 
would come and liberate them.1 
 

So repeats historian Mercia MacDermott the “myth” of “eternal friendship” between 
Russians and Bulgarians that has been sometimes accepted and sometimes rejected by 
both historians and the general public. The origins of this myth are many, both subtle and 
obvious, and will be discussed later in this article. Language certainly played an important 
role in the development of close ties between the two peoples, as did dissatisfaction with 

 
1 Mercia MacDermott, A History of Bulgaria 1393-1885 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1962), 56. 
The genesis of this paper was a course in Eastern European history taught by Professor Igor Tchoukarine. 
Professor Tchoukarine then graciously agreed to supervise an independent study on the paper’s specific 
thesis. Professor Theofanis Stavrou contributed new insights on the Christian Uniate movement by his 
dissertation student Denis Vovchenko. 



 

72 
 

the Constantinople-based, Greek-dominated early Orthodox church. However, the basic tie 
between them was Pan-Slavism. Most history books comment on commonalities among 
Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Russia. All five share Slavic ethnicity and 
Orthodox Christianity, as well as having similar languages and cultural proximity. In the 
opinion of diplomatic historian Barbara Jelavich, these commonalities gave Russia an 
advantage in creating autonomous states in the Balkans not shared by any other world 
power.2 In spite of these affinities, the pride and parochialism of Russian government 
officials and the Russian Orthodox church inhibited their effectiveness. Largely due to 
geography, Russia frequently intruded in the affairs of South Slavic countries, which caused 
people in those regions to harbor resentment towards Moscow. In many cases Russia failed 
to recognize that South Slavs were no less nationalistic than Russians. Likewise, South Slavs 
naïvely failed to understand that Russia was acting in what it perceived to be its own best 
interests, not necessarily those of Balkan Slavs. 
 
While this article focuses on Bulgaria, many of its arguments are generally applicable to 
Serbia and other South Slavic countries.3 The article argues that strong factors worked 
against “eternal friendship.” The article begins by examining the Russo-Turkish War of 
1877-78 and its aftermath, which provides a case study of the ambiguous and changing 
relationship between Russia and the South Slavs. While the war’s direct focus was on 
Bulgaria, Russian diplomatic and military efforts were part of a chain of events that 
significantly affected not only Serbia and other South Slav countries, but also the Ottoman 
and Austrian empires and the Great Powers in general. In its analysis of diplomatic aspects 
of this question, this paper uses primary sources including government memoranda, 
newspapers, pamphlets, and contemporaneous writings, as well as other sources. However, 
Russia’s involvement in the war does not fully explain the origin and “failure” of the myth. 
The second part of the article turns its analysis to the cultural and political affinities 
between the two peoples, which transformed from the myth of eternal friendship to 
Bulgarian resentment of Russia’s actions and the mutual naiveté exhibited by both 
countries. This second part specifically examines the themes of Pan-Slavism; common 
Orthodox religion; language, culture, modernization and nationalism; and Russian 
autocracy and Bulgarian nationalism. 
 
The Russo-Turkish War 1877-78 and Russian Involvement in South-Eastern Europe 
Both Bulgarians and Russians demonstrated chauvinism and naivete in expressing 
concerns about their relationship. In 1870, seven years before the Russo-Turkish War, 
Bulgarian writer and revolutionary Liuben Karavelov predicted the attitude of his fellow 
countrymen towards Russia with these words: “If Russia comes to liberate, she will be 
received with great sympathy; but if she comes to rule she will find many enemies.”4 

 
2 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements 1806-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 
30. 
3 Even though the focus is Bulgaria, one cannot study Russian-Bulgaria relations in this period without 
considering interactions with Serbia and Austria-Hungary. Whether it is in relation to Bosnia and 
Herzegovina or Macedonia, Russian and Bulgarian actions and reactions are greatly influenced by both Serbia 
and Austria-Hungary. 
4 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism: Russian Influence in the Internal Affairs of Bulgaria 
and Serbia, 1879-1886 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), vii. 



 

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Russia’s “victory” in the war was followed within one year by national elation with the 
creation of an enlarged Bulgaria through the San Stefano settlement, followed by prompt 
disillusionment with the polity’s halving by the Congress of Berlin (to which Bulgarians 
were not even invited). Bulgarian revolutionary-turned-statesman Stefan Stambolov 
bitterly stated that Bulgaria was better-off with the Ottomans before Berlin than it was 
after the war.5 Expressing a different attitude towards the “Turkish yoke” in 1886, Russian 
Foreign Minister Nicholas Giers, in a secret communication to British Ambassador Sir 
Robert Morier, displayed resentment and unrealistic expectations about Bulgarian 
attitudes.6  After the Russian soldier “spent his best blood and half his treasure in rescuing 
the Christian [Bulgarians],” they “repudiate[d] the obligations they are under to Russia.”7 
As will be discussed later, expected Bulgarian gratitude towards Russia for its defeat of the 
Ottomans resulted instead in growing resentment and estrangement. Rather than “cruel 
years of Turkish oppression” and longing for Russia to liberate them, evidence 
demonstrates that Bulgarians were relatively successful under Ottoman rule and actually 
better off than they were in the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (1185-1396).8 
 
Russian motivations for its involvement in Bulgaria and willingness to expend “blood and 
arms” for Bulgarian independence through the Russo-Turkish War are more complicated 
than Bulgarian gratitude. Russia’s principal goal was a desire for access to Bulgaria’s warm-
water ports on the Black Sea, access to, or control of, the Dardanelles Straights, as well as 
the geographic position of the South Slavs in general.9 Russian efforts to gain free access to 
the Black Sea and Dardanelles Straights dated to the time of Peter the Great.10 Its chief goal 
in the Balkans was control of the Dardanelles Straights, which represented the “key” to 
Russia’s back door, or as Charles Jelavich summarizes, “all Balkan interests were 

 
5 Duncan M. Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 1870-1895 (Durham: Duke 
University Press, 1993), 38. 
6 Edward Dicey, The Peasant State: An Account of Bulgaria in 1894 (London: John Murray, 1894), 265. 
7 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 193-204. Morier to Rosebery, no. 253 most secret, St. 
Petersburg, July 21, 1886, Public Record Office, FO 65/1260, The National Archives, UK. 
8 Karel Durman, Lost Illusions: Russian Policies towards Bulgaria in 1877-1887, Upsala Studies on the Soviet 
Union and Eastern Europe, no. 1 (Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1988), 9-52. While 
acknowledging that “hope and longing” existed within the Orthodox clergy throughout the South Slavic lands, 
Durman contends that there was no substantial evidence of anything more than a vague feeling towards 
Russia. Quoted from F. Dostoevsky, Diary of a Writer, vol. 2 (New York: George Braziller, 1954), 892. Instead 
of “an impoverished country exposed by the Turks to permanent, intolerable privation,” Fyodor Dostoevsky 
reported in 1877 at the beginning of the Russo-Turkish War that Russian troops found “charming little 
Bulgarian cottages…cultivated land yielding almost hundredfold harvest, and…three Orthodox churches to 
[every] one mosque….they should be welcoming us almost on their knees. But they are not on their 
knees…and it even seems that they are not glad we are here.”  
9 M. S. Anderson, The Eastern Question 1774-1923 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966), 227. 
10 Cyril E. Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” in The Balkans in Transition: Essays on the 
Development of Balkan Life and Politics Since the Eighteenth Century, eds. Charles and Barbara Jelavich 
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1963), 149. Along with other provisions, Russia gained from the 
Ottomans with the 1774 Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji the important Black Sea ports of Azov and Kherson. By 
the nineteenth century, grain from southern Russia represented one-third to one-half of its exports and 
guaranteed water passage became a major motivating factor in its Balkan policy. 



 

74 
 

subordinated to the problem of the Straights.”11 Regardless of a perceived setback in the 
Congress of Berlin, Russian interests were nevertheless advanced with the Russo-Turkish 
War. 
 
Russia, like many European powers in the 1860s, was grappling with the “Eastern 
Question”:  How to deal with the expected failure of the Turkish Empire?12 Russia believed 
that it could improve its geopolitical position and play a key role in determining the fate of 
the region. Barbara Jelavich discusses three strategic options for Russia in the case of the 
demise of the Ottoman Empire: preservation of the Empire through dominance of the 
Ottoman government by Russia; partition of the area in cooperation with other powers; or, 
creation of autonomous national regimes, with Russia then attempting to dominate those 
regimes.13 All Russian options and actions were severely constrained by Western powers, 
particularly Austria-Hungary.14 The latter clearly understood the advantage Russia held, 
being both Slavic and Orthodox, and was convinced that independent South Slavic states 
would become either satellites or allies of Russia, and that the Danube could become a 
“Russian River.”15 The very existence of multiple ethnicities in the Catholic, German-
dominated Austro-Hungarian Empire made it particularly sensitive to the possible addition 
of more Orthodox, Slavic subjects. The Habsburgs preferred to maintain the status quo, that 
the northern border of the Ottoman Empire be the Sava-Danube line as set by the Treaty of 
Karlowitz in 1699 and that no new autonomous states be established in the Balkans.16 
Russia believed that Bulgarian independence, as advanced by the Russo-Turkish War, was 
the initial step towards Jelavich’s third option.    
 
In addition to the constraints placed upon Russia by Austria-Hungary and other Western 
powers, Russia became caught in a confluence of factors beginning in 1875 that seemed to 
leave it with no options for maintaining its influence in the peninsula, except to favor 
Bulgaria over Serbia. After centuries of exploitation, non-Muslim peasants rebelled against 
landowning Muslim beys in Bosnia in July 1875, followed in 1876 by Serbia and 

 
11 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 3-4. While he does not disagree with this 
assessment of Russian orientation, it should be noted that historian M. S. Anderson considered Russia’s policy 
towards the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire irrational, more complex and “more influenced by conflicting 
cross-currents, than that of any other power.” Much of the blame for Russia’s “irrational” involvement in the 
Balkans Anderson attributes to “unofficial Russia,” Pan-Slav officials, societies, and newspapers. In 
Anderson’s opinion, Russia should have placed much more importance on strengthening its Black Sea fleet 
and less on the Straights. He points out that the Kattegat Sound between Denmark and Sweden was in non-
Russian hands and yet had always provided Russia with unimpeded commercial and military passage. See 
Anderson, The Eastern Question, 392-393. 
12 Since the mid-1850s, the imperial interests of Britain and Russia competed for the expected demise of the 
“sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire. Britain’s general approach was to attempt to strengthen the 
Ottomans. Russia attempted to further pro-Russian sentiments to the detriment of the Ottomans through 
Orthodox and Slavic affinities, especially in using autonomous Serbia.  
13 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 28-30. 
14 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 180. 
15 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 128-130. 
16 As has already been mentioned, Austria was concerned about its ability to compete with Russia for the 
loyalty of its various Slavic nationalities. If the status quo were not maintained, the Habsburgs preferred an 
apportionment of the Balkan countries among the great powers, thereby limiting Russia’s influence.  



 

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Montenegro independently going to war with the Ottoman Empire.17 Bulgarian 
revolutionaries saw an opportunity for action against the ruling Ottomans in the various 
futile attempts by Russian and Austrian representatives to restore peace as well as British 
opposition to “putting a knife to the throat of Turkey” and existing political chaos in 
Constantinople.18 Bulgarian Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov, with the encouragement of 
factions in the Russian government (i.e. Russian Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Count 
Nicolai Pavlovich Ignatiev), led revolutionary activities against the Ottomans beginning in 
April 1876, followed by terrible Turkish reprisals conducted by Muslim irregulars (i.e., 
bashibazouks or Circassian emigrants from the Russian Caucasus).19 These Turkish 
reprisals resulted in international condemnation of the Ottoman Empire. 20 
 
Russian Pan-Slavists encouraged Serbian hostilities against Turkey and Russian public 
opinion strongly favored the Serbs, but Serbia was not up to the task.21 With the threat of a 

 
17 R. J. Crampton, Bulgaria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 90. Dennis P. Hupchick, The Balkans from 
Constantinople to Communism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 257. 
18 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 178-183. In their first serious attempt to restore peace, Austrian Foreign 
Minister Julius Andrassy and Russian Ambassador to Vienna, Prince A. M. Gorchakov, circulated to the Great 
Powers the Andrassy Note in December 1875. Seen as “window-dressing,” the Note provided for religious 
liberty, the end of tax farming, and land reform. Britain and Turkey reluctantly agreed to the Andrassy Note, 
but Britain refused to require written acceptance by Turkey. As the threat of hostilities between Austria and 
Russia increased, Andrassy and Gorchakov met a second time, which resulted in the Berlin Memorandum of 
May 1876 (being almost entirely the work of Andrassy). If the Ottoman Empire failed, the Memorandum 
called for Austria to take part of Bosnia and Russia to take southern Bessarabia.  
19 Denis Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism: Imperial Russia and Ottoman Christians, 1856-1914 (New 
York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 194. To counter the European powers’ general distrust of Russian 
intentions in the Balkans, Ignatiev believed that international opinion would be especially important in any 
Russian intervention in the Balkans. Ignatiev encouraged Stambolov to take the initial steps towards 
revolution. Ignatiev’s goals were to destabilize the Ottoman Empire and to give Russian an adequate reason 
for military intervention in Bulgaria, as well as to dispel the prevalent opinion that Bulgarians never had and 
never would fight for their independence. Crampton, Bulgaria, 93. Cited in Encho Mateev, Dǔrzhavnikǔt Stefan 
Stambolov (Sofia: Letopisi, 1992), 111. To incite revolutionary actions against the Ottomans, Stambolov 
repeated often what he had been told by Ignatiev in 1875: “Russia can do nothing for Bulgaria now if the 
Bulgarians do not provide grounds for it.” 
20 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 184. Stambolov and other revolutionaries had previously realized that 
publicity would be crucial to their efforts and effectively used Bulgarian, Romania, French, and British 
newspapers to ensure that any reprisals were “Europeanized” (especially in Western media). Particularly 
effective was Gladstone’s The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, which was published in 
September 1876 and sold 200,000 copies within a month. This publication played upon prevalent Christian 
emotionalism and destroyed pro-Turkish feelings in Britain more than any other publication in the century.  
Investigations into the “April Uprising” were led by Russian and American diplomats and resulted in 
sensational photos and “lurid accounts of all sorts of violence done to helpless local Christian subjects by their 
cruel Muslim masters.” The press coverage of these events represented an important landmark in the 
development of the mass circulation press in Russia and Europe. See Vovchenko, Containing Balkan 
Nationalism, 195. 
21 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 186-187. Serbia was encouraged to go to war with Turkey by Russian 
General Cherniaev, a leading Pan-Slav, who expected decisive Russian help for Serbia. Cherniaev had resigned 
his military commission and went to Serbia to lead its army against the express wishes of Alexander II who 
did not wish to become involved. Prayers were offered for Serbian success in Russian Orthodox churches and 
contributions of money to Serbia increased. In December 1876 the great Russian journalist I. S. Iksakov 
wrote: “All that has happened in Russia this summer is an unheard-of phenomenon in the history of any 



 

76 
 

larger war increasing and their interests at stake, Russia and Austria-Hungary were forced 
to immediately enter into a verbal, ambiguous Reichstadt Agreement specifying territorial 
annexations and spheres of influence upon the conclusion of Serbian-Turkish hostilities.22 
Disillusioned and irritated with Serbia’s military weakness, Russian Pan-Slavists saw 
Bulgarians more firmly Russophile and more immune to Western power influences. 23  In 
his 1860 letter to the Serbs, Russian theologian and philosopher Aleksei Khomiakov 
expressed this same concern: that Serbs were renouncing Pan-Slavism and Orthodoxy and 
were instead following a Western path. Khomiakov specifically mentioned Austria as a 
“corrosive” influence.24 While Russia’s policy in the past had been to support all Orthodox 
peoples in the Balkans, it realized after the Crimean War that such commitments were too 
far-reaching and that the geographic position of Bulgaria superseded traditional Russian 
sympathies for Serbia.25  Even though intervening in Bulgaria would certainly revive 
Western power concerns, Russia reasoned that any alternative exercise of military power 
in the western Balkans (e.g., Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) would more immediately and 
seriously lead to conflict with its two Dreikaiserbund partners, Germany and Austria-
Hungary.26 Russia’s plan was to agree to Austria-Hungary annexing Bosnia and 
Herzegovina, to the detriment of Serbia, as compensation to Austria-Hungary for 
prospective Russian gains in Bulgaria.27 
 
With Serbia’s pending collapse against Turkey, Russia drew two important conclusions. As 
mentioned earlier, Russia was irritated by Serbia’s military weakness against the Sublime 

 
country: public opinion conducted a war apart from the government and without any state organization in a 
foreign state.” B. H. Sumner, Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880 (Oxford: Archon Books, 1937), 193, fn. 842. 
22 Sumner, Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880, 185-186. Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan 
Nationalism, 6-7. Gorchakov and Andrassy met at Reichstadt (German for Zákupy in the current Czech 
Republic) in July 1876 and verbally agreed not to engage in the fighting and to determine territorial 
settlements upon the conclusion of hostilities. The objective of the agreement was to prevent the formation of 
a single, unitary South Slav state (i.e., Bosnia and Herzegovina would in no event become one state). Far more 
important than demonstrating the hazards of verbal agreements, the real importance of the Reichstadt 
Agreement was that Austria-Hungary and Russia both desired to avoid war in the Balkans. 
23 Sumner, Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880, 169-172. Pan-Slavism never had significant influence in the 
highest levels of the Russian government. It had little appeal for the Russian bureaucracy, including 
statesmen like Prince A. M. Gorchakov, nor the influential Baltic Germans. It was advocated by military 
commanders, educated classes and Count Nikolai Ignatiev.  
24 Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, A Study in Ideas, vol. 1, A. S. 
Xomjakov (‘s-Gravenhage: Mounton & Co., 1961), 247-259. 
25 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 3-4. Anderson, 187. Charles and Barbara Jelavich, 
The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), 
128. Telling examples of Russia’s earlier preference for Serbia can be seen in the peace treaties of the Russo-
Turkish wars of 1806-12 and 1828-29. While there was constant fighting on Bulgarian soil and Bulgarians 
assisted the Russians in fighting, neither treaty contained any provisions concerning the Bulgarians.  
By the same token, there was a marked difference in Russian influence among the Balkan countries after the 
Crimean War. Compared to Bulgaria, Serbia and the Danubian Principalities were much less favorably 
inclined towards Russia because of interference in their internal politics. Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan 
Entanglements, 134. 
26 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 186. The Dreikaiserbund was initially an informal agreement from 1872 
but was strengthened in a formal agreement between the three parties in 1879. 
27 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 12. 



 

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Porte and started to see Bulgaria as the more reliable supporter of its influence in the 
Balkans.28 Secondly, Russia saw that military action in support of Slav inhabitants of the 
Balkans would help stabilize the Russian monarchy, which had been threatened by populist 
movements since the early 1870s.29 “War or disorder at home, that is the dilemma,” wrote 
a high-ranking Russian Foreign Ministry official in August 1876.30 With the threat of war 
between some combination of Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary 
increasing, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck was forced to choose between Russia 
and Austria-Hungary, and Britain worried over the threat to the status quo in Turkey. The 
Western powers called for a conference in Constantinople at the end of 1876 to devise a 
series of reforms that would ensure that atrocities against Christians in the Ottoman 
Empire did not recur.31 However, the Ottoman Empire had three sultans in 1876 and the 
Ottoman Empire had not been in such confusion in seventy years, resulting in the 
preliminary agreement of the conference becoming meaningless and ending in failure.32  
 
With the failure of the Constantinople conference and British public opinion turning 
strongly against the Ottomans, Russia felt free to declare war on the Ottoman Empire, 
which it did in June 1877.33 The weakened Ottomans were quickly defeated and accepted 
an armistice in January 1878. Historian M. S. Anderson wrote that the resulting short-lived 
San Stefano settlement “represented the fullest practical expression ever given in Russian 
foreign policy to the Pan-Slav ideal.”34 The San Stefano settlement gave the Bulgarians all 

 
28 The central government of the Ottoman Empire is frequently referred to as the Sublime Porte or the Porte. 
This figure of speech has its origin from the earliest days of the Ottoman Empire when the sultan would make 
announcements from the entrance to his palace. 
29 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 187. 
30 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 187, citing Charles and Barbara Jelavich, eds., Russia in the East, 1876-1880 
(Leiden: Brill, 1959), 20. There were in fact conflicting ulterior motives within Russia about a prospective war 
against Turkey. Pan-Slavist bureaucrats saw a war as strengthening support for the autocracy, while the 
intelligentsia hoped that war would make more apparent the autocracy’s incompetence. Tsar Alexander II 
was eventually assassinated in March 1881. In any event, celebrations by the Russian people over Russia’s 
quick victory over the Turks were reinforced by the realistic battlefront paintings of Vasily Vershchagin and 
the orchestral tone poem Marche slave by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky with its various renditions of “God Save 
the Tsar.” Lionel Kochan and Richard Abraham, The Making of Modern Russia, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Martin’s 
Press, 1983), 202-203. 
31 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 188-190. Crampton, Bulgaria, 92-3.  
32 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 185 and 191-192. The Porte initially accepted a compromise imposed 
upon it by plenipotentiaries from Britain and Russia. But British Ambassador Sir Henry Eliot purposely 
undermined his government’s official representative and encouraged newly installed Sultan Abdülhamid II to 
proclaim a new constitution, thereby making the preliminary agreement of the Western powers meaningless. 
Abdülhamid’s actions were not duplicitous, as was later alleged, but were principally the result of new forces 
within Ottoman society that desired to liberalize Ottoman government.  
33 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 192-194. Within three months of the failed Constantinople conference, 
Ignatiev achieved for Russia a watered-down pledge of Austro-Hungarian neutrality in the event of war with 
Turkey. At the same time, public opinion in Britain turned so strongly against the Ottoman Empire that Prime 
Minister Benjamin Disraeli was forced to accept war against Turkey. The “price” of Austria’s acceptance was 
receipt of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Russian recognition that Serbia fell within Austria’s orbit. Hupchick, 
The Balkans from Constantinople to Communism, 264 and 192-194. 
34 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 203. The treaty ending the war was signed in San Stefano, a village west of 
Constantinople. 



 

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they could hope for, uniting the three historic regions of Bulgaria (Moesia, that is Eastern 
Rumelia, and Thrace and Macedonia) into one state and one church. Over 23,000 Bulgarian 
people expressed gratitude to Russia by signing a petition of thanks to Tsar Alexander II.35 
Unfortunately for the Bulgarians, the San Stefano settlement brought to the fore 
longstanding conflicts within the Russian government; before ambassador to the Porte 
Ignatiev signed the peace agreement, ambassador to the Habsburgs, Prince A. M. Gorchakov 
had already given Britain and Austria-Hungary effective veto power over it.36 The treaty 
represented everything that Britain and the Habsburgs feared: an enlarged center of 
Russian influence, a threat to British routes to the Suez and India, and an enlarged Slav 
state that could challenge Austria-Hungary’s positions in the Balkans.37 While Britain 
initially acquiesced to the San Stefano settlement, Austria protested that an enlarged 
Bulgaria clearly violated the Reichstadt and Budapest agreements and that the 
compensation due it with regards to Bosnia-Herzegovina had been ignored.38 
 
At the same time, Gorchakov was also agreeing with Austrian Foreign Minister Julius 
Andrassy to convene an international conference in Berlin to counteract the San Stefano 
settlement.39 At the 1878 Congress of Berlin, Bulgaria lost its recently added territories, 
and newly constructed Eastern Rumelia was created “to diminish Russian influence in the 
Balkans by keeping Bulgaria small.”40 There was great disagreement among influential 
elements of the Russian public and press about whether or not Berlin represented a severe 
setback for Russia; yet, even if it did, the Russo-Turkish War still helped establish Russia’s 
position in Bulgaria.41 Russia departed Eastern Rumelia a year later, but only after it had 
trained 40,000 men in paramilitary “gymnastic societies.” Russian actions thereby gave 
early impetus to the eventual union of the nation by creating the environment for Bulgarian 
freedom and national independence.42 As historian Richard Crampton observes, “The April 

 
35 Crampton, Bulgaria, 91-93. 
36 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 205. 
37 Crampton, Bulgaria, 94. Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 128. Recognizing the power of 
Pan-Slavism, Austria did not want to compete with Russia for the loyalties of the various Balkan Slavic states.  
38 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 6-7. The Budapest Convention was an outgrowth of 
the Constantinople Conference and was signed in 1877 by Emperor Franz Joseph and Russian Tsar Alexander 
II.   
39 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 205. Typical of the cautious, non-committal Bismarck, who rarely wanted 
to be associated with difficult decisions, Bismarck objected to Berlin being the site for the conference. He still 
believed that a partition of the Ottoman Empire between all interested powers was the best solution to all 
Near East problems. 
40 Crampton, Bulgaria, 94. Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 71. 
41 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 1-16. Within a few years, Russia de facto achieved 
its goals for Bulgaria, but to the detriment of its interests elsewhere in the Balkans. Serbia was again (after 
creation of the Bulgarian Exarchate) faced with its secondary status in Russian international relations vis-à-
vis Bulgaria and became a Habsburg vassal state. After providing military assistance to Russia through 
territorial access in the Russo-Turkish War, Romania turned from Russia and looked to the Dual Monarchy of 
Austria-Hungary for future support. The Congress of Berlin also exacerbated Russian internal concerns. The 
reforms of Tsar Alexander II were being poorly received, the Turkish war created a tremendous financial 
strain on Russia, and revolutionary activities were contributing to state insecurity. (Alexander was 
assassinated within three years of the Congress of Berlin.) 
42 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 71. 



 

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uprising was the beginning of the birth of the modern Bulgarian state. The midwife was 
Russia.”43  
 
Russia used the Russo-Turkish War to gain approval among Bulgarians, but the war alone 
does not fully explain the eternal friendship myth. The second part of this article examines 
other factors that helped establish Bulgarian-Russian affinity and subsequent resentments 
and naiveté by both countries in understanding the other’s needs. These include the three 
important affinities that served to strengthen the Bulgarian debt to Russia for furthering 
independence through the Russo-Turkish War: their common Slavic ethnicity, shared 
Orthodox religion, and similar languages.  
 
Pan-Slavism  
The importance of the Slavic ethnicity for Russian political decisions in the Balkans varied 
greatly over time and among the various tsars and intellectual, political and military 
leaders. Three major movements of Slavic nationalism before 1914 have been identified: 
“Slavophilism” during the reign of Tsar Nicholas I; “Pan-Slavism” under Tsars Alexander II 
and III; and “Neo-Slavism” from approximately 1908-1914.44  In each case, while Russian 
leaders identified their shared Slavic heritage, they also approached other European Slavic 
peoples “as primitive people who needed firm, if friendly, guidance.”45 
 
In the late nineteenth century, Russian diplomats came to realize that their support of 
Bulgarian independence transcended Pan-Slavism and unleashed a fervor for Bulgarian 
nationalism that Russia could not control. After centuries of Muslim rule, Balkan peoples 
were initially receptive to calls to unite behind the Slavic heritage and Orthodox religion 
they shared with Russians.46 Crampton points out, however, that the nascent Bulgarian 
democrats “had no taste for tsarist autocracy.”47 In fact, the change in Bulgarian attitudes 
towards Russia started with the Crimean War. After the Crimean War, and certainly after 
the Congress of Berlin, Russia could not promote the idea of independent Balkan countries 
within a framework of conservative domestic policies without stimulating nationalism and 
political freedom.48 Bulgarians were further offended by Russian support for Ottoman 

 
43 Crampton, Bulgaria, 91. 
44 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 34. A complete exposition of these philosophies is beyond 
the scope of this study. In brief, “Slavophilism” can be idealistically viewed as the embodiment of eighteenth-
century nature as seen by Rousseau and Johann Gottfried Herder. It is easily conflated with Orthodoxy and 
often led to virulent attacks on Catholic Poles. Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 93-94. “Pan-Slavism” is 
more closely tied to, but not synonymous with, nationalism and Russian domination, and an orientation to 
Orthodoxy. Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 135 and 157. “Neo-Slavism” originated in Austria-
Hungary and had a short life before World War I as a reaction to Germanization. It did not attach any 
importance to religion, but was focused on the Balkans and Russia, putting each country on an equal basis. 
Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 208. 
45Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 33. As an illustration of disagreement within the Russian 
government, it is instructive to note that only one of the three Russian foreign ministers for most of the 
nineteenth century was both Slavic and Orthodox (i.e., Gorchakov). Ironically, Gorchakov, tended to side with 
the Western powers over Balkan Slavic countries. 
46 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 3. 
47 Crampton, Bulgaria, 73. 
48 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 73. 



 

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resettlement of Circassians in Bulgaria after the Crimean War and the related settlement of 
Bulgarians in Crimea.49 Subsequent Russian use of force, intimidation, and bribery only led 
to increased Bulgarian rejection of attempted Russian domination.50 Russian patronization 
of Bulgarians ranged from the comical (e.g., putting sweets on the desks of members of the 
National Assembly) to the consequential (e.g., Russians holding all military ranks in the 
Bulgarian army above captain).51 By the 1880s, the saying circulated in Sofia that, “Russia, 
though loving Bulgaria, did not love the Bulgarians.”52 
 
It is easy to over-emphasize the importance of Pan-Slavism in Russian actions. Faced with a 
choice between Pan-Slavism and its national interests, Russia would understandably 
choose its national interests.53  In fact, Pan-Slavism did not originate in Russia but instead 
with non-Russian Western Slavs (i.e., Czechs and Slovaks) in the first half of the nineteenth 
century, as part of their national awakening. In the second half of the nineteenth century, it 
became predominantly a Russian movement “rooted in a feeling of spiritual and material 
grandeur and in a consciousness of historical destiny.”54 Russian Pan-Slavism did not draw 
its strength from the nineteenth-century conservative court and government but from the 
smaller, educated class of Russian radicals newly exposed to Western concepts of 
independence and freedom.  
 
As already noted, Russia sacrificed both Balkan nationalism and Pan-Slavism in valuing its 
interests vis-à-vis the Straights and Bulgaria, thus making it easier for Austria to absorb 
Bosnia-Herzegovina to the detriment of Serbia. Serbia was bluntly reminded of Russian 
priorities when it complained about Russian positions in the San Stefano settlement. Russia 
told the Serbian delegation that “the interests of Russia came first, then came those of 
Bulgaria, and only after them came Serbia’s; but that there were occasions on which 
Bulgarian interests stood on equal footing with the Russian.”55 Since it appeared to Russia 
that Serbia would inevitably fall under the influence of the Habsburgs, Charles Jelavich 
wrote that it was only “logical” that Serbia should not be strengthened and must be 

 
49 Crampton, Bulgaria, 73 and 38. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-
1923 (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 467. After the Crimean War, the Ottomans relocated approximately 
600,000 Circassians from Muslim states of the Caucasus to Bulgaria to strengthen the Ottoman northern 
border. Russia supported this relocation. With about one-fourth being agricultural slaves in the Caucasus, 
their integration in Bulgaria caused many problems. Several Bulgarian Christians responded by relocating to 
the Crimea, claiming that their villages were no longer safe and their agricultural land had been ruined.  
50 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 283. 
51 Crampton, Bulgaria, 111. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 228. 
52 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 82-83. 
53 Hans Kohn, Pan-Slavism: Its History and Ideology (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), xv-xvii. 
54 Kohn, Pan-Slavism, 121-22. John M. Letiche and Basil Dmytryshyn, “Križanić’s Memorandum on the Mission 
to Moscow, 1641,” The Slavonic and East European Review 68, no. 1 (1990): 41-68. A much earlier, albeit 
unsuccessful, advocate of Pan-Slavism was the Croatian Catholic missionary Juraj Križanić (Yuri Krizhanich). 
Križanić had two goals in his 1641 mission to Moscow, reconciliation of Eastern Orthodoxy with Roman 
Catholicism and unification of all Slavic peoples under the leadership of Russia.  
55 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 12-13. 



 

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abandoned: “Russia was making peace not on the basis of Balkan nationalism or the ‘Slavic 
idea’ but on that of the balance of power and national interest.”56 
 
Any favoritism towards Bulgaria or belief in Pan-Slavism professed by Russia, however, 
was not reciprocated by Bulgaria. As Bulgarian leaders (as well as those of other Slavic 
countries) became more exposed to Western beliefs and ideals, they increasingly sought 
national self-determination and independence. At the Tûrnovo Constitutional Convention, 
hot-headed revolutionary Stefan Stambolov rejected the Western-imposed edict of Berlin.  
Spurning Russia’s efforts, he said, “it would have been better that you [Russia] had not 
come to free us when you were not strong enough to defend your creation, San Stefano 
Bulgaria! Under the Turks, but as one, we had greater hope for a brighter future. But now, 
cut into five parts, our hopes die.”57 Historian Hans Kohn understood this reaction and 
generalized that people become “less inclined to sacrifice” their individuality, traditions, 
and language, as their consciousness of them increases.58  
 
An examination of the life of Stefan Stambolov illustrates Bulgarian leaders’ willingness to 
use Russia to achieve national aspirations, but not to the detriment of efforts towards 
national independence. Stambolov was a Bulgarian patriot and pragmatist but also a 
revolutionary with autocratic tendencies. Murdered at age forty-one, his short life was full 
of contrasts and contradictions illustrating Bulgarian attitudes towards Russia in the late 
nineteenth century. Stambolov recognized Russia’s efforts in gaining independence for 
Bulgaria but in the end was hated by Russia, because he could not be “bought, brow-beaten, 
or persuaded” to do Russia’s bidding.59 He played no role in the April 1879 selection of 
Prince Alexander of Battenberg as the first modern Bulgarian monarch, Russia’s preferred 
candidate, but was also “heartsick” when Russia forced Alexander to abdicate.60 While 
Stambolov was never a Russophile, Alexander’s removal was the final step toward making 
him a Russophobe.61 He worked hard to convince Alexander’s successor, Prince Ferdinand, 
to assume the Bulgarian throne, over the strong objections of Russia; nonetheless, 
Stambolov’s assassination in 1896 was likely related to his involvement in political 
disagreements between Ferdinand and Russia.62 Neither motivated by Slavism nor 
Orthodoxy, Stambolov subscribed to Realpolitik and neo-Machiavellism, with his beliefs 

 
56 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 12-13. 
57 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 35-38. In accordance with Article IV of the 
Congress of Berlin, leaders of the newly formed Bulgaria (excluding Eastern Rumelia) met at (Veliko) 
Tûrnovo in a Constitutional Assembly on February 10/22, 1879. Two days before the convention convened, 
three-fourths of the delegates, along with many foreign diplomats and journalists, attended a meeting to 
discuss whether to go forward with the convention or to stage some form of protest. In an address that was 
well received by those in attendance, Stambolov attacked both Russia in particular and Europe in general. 
58 Kohn, Pan-Slavism, xvi. 
59 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 122 and 145. 
60 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 98. 
61 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 95. 
62 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 124 and 230-231. 



 

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being called by University of Zurich political theorist Josette Baer “Early Bulgarian 
liberalism.”63  
 
Common Orthodox Religion 
More important than the ethnic ties between Russia and many of the Balkan peoples was 
their shared Orthodox Christianity. Charles Jelavich calls Orthodoxy “the principal agency” 
through which Russia could “reach down to the roots of Slavic national feeling and to the 
individual Slavic peasant.”64 By the 1830s, an increasing number of Bulgarian priests were 
being trained in the Slav-dominated seminaries of Russia, rather than Hellenized 
seminaries in the Balkans.65 Both seminary groups opposed what they saw as long-
standing corruption in the Greek-dominated Constantinople Patriarchate, and from the 
1820s, serious agitation against the Patriarchate grew to the point that “the Bulgarian 
people no longer wanted Greek bishops, good or bad.”66 However, since Bulgaria had 
“always” been Orthodox Christian, it is easy to forget another cause of concern for Russia. 
In the early 1860s, Tsar Alexander II and Russian leadership feared Bulgarians “going 
Catholic.”67 Russia saw a rapidly growing Bulgarian Uniate movement that would allow 
Bulgarians to keep Orthodox rites but recognize Papal supremacy (i.e., “going around” the 
Constantinople Patriarchate). Regardless of how unlikely the development of the Bulgarian 
Uniate movement might be, it resulted in Russia placing more emphasis upon Orthodox 
unity and less upon Pan-Slavism.68   
 
Russia was inevitably involved in Balkan Orthodox religious affairs because of the 
important role granted it by the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji. The treaty gave Russia the 
right to intervene diplomatically with Constantinople concerning the safeguarding of 
Ottoman Christians.69 In response to extending Russian diplomatic pressure on the Porte, it 
persuaded the Patriarchate to recognize the autonomy initially of the Serbian Church in 
1831, followed by the religious autonomy of the Greeks, Protestants, Armenian Catholics, 
and, finally, the Bulgarian Church in 1870.70  In the end, Russia was able to use the Russo-

 
63 Josette Baer, “The Creation of Polity in Bulgaria, Realpolitik or Constitutionalism by Default,” East Central 
Europe 31, no. 1 (2004): 3-8. 
64 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 3. 
65 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 66. 
66 Charles Jelavich, Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism, 64-67. 
67 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 113. 
68 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 133. Bulgarian nationalists employed the fear of Catholic 
missions again in the 1870s. They suggested that Bulgarian communities in Macedonia “would switch to the 
still-minuscule Bulgarian Uniate millet” unless they were allowed to join the Exarchate. “Indeed, average 
Russians remembered the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 as a religious conflict rather than as the struggle 
between the Slavs and the Turks.” Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 321. 
69 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 26 and 74. However, it must be noted that with Russia’s defeat 
in the Crimean War, Russia relinquished its monopoly claim to protect Ottoman Christians to the Concert of 
Europe in general. 
70 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 65-78. 



 

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Turkish War to gain enormous goodwill with Bulgarians by supporting demands for a 
separate Bulgarian national church (e.g., Exarchy) and canonical law.71 
 
Because of the emphasis they placed upon ecclesiastical affairs, in comparison to social 
grievances and inequalities common with most nationalist movements, Bulgarians were 
late to achieve an independent church, which caused special concerns for the Porte, Russia, 
and Western powers. The desire for religious autonomy was a crucial component of the 
Bulgarian vǔzrazhdane (national revival).72 Bulgarian communities outside of the 
“Bulgarian” lands were hugely important to vǔzrazhdane.73 Because of these “outsiders,” 
Bulgarians wanted to reverse the order by which religious affiliation was regulated in the 
Ottoman Empire—instead of religious affiliation determining cultural identity, the 
Bulgarians wanted cultural identity to determine religious affiliation. They wanted ethnic 
Bulgarians living in Constantinople to be under the religious authority of an Exarch living 
in Bulgaria, not the Constantinople Patriarchate. The Patriarchate realized that this 
demand could soon result in separate Bulgarian, Romanian, and other ethnically-based 
Orthodox organizations.74 Bulgarians recognized that this “ethnicism” would be to their 
advantage, because, “at the opportune moment,” Macedonia could be recognized by the 
Porte as part of the Bulgarian millet and become part of Greater Bulgaria.75  Russia feared 
that Orthodox Christians leaving the Patriarchate would diminish its right to intervene 
under the Kutchuk Kainardji treaty. Conversely, Western powers were concerned that this 
change would result in increased Russian influence. The Patriarchate naturally feared that 
such changes would diminish its influence and income.76 The net result was that Bulgarians 
articulated religious issues to further national political aspirations.77 

 
71 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 82 and 295. Bulgaria paid greatly and permanently for its 
Balkan and Orthodox disunity. Already in the late 1850s, the priest of the Russian embassy in Athens 
reported anti-Slavic and anti-Russian feelings in Greece stemming from the Bulgarian Church Question. 
Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin) predicted that the Bulgarian church would separate from Patriarchate 
control and that there would be continuing hostility between Greece and Bulgaria in Thrace and Macedonia. It 
was not until after the disastrous Balkan Wars in 1914 that Bulgaria was ready for Orthodox unity.  
72 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 23. 
73 Vovchenko, Containing Balkan Nationalism, 23-24. 
74 Veljko Vujačić, Nationalism, Myth, and the State in Russia and Serbia: Antecedents of the Dissolution of the 
Soviet Union and Yugoslavia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 126-127. The precedent for an 
Orthodox millet outside of the Ottoman Empire can be seen as early as the fifteenth century in Habsburg 
domains, and even more obviously after the Austro-Turkish Wars of the late seventeenth and early 
eighteenth centuries when at least 30,000 Serbs were led into Habsburg lands by the patriarch of Peć, 
Arsenije III Čarnojević (the Great Migration of 1690). Čarnojević was granted wide ecclesiastical and secular 
powers and essentially an Ottoman millet system existed. Habsburg authorities used the Uniate creed in the 
opposite manner. They attempted to draw Orthodox Serbian frontiersmen who had initially come to 
Habsburg lands in the Great Migration of 1690 into Roman Catholicism through dissemination of the Uniate 
creed.   
75 George G. Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalism,” in The Balkans in 
Transition: Essays on the Development of Balkan Life and Politics Since the Eighteenth Century, eds. Charles and 
Barbara Jelavich (Berkley: University of California Press, 1963), 138-139. 
76 Crampton, Bulgaria, 70. 
77 Crampton, Bulgaria, 76-80. The external factors identified by Crampton include imperial devolution as an 
outgrowth of the Austro-Prussian war, Russia Slavophiles losing interest in Poland and substituting the 
Orthodox Balkans where they favored the Slavs over the Greeks, the Serbian Michael Obrenović promoting a 



 

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Language, Culture, Modernization, and Nationalism  
The third affinity between Bulgaria and Russia that Barbara Jelavich identified is their 
linguistic proximity.78 While this article identifies several examples of estrangement from 
Russia as Bulgarian nationalism developed (the life of Stefan Stambolov being one), the 
refinement of the Bulgarian language was a reaction against the Greek language and 
Orthodox Greek clergy; the result brought the Bulgarian and Russian languages and 
peoples closer together. Reflecting both the similarities in the languages and traditional ties 
between the two groups, Russian became part of the Bulgarian gymnasium curriculum in 
1878.79 After 1878, Russian literature also became more widely read in Bulgaria than in 
other Balkan countries, and many Bulgarian writers turned to Russia for inspiration.80  
 
Books published in Bulgarian first became available in the nineteenth century. The first 
Bulgarian book was published in 1806 by Bishop Sofronii Vrachanski, Kyriakodromion (a 
book of precepts and sermons for every Sunday of the year), followed in 1824 by Pet’r 
Beron’s first modern Bulgarian schoolbook, and in 1835 by Neofit Rilski’s Bulgarian 
Grammar (Bolgarska grammatika).81 Furthering the development of Bulgarian literature, 
the Ruthenian Yuri Venelin created great interest in the 1830s in Moscow and Odessa with 
his collections of Bulgarian folk poetry.82 As was true in other Balkan countries, 
nationalism led to the creation of vernacular literature relating “an awareness of the ethnic 
group as a historical entity.”83 After being first seen in Greece and Serbia, a largely 
religious-based cultural renaissance grew in Bulgaria, particularly in the 1860s.  
 
However, the foundation for Bulgarian pride and nationalism was laid even earlier by the 
most important of all eighteenth-century Bulgarian writers, Paisiǐ Hilendarski. Father Paisiǐ 
finished in 1762 his manuscript Slavonic-Bulgarian History (Slavianob’lgarska istorija), 
which represented the  “landmark…of modern Bulgarian literature,” and “the response to a 

 
Balkan alliance, separate Serbian treaties with Montenegro, Greece, and Romania and most importantly an 
insurrection in Crete in 1866. 
78 Ivan G. Iliev, “Short History of the Cyrillic Alphabet,” International Journal of Russian Studies, 2, no. 2 (2013): 
221-285. Slavs in Moravia, Pannonia and Bulgaria started using the Glagolitic script created by St. Cyril at the 
end of the ninth century. The “Cyrillic alphabet” originated in the First Bulgarian Kingdom at the beginning of 
the tenth century. The commonly accepted belief is that Cyrillic began in the tenth century as an enhancement 
of the Bulgarian Glagolitic script, with its creation being variously attributed to Saint Cyril (born Constantine), 
Clement of Ochrid, or Konstantin of Preslav. From its origin in Bulgaria with 43 letters, letters were changed 
or eliminated by Tsar Peter I due to the influence of Western European culture and Latin script. The first 
Bulgarian official orthography was imposed 1899, and then again under the Communist government in 1945, 
when Bulgarian was brought closer to Russian by removing two more letters. 
79 Crampton, Bulgaria, 446. 
80 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 166-167. 
81 Albert B. Lord, “Nationalism and the Muses in Balkan Slavic Literature in the Modern Period,” in The 
Balkans in Transition: Essays on the Development of Balkan Life and Politics Since the Eighteenth Century, eds. 
Charles and Barbara Jelavich (Berkley: University of California Press, 1963), 260-261. 
82 Lord, “Nationalism and the Muses in Balkan Slavic Literature in the Modern Period,” 267-268. MacDermott, 
A History of Bulgaria,123. Venelin reproached Russia “for having forgotten the Bulgars from whom they had 
received baptism and the alphabet.” 
83 Lord, “Nationalism and the Muses in Balkan Slavic Literature in the Modern Period,” 258. 



 

85 
 

feeling that a national spirit was needed.”84 Paisiǐ’s impact was long-lasting.  His book was 
hand-copied for more than eighty years and only first printed in 1844, with its previously 
anonymous author finally identified in 1871. While Paisiǐ writing in the eighteenth century 
was focused on Greek influences, there can be no doubt, with his urging for a “national 
spirit” and plea for “greater self-confidence and self-assertion,” that he would have likewise 
resisted Russian influences in nineteenth-century Bulgaria.85  
 
Despite their linguistic connections, Russia was not the major channel through which 
Western culture, ideas, and institutions came to Bulgaria and other South Slavic countries, 
nor did Russia have much influence over Bulgarian efforts to modernize.86 Ottoman rulers 
had undertaken modernizing reforms in their Balkan provinces, but these reforms were 
too limited and too late to capture the imagination of Balkan leaders.87 Most literate people 
believed that independence from the Ottomans was essential to systematic 
modernization.88 From the early 1700s, commercial expansion resulted in foreign capital 
flowing into Bulgaria, especially for the textile industry, with a resulting exposure to 
Western ideas.89 Businessmen with some knowledge of German and French were traveling 
to Western cities such as Paris, Vienna, and Leipzig, and Bulgarian business communities 
grew in Odessa and Constantinople.90 The more Bulgarians were exposed to Western 
beliefs and ideals, the less interest they had in Russian Pan-Slavism. Even traditional ties 
and Russia’s military efforts with respect to independence could not counteract Bulgarian 
interest in an independent nation free of Russian interference. Western ideals, especially 
those espoused by French philosophes and encyclopedists, first reached Bulgaria through 
neighboring regions. In the first half of the nineteenth century, this exposure centered on 
Greek schools and translations of Western texts into Greek, while by the middle of the 
century, Bulgarians who could not afford to go further west were exposed to Slavic scholars 
at schools in Belgrade and Kragujevac.91  
 

 
84 Lord, “Nationalism and the Muses in Balkan Slavic Literature in the Modern Period,” 259. 
85 Crampton, Bulgaria, 31-32. The book had two purposes, the first being “to recall and relate the greatness of 
the past.” But looking to the future, his second purpose was to “issue a plea for greater self-confidence and 
self-assertion.” He accused the Bulgarian people of “cultural submissiveness and their apparent inferiority 
complex vis-à-vis the Greeks…Rather than learning Greek, the Bulgarian should, he wrote, ‘know your own 
nation and language and study in your own tongue’ and should ‘keep close to your heart your race and your 
Bulgarian homeland.’” Marin V. Pundeff, “Bulgarian Nationalism,” in Nationalism in Eastern Europe, eds. Peter 
F. Sugar and Ivo J. Lederer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 99-100. In his interaction with 
monks from Russia and Balkan lands in the monastery communities at Hilandar and Zograf on Mount Athos, 
Paisiǐ was stung by “the ridicule Greek and Serbian monks heaped on Bulgarians for being backward, 
ignorant, and lacking a great national past.” He resolved to change their attitude and stated that he had 
written his work “for the ordinary Bulgarian” and for “the benefit of the whole Bulgarian nation.” 
86 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 162. 
87 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 146. 
88 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 146. 
89 Cyril. E. Black, The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria (Princeton: Princeton University 
Press, 1943), 25. 
90 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 162. Black, The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria, 28. 
91 Black, The Establishment of Constitutional Government in Bulgaria, 26-7. 



 

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However, Constantinople was the most important Bulgarian center for the dissemination of 
Western ideas, and by the 1880s, its Bulgarian population grew to between 30,000 and 
40,000 people. Initially, the “nationalism” that resulted from an increased awareness of 
Western ideas was not anti-Ottoman. Some leaders equated an acceptable Bulgarian 
accommodation with the Ottoman sultan to the situation in Hungary, in which the Austrian 
Emperor was also King of Hungary. A Bulgarian version of this demand was a privileged 
status for Bulgaria that included autonomy, a Christian governor subordinate to the sultan, 
a representative assembly, and the right to use their Bulgarian language for official 
purposes.92 
 
The spread of Western thought within Bulgaria was hindered by conflicting ideas and their 
diverse sources (e.g., Russian Orthodox seminaries, Bulgarian businessmen traveling to the 
West, French philosophes). Beginning in 1816, Russia wished to educate Balkan leaders—
first Serbian and then Bulgarian—by bringing them to Russia.93  However, bringing Balkan 
leaders to Russia for their education was counterproductive, since they found their contact 
with non-governmental radicals more relevant to their lives and beliefs than their 
“education” by Russian government officials. Leaders such as Stefan Stambolov were 
imbued with radicalism in their youth and, later in life, became advocates of (relatively) 
democratic government, in opposition to Russian coercion and force.94 Historian Cyril 
Black opines that the paradox of nascent Bulgarian radicals turning towards democratic 
inclinations was not simply a case of political moderation developing with age, but that 
their later political philosophies developed from that early exposure.95 It has also been 
noted that most of the subsequent revolutionaries were trained either in Greek schools, or 
in foreign institutions, rather than at “official” Russian institutions.96 
 
Peasants composed the vast majority of the Bulgarian population and were consistently 
portrayed by later nineteenth-century writers as passive, submissive, and far less excitable 
than most Slavs, living a hard subsistence life, and desiring mostly to be left alone to tend 
their farms.97 To a large extent, peasant passivity was of limited concern to Bulgarian 
leaders. However, when Prince Alexander, with Russian support, attempted to significantly 
reduce Bulgarian representative democracy with a new, less liberal constitution, liberal 
leaders were chagrined to discover that the majority of the population “remained deeply 

 
92 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 163. 
93 Crampton, Bulgaria, 51. 
94 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 17. Stambolov was first radicalized as a 
student at the Russian Orthodox seminary in Odessa, a hotbed of revolutionary ideas. 
95 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 171-172. Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the 
Development of Balkan Nationalism,” 171-172. The paradox of South Slavic writers and politicians being 
exposed and receptive to Western political views of democracy and political freedom simultaneously with 
increasing ties between their countries and Russia, applies equally to Stefan Stambolov, as described, and 
Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić.  
96 Charles and Barbara Jelavich, The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 131. 
97 Black, “Russia and the Modernization of the Balkans,” 408; Dicey, The Peasant State, 15; Durman, Lost 
Illusions, 23; Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 2. The same is true of the Balkan 
peoples in general. Through the 1930s, 70-80 percent of the population of all Balkan countries, except Greece, 
were peasants. Their only involvement in the body politic was through war. 



 

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devoted to the Russians and would not support those with whom the Tsar quarrelled 
[sic].”98  
 
Peasant devotion to the tsar also presented a dilemma for Prince Alexander. He opposed 
Russians sent to aid his government but had to tolerate them because they “served as a 
subtle assurance to the mass of the population that the tsar was still looking out for 
Bulgaria.”99 Contemporary American journalist Frederick Moore wrote in 1906 that 
“Bulgarians of intelligence and education put little faith in the promises of the present 
Russian Government. But Russia holds a fast grip on the masses of the people.”100 With a 
scholarly focus more on diplomacy than “common people,” Barbara Jelavich discounts 
Russia’s efforts by stating, “Neither Orthodoxy nor Slavdom could provide an effective 
alternative to rampant nationalism.”101 This conflict between the feelings of the people 
towards Russia and Orthodoxy and the views of many Bulgarian leaders would play an 
important role in Bulgarian politics through World War II, and perhaps to the present. 
 
Bulgaria was originally populated by conservative peasant farmers with modest 
expectations, and many historians have traditionally “blamed” these peasants for the 
relatively slow emergence of political and revolutionary activity against the Ottomans, after 
the first stirring of Bulgarian national revival vǔzrazhdane in the 1820s.102 However, 
Ottoman Tanzimat reforms in the mid-1820s resulted in increased economic security for 
Bulgarian peasants, allowing for greater acceptance of Western ideals and eventually 
resulting in development of an intelligentsia.103  Bulgarian historian Petǔr Mutafchief 
theorized that Slavs were not “natural state formers,” and others have pointed out that the 
Bulgarians developed many of the usual features of a state, such as forming a navy and 
minting of coins, later than did other groups.104 But Richard Crampton hypothesizes that 
geography was the better explanation for Bulgaria’s relatively late revolutionary activity. 
Bulgaria was located close to Constantinople, and the concentration and wealth of 
Bulgarians who settled in Constantinople meant that the heart of the Bulgarian national 
cause was located “precisely where it would be more difficult to make any realistic claim to 
political devolution.”105 As has already been discussed in regard to efforts for an 
independent Bulgarian Church, émigré organizations in Belgrade, Bucharest, Odessa, 
Constantinople, and elsewhere played a large role in both national and religious 
independence efforts. When it did emerge, Bulgarian nationalism “had an unusually weak 
sense of territorial nationalism,” resulting in its struggles for nationalism being “cultural 

 
98 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 59-60. Emphasis added. Richard Crampton, 
Bulgaria, 1878-1918 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1983), 40 and 57. 
99 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 61. 
100 Frederick Moore, The Balkan Trail (New York: Macmillan, 1906), 55. 
101 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 195. 
102 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 2. 
103 Crampton, Bulgaria, 41-44. 
104 Crampton, Bulgaria, 82. 
105 Crampton, Bulgaria, 82-83. 



 

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rather than political and territorial.”106 There was more a sense of being Bulgarian than 
being from Bulgaria. 
 
Russian Autocracy and Bulgarian Nationalism 
The lives of Bulgaria’s two nineteenth-century monarchs clearly illustrate Russian efforts 
to direct or restrict Bulgarian nationalism. Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who assumed 
the throne as Bulgaria’s first monarch of the modern era, was a German by birth and 
Russian Tsar Alexander II’s godson and nephew who fought as a Russian officer in the 
Russo-Turkish War and was the Tsar’s preferred candidate to lead Bulgaria as prince.107 He 
was “elected” Prince of Bulgaria in April 1879, but very quickly developed serious 
misgivings about both the new Bulgarian constitution (Tǔrnovo Constitution) and Russian 
interference in his government.108 Relations between Battenberg and Russia only 
worsened during his six-year reign, reaching their lowest point following the assassination 
of Tsar Alexander II, the succession of Tsar Alexander III, and the Bulgarian monarch’s 
decision, over the strenuous objections of Alexander III, to accept unification of Berlin-
defined Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia in 1885.109 While both Russian tsars expected 
Bulgaria to be a “Russian satellite, a dutiful and servile ‘outpost’ of the Russian Empire,” the 
autocratic Tsar Alexander III turned on his father’s chosen monarch because Battenberg 
“refused to be a Russian stooge.”110 Prince Alexander abdicated under pressure in 1886.111 
 
In contrast, Prince Alexander’s successor was violently opposed by Alexander III at first but 
finally achieved recognition by Russia in 1896, nine years after he took the oath of office.112 
Prince Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was an officer in the Austrian military with both 
Austrian and French royal lineage and highly intelligent but also with an extravagant 
personality.113 While Ferdinand was generous to his adopted country, his overarching 
concern was his self-interest.114 Surviving several Russian-supported assassination 
attempts, the fervently Catholic Ferdinand finally achieved recognition by Russia (and 
Europe) only after agreeing to his son Boris’s conversion to Orthodoxy.115 Ferdinand was 

 
106 Crampton, Bulgaria, 83. 
107 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 42. 
108 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 42, 39, and 44. Count Egon Corti, The 
Downfall of Three Dynasties, trans. L. Marie Sieveking and Ian D. Morrow (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 
1934), 258. In fact, within three weeks of arriving in Bulgaria, Prince Alexander “had come into conflict with 
all the Russian officials in Bulgaria” and within the first few months had developed “a violent hatred of all that 
was Russian.” 
109 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 185-187. 
110 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 234. 
111 Anderson, The Eastern Question, 231-233. 
112 Crampton, Bulgaria, 132 and 145. 
113 Crampton, Bulgaria, 131-132. 
114 Crampton, Bulgaria, 149. Mateev, Dǔrzhavnikǔt Stefan Stambolov, 214. 
115 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 141 and 179. Crampton, Bulgaria, 134.  
Because Russia was traditionally averse to deposing a monarch, his recognition had great significance—if 
Ferdinand were not a legitimate ruler, any action to overthrow him was not revolutionary and thereby 
acceptable. Tsar Boris III ruled Bulgaria from 1918 to 1943. Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 
167. 



 

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used as a pawn by various powers for their own purposes: early in his reign, even though 
Turkey was happy with Ferdinand, it publicly opposed him to mollify Russia; later, Austria 
assisted Ferdinand in assuming the title of tsar simply because it would displease Russia.116  
Ferdinand was most likely complicit in the assassination of Stambolov in 1896, resulting in 
him becoming more reliant upon Russia for his political survival.117 However, he was a 
poor strategist who relied increasingly on constitutional absolutism and personal rule.118 
He failed to recognize that Bulgaria was a small state, barely beginning to develop a 
modern economy and virtually isolated internationally.119  
 
Conclusion 
This article has focused on repeated attempts by Russia to meddle in the internal affairs of 
Bulgaria in the last four decades of the nineteenth century. Russia took similar actions in 
Serbia as well, resulting in tangled three-way relationships extending into the First World 
War, if not beyond.120  All three countries were naïve about the others’ motives. While the 
Russo-Turkish War was also the result of Russian disillusionment with Serbia and Russia 
weakness from the Crimean War, it was primarily about geography and the Dardanelles 
Straights. Balkan nationalism and Slavism were secondary to the balance of power and 
Russian national interests. 
 
Lacking another foreign patron, Bulgaria had no choice but to attempt to achieve 
independence through Russia.121 This was the logical choice because of the commonalities 
between the peoples and polities. However, Bulgaria failed to realize that it could not pick 
and choose the level and form of Russian involvement in its affairs. Additionally, one could 
argue that Bulgaria also had the misfortune of being “attached” to Russia, which failed to 
develop as quickly as Western Europe, and was relatively weaker at the end of the 
nineteenth century than at the beginning. Whether or not this belief was justified, Bulgaria 
believed that Russia had failed or abandoned it after the San Stefano settlement and the 
Congress of Berlin. Several instances of conflict and working at cross-purposes by Russian 
officials Ignatiev and Gorchakov served to reinforce Bulgarian dissatisfactions. Bulgaria 
further failed to recognize that it was a pawn, not a player, in attempts to solve the “Eastern 

 
116 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 131. Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan 
Entanglements, 221. 
117 Perry, Stefan Stambolov and the Emergence of Modern Bulgaria, 230-234. Ardern George Mulme-Beaman, 
Twenty Years in the Near East (London: Methuen & Co, 1898), 182. 
118 Crampton, Bulgaria, 173. 
119 Crampton, Bulgaria, 153. 
120 Indeed, one of the many tragedies of the Balkan Wars was that Russia failed to promote fairness and 
moderation between Serbia and Bulgaria. As a result, Russia lost any position of influence it had among 
Bulgaria’s leaders, and instead became less advantageously bound to Serbia and inextricably involved in 
Sarajevo in 1914. As has been mentioned, the three-way Slavic relationship first suffered because of the San 
Stefano settlement. But it was irreparably damaged by the fourteen-day Serbo-Bulgarian War of November 
1885, which Serbia foolishly started upon Austro-Hungarian suggestions of support, only to then be saved 
from serious military defeat by Austro-Hungarian intervention. This short war resulted in Bulgarian and East 
Rumelian unification, de facto independence from the Ottoman Empire for Bulgaria, and Serbia being drawn 
closer to Austria-Hungary. Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912-1913: Prelude to the First World War (New 
York: Routledge, 2000), 139. 
121 Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 159. 



 

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Question,” while the Serbian interests became secondary to balance of powers interests of 
Russia vis-à-vis Austria. Likewise, Russia did not recognize that once Western liberalism 
was introduced, Bulgaria would no longer be satisfied with being merely a pawn.  
 
The “eternal friendship” between Bulgaria and Russia was largely outweighed by the pride 
and parochialism of Russia and the Orthodox church. The myth gave way to resentment, 
estrangement, and mutual naiveté. Bulgarian nationalism replaced Orthodoxy and Slavism 
and transcended Russian autocracy. While the causes are varied and complex, the final 
irony of Russian adventures in the Balkans at the end of the nineteenth century is that 
within fifteen years, it was Bulgaria that allied with Austria-Hungary in the First World 
War, while all other South Slavs (and non-Slavs in the peninsula) allied with Russia and 
against Austria.122 
 

 
122 “Thus one of the great Russian illusions of the nineteenth century, that liberated national states would 
provide faithful allies, was effectively shattered.” Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 266. 


