Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 52
The Bulgarians took over the newcomers’ Slavic language. The Turkish conquest of Bulgaria in 1396 hampered the development of the Bulgarian language for several centuries, but after the Bulgarians achieved independence in 1878, a modern literary language based on the vernacular emerged. Modern Bulgarian, which is generally said to date from the sixteenth century, borrowed words from Greek, Turkish, Russian, French, and German. Although it resembles Slavic languages, Bulgarian has a definite article and has almost completely dropped the numerous case forms of the noun. It uses position and prepositions (like English) to indicate grammatical relationships in a sentence instead of using cases (like Russian). Once an independent kingdom, Bulgaria was dominated by the communist Party from 1946 until 1990, when a multiparty system was adopted. During the communist period, when Bulgaria was under the control of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the once dominant agricultural sector was overtaken by manufacturing. After World War II, all industrial enterprises were nationalized and operated under a series of five-year economic plans, modeled after the Soviet system, with financial aid from the USSR. Bulgaria enjoyed one of the most prosperous economies of the Soviet bloc. The transition from the old command economy to a democratic, market-oriented economy, initiated after the collapse of the communist regime, has been slow. Mass privatization of state-owned industry was sluggish, although privatization of small-scale industry, particularly in the retail and service sectors, accelerated. Under communism, Bulgarians became accustomed to free health services, but Bulgaria’s post-communist governments have not had the financial resources to maintain these services. In 2003, 52 percent of the population was employed in services, 36 percent in industry, and 12 percent in agriculture. Most Bulgarians (85%) are Bulgarian Orthodox, while 13 percent are Muslim, 0.8 percent are Jewish, 0.5 percent are Roman Catholic, and 0.2 percent are Uniate Catholic. The remainder, about 0.5 percent, are of Protestant, Gregorian-Armenian, and other faiths. See also: ALTAI; BULGARIA, RELATIONS WITH; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; TATARSTAN AND TATARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bell, John D. (1998). Bulgaria in Transition: Politics, Economics, Society, and Culture after Communism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Bristow, John A. (1996). The Bulgarian Economy in Transition: Studies of Communism in Transition. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar. Crampton, R. J. (1997). A Concise History of Bulgaria. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dimitrov, Georgi, and Banac, Ivo. (2003). The Diary of Georgi Dimitrov, 1933-1949. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
JOHANNA GRANVILLE
BULGARIA, RELATIONS WITH
Relations between Russia and Bulgaria are marked by their closeness in alphabet, language, culture,
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and religion. Between the tenth and eighteen centuries both nations used a literary language that had emerged originally in Bulgaria together with the Cyrillic alphabet. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Bulgarian Orthodox culture served as the foundation of Russia’s nascent culture and polity (reinforced by a second wave of Bulgarian influences in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), whereas the Russian variant of the common cultural tradition played a crucial role in the renaissance of Bulgarian culture and language in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From the beginning of modern Bulgarian education in the 1830s, Russian language and literature have had a solid presence in the Bulgarian school curriculum, and the concomitant impact of Russian culture and ideas has dramatically influenced key developments in Bulgarian history, such as the emergence of nationalism, liberalism, and constitutionalism in the nineteenth century, and of communism, forced collectivization and industrialization, and a glas-nost-inspired pro-democracy movement in the twentieth.
Political relations can be traced back to Bulgaria’s triangular relationship with Kiev and Constantinople in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Bulgaria’s repeated loss of independence and the fragmentation of Rus made contacts episodic until the rise of the Russian Empire and its many wars with Turkey in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the war of 1877 to 1878, Russia liberated Bulgaria from Turkish rule and laid the foundations of its state institutions. Mounting bilateral disagreements led to the severing of diplomatic relations in 1886. Bulgaria’s de facto independence was recognized by Russia in 1896, after the failure of a protracted campaign of military conspiracies and assassinations backed by Alexander III. Until 1912 Bulgaria maneuvered between the Balkan policies of Austria-Hungary and Russia. In 1912 it entered into an alliance with Serbia and Greece under Russian tutelage. This alliance won the First Balkan War against Turkey, but disagreement between the allies led to the Second Balkan War in 1913, which ended in Bulgaria’s defeat and the decline of Russian influence in Sofia. When Bulgaria entered War World I by attacking Serbia in September 1915, Russia declared war on Bulgaria and its fleet bombarded Varna. In 1916 Russian and Romanian troops opened a new front against Bulgaria but were defeated. In March 1918 Russia signed a peace treaty in Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, including Bulgaria. Bulgaria’s defeat by the entente in September 1918 led to radicalization and the rise of Bolshevik influence. The Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) was formed in 1919 as a section of the Comintern. In 1923 the Comintern prompted the unprepared BCP to start an uprising, which ended in defeat, reprisals, and the banning of the party. Bulgaria established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1934; until then relations had been tense because of Moscow’s encouragement of BCP subversion, which culminated in a spectacular explosion in a Sofia cathedral in April 1925, with 123 dead and several hundred wounded. Bilateral relations improved markedly after the conclusion of the Soviet-German nonaggression pact in 1939. In November and December 1940, the USSR attempted to gain German and Bulgarian consent for the inclusion of Bulgaria in the Soviet security sphere, but by that time Bulgaria had effectively joined the German-led coalition. Friction over Bulgaria was one of the reasons behind Hitler’s decision to attack the USSR in 1941. Bulgaria served as a supply base for the German army, but was officially neutral in the Soviet-German war and diplomatic relations were preserved. Between 1941 and 1944, with the help of the BCP and noncommunist Bulgarian Rus-sophiles, the USSR engaged in a relentless espionage, sabotage, and guerrilla campaign against Bulgaria. In September 1944 the USSR declared war shortly after the formation of a pro-Western government in Sofia, and Soviet troops advanced unopposed while a BCP-controlled putsch overthrew the government. The Bulgarian army was mobilized to fight German troops as part of the Soviet war effort, while the BCP killed and imprisoned thousands of its opponents in an attempt to cleanse the country of potential anti-Soviet elements.
When Soviet troops left Bulgaria in 1947 the country had already become a one-party state. Its security services and army, foreign and internal politics, economy, and culture were dominated by Soviet advisers. Every facet of Bulgarian society was forcibly reshaped along Russian-Soviet lines. Destalinization after 1953 led to some relaxation of Soviet controls. While the other satellites all attempted to move away from the Soviet model, Bulgaria came to be perceived as the closest Soviet ally. Under the rule of Todor Zhivkov (1954-1989), the Bulgarian elite enjoyed unique and unparalleled access to Soviet decision-making institutions, Soviet resources, and Soviet society in general. Compared with other European members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), the Bul184
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garian economy had grown most dependent on the Soviet, with the USSR accounting for more than half of overall Bulgarian trade throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Glasnost gave a major boost to the creation of a small but vocal pro-democracy movement in Bulgaria in 1988 and 1989. In November 1989 Zhivkov was removed with Soviet connivance, which ushered in the era of multiparty politics in Bulgaria.
After the collapse of the COMECON, the Warsaw Pact, and the USSR in 1991, bilateral trade was limited largely to Russian oil and gas exports to Bulgaria, and political contac
ts became episodic. Boris Yeltsin visited Bulgaria in August 1992, and Vladimir Putin did so in March 2003. See also: BALKAN WARS; BULGARIANS; COUNCIL FOR MUTUAL ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Crampton, Richard J. (1983). Bulgaria, 1878-1918. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs. Dimitrov, Vesselin. (2001). Bulgaria: The Uneven Transition. London: Routledge. Durman, Karel. (1988). Lost Illusions: Russian Policies towards Bulgaria in 1877-1887. Uppsala: Acta Uni-versitatis Uppsaliensis. Haramiev-Drezov, Kyril. (1993). “Russian-Bulgarian Relations on a New Footing.” RFE/RL Research Report 2(15):33-38. Jelavich, Charles. (1958). Tsarist Russia and Balkan Nationalism. Russian Influence in the Internal Affairs of Bulgaria and Serbia, 1879-1886. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sumner, Benedict H. (1937). Russia and the Balkans, 1870-1880. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
KYRIL DREZOV
BUND, JEWISH
The term Bund is an abbreviation of der algemeyner yidisher arbeter bund in rusland un poyln and refers to the General Jewish Labor Union in Russia and Poland (after 1901 the name added Lithuania to Poland and Russia). Founded in Vilna in 1897 by a group of Jewish Social Democrats, it was one of the forces behind the establishment of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP) in Minsk in 1898. The Bund was an integral part of the RSDWP in the Russian Empire until it split from the party in 1903, rejoining it in 1906. The Bund pioneered Jewish political activism in the Russian Empire, while making important contributions to the development of a modern, secular Jewish culture in eastern Europe.
The movement originated among russified Jewish intellectuals, the Vilna Group, who were well-grounded in the theories of social democracy circulating in the Russian Empire-including Poland-in the 1890s. As convinced and enthusiastic cosmopolitans, they did not seek to create a specifically Jewish movement. Nor were the masses of Jewish artisans seen as a suitable substitute for an industrial proletariat. Nonetheless, on the Russian model, a few activists founded circles that sought to provide a general and political education for artisans, and to transform them into revolutionary activists. In 1894 the publication of two influential pamphlets, Shmuel Gozhansky’s Letter to Agitators and Arkady Kremer’s On Agitation, marked a major change in strategy, a move to mass agitation and the pursuit of specific economic goals. Given that the vernacular language of 97 percent of Jews in the Russian Empire was Yiddish, the move to mass agitation also marked a permanent commitment to the use and development of that language. The movement proved successful at attracting members by engaging in practical work, such as the creation of strike funds and self-help bodies, and publication of a Yiddish-language press and agitational materials. Over time the Bund ideology developed an emphasis on the importance of Yiddish as a central element in Jewish secular culture.
The Bund was formed in 1897 to unite scattered Jewish Social Democratic groups throughout the Pale of Settlement. It combined a central political organization led by professional revolutionaries and a mass movement directed to economic and political change. The organization produced a number of outstanding revolutionary leaders such as John Mill, Vladimir Medem, and Yuli Martov. In 1898 Bund members were major participants in the foundation of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. At this meeting the Bund was granted full autonomy as to the geographical area of its activities, and a free hand to deal with the unique problems of the Jewish working class. This autonomy was ostensibly the cause of the split of the Bund from the RSDWP in 1903; in fact, criticism of the Bund’s position was only a tactical maneuver on the part of Vladimir Ilich Lenin, in his effort to impose his ideological
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agenda upon the RSDWP. There was thus no serious obstacle to the readmission of the Bund to the party in 1906.
One of the most successful elements of the Social Democratic movement in the Russian Empire (in terms of numbers and organizational abilities), the Bund was active in the creation of self-defense groups to resist pogroms. Its commitment to Yiddish did much to foster the development of Yiddish language, literature, and culture. The Bund developed a program that called for Jewish cultural autonomy in a democratic Russian Empire. After 1905 the Bund had to compete with a broad variety of Jewish political activities, including various forms of Zionism, which it sharply opposed. In October 1917 the Bund joined other moderate socialists to oppose the Bolshevik seizure of power, but the outbreak of pogroms in 1918 led many Bundists to welcome the protective role of the Red Army in the Pale. Bundists were a principle source of personnel recruited to the task of bringing the revolution to the Jewish street, through work in the Jewish Sections of the party and the state. The Bund was formally merged with the Russian Communist Party in 1921, while remaining a significant political force outside the Soviet Union, particularly in interwar Poland and the United States. See also: JEWS; SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WORKERS PARTY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frankel, Jonathan. (1981). Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jacobs, Jack, ed. (2001). Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100. New York: New York University Press. Mendelsohn, Ezra. (1970). Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers’ Movement in Tsarist Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Tobias, Henry J. (1972). The Jewish Bund in Russia: From Its Origins to 1905. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ivan Alexeyevich Bunin was the scion of an ancient aristocratic family from the heartland of Old Russia, the fertile countryside south of Moscow that produced so many writers from the gentry, among them Turgenev and Tolstoy. Much of his early fiction depicts the decline of the class he was born into. The celebratory tone of “Antonov’s Apples” (1900) makes it exceptional. However, it is purely commemorative, a song of praise for a way of life that has passed away. A lyric apprehension of nature is a central feature of Bunin’s art. Without religious faith or political commitment, he finds sustenance in a pantheistic attitude or in aristocratic stoicism. The Village (1909-1910), a naturalistic portrait, is more typically grim. Its subject is the barbarity and backwardness of Russian provincial life. “Dry Valley” (1911) is one of the supreme masterpieces of modern fiction. In this haunting novella Bunin’s lyrical reverie attains mythic and tragic resonance. Experience is filtered through layers of memory to evoke an image of the patriarchal estate of Old Russia as a landscape of violence and ruin.
Bunin fled Russia after the Revolution. He settled in Paris but traveled much. Separated from the Russian countryside he knows so intimately, he tends to become abstract-as in his exotic Eastern tales and much of his work in emigration. “Gentleman from San Francisco” is a masterpiece of his international style. A work of cold, jewel-like beauty, it may be read as a satire of bourgeois civilization or an allegory of the vanity of human ambition in the face of death-a favorite theme of Bunin’s, especially in his later years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Poggioli, Renato. (1957). “The Art of Ivan Bunin.” In The Phoenix and the Spider. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Woodward, James B. (1980). Ivan Bunin: A Study of His Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
MILTON EHRE
JOHN D. KLIER
BUNIN, IVAN ALEXEYEVICH
(1870-1953), poet and a master of prose fiction; the first Russian to win the Nobel prize for literature (1933).
BUREAUCRACY, ECONOMIC
Each of the fifteen union republics had its own state apparatus, which paralleled that of the USSR as a whole. Although there was an elected government (the Supreme Soviet), the USSR Council of Ministers (Sovet Ministrov SSSR) conducted the business of gov186
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ernment and constituted the highest oversight and executive body of the Soviet economic bureaucracy. It was composed of industrial ministers, chairmen of various state committees, and chairmen of agencies with ministerial status. The chairman of the Council occupied the most powerful position in the state appara
tus, in effect the position of prime minister. At various stages of Soviet history, the head of the Communist Party of the USSR and the head of the state were the same person, but this was not always the case. The Council of Ministers was responsible for the enactment of the economic policies of the Communist Party by the state bureaucracy. The Council of Ministers was the main source of economic legislation; it coordinated and directed the activities of the state committees and the ministries, and supervised national economic planning, state budget, and credit and currency systems. It was authorized to reverse the decisions of ministries and make and execute the key resource-allocation decisions of the Soviet economy.
State economic committees were subordinated to the Council of Ministries of the USSR in the vast Soviet economic bureaucracy. Gosplan SSSR (the state planning committee) was the most important such agency, followed by more than forty state committees and agencies with ministerial status involved in economic affairs. Gosplan was subdivided into industrial departments, such as coal, ferrous metals, and machinery, and also had summary departments, such as finance, dealing with functions that crossed functional bodies. Gosplan was primarily responsible for executing the directives of the Council of Ministries and preparing annual operational plans for the industrial ministries with the participation of the latter. In addition, Gosplan was charged with the preparation of long-term (five-year) plans and longer-term perspective plans, which had more operational significance for investment planning. Gosplan had considerable responsibilities concerning supply planning and distribution of production (supplies) among ministries; it also arbitrated disputes among ministries or state committees and dealt with the problem of regional coordination.
Other state economic committees can be divided into three groups: Gossnab SSSR (the State Committee for Material Technical Supply), the financial state committees, and other functional state committees. Gossnab SSSR assisted Gosplan with the allocation of key material inputs (funded goods) to the ministries. The reforms of Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin of 1965 assumed, among other things, the assignment to Gossnab of the responsibility for the allocation of producer goods. The ministerial supply organizations that had dominated the rationing of funded goods largely disappeared. The tasks of Gossnab included honing the operational details for detailed assortments of funded goods according to the general allocations outlined by Gosplan. Gossnab acted as an executive arm of Gosplan in matters of supply planning by maintaining actual warehouses and distribution points from which ministries drew materials. Gossnab applied itself to the creation of a wholesale trade system based on direct contracts between suppliers and users. By the late 1970s Gossnab handled only one-half of the value of rationed goods. Despite reform efforts, markets for producer goods failed to emerge, and the traditional system of material supplies and balances continued to function.