Academic literature on the topic 'Bulgaria – Economic conditions – 1918-1944'

The article deals with the diplomatic activities of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB) in the Soviet Ukraine on the basis of materials from the Central State Archive of Public Organizations of Ukraine (TsDAGO). These are documents of the secret part of the general department of the foundation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. The chronological scope of the study was from 1944 to 1989, from the establishment of diplomatic relations between the USSR and Bulgaria after the 1944 Bulgarian coup d’etat until the democratization of the Bulgarian state and society began. The development of Bulgarian-Soviet diplomatic relations, their activity and peculiarities were condi tioned by the subordinate status of Bulgaria, the formation of Moscow’s directive diplomacy, and the high intensity of economic and other ties. Particular attention in them belonged to Ukraine, which became the field of activity of Bulgarian diplomats. Before the opening of the consulates, the coordination of diplomatic activities in Ukraine was conducted from the embassy in Moscow. In 1965, the first Consulate General of Bulgaria was opened in Odessa; in 1971 – in Kiev, which had features – the Consulate General in Odessa was focused on economic issues, the Consulate General in Kiev – the problems of political and international importance. The author shows that the documents of the archive reveal the functional aspects of consulates, as well as their composition, characteristics of Bulgarian diplomats, everyday life, problems of stay and work. The documents include the personalities of some of the general consuls like S. Ralev, N. Minkov, K. Evtimov, I. Radonov. An important feature of the diplomatic activity of the Bulgarian diplomatic missions was their complete control of the Party centers of the USSR and the People’s Republic of Bulgaria. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in these conditions was the executor of the tasks of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Central Committee of the CPSU, the translator of their position, the informer, while performing traditional functions within the framework of international diplomatic law. The most meaningful for the characteristics of the Soviet/Ukrainian-Bulgarian relations are the conversations with the consuls of Bulgaria, which testify to the dependent position of the country. At the same time, the Bulgarian diplomats were trustees who reported on relations in the consular corps of Kiev, the political views of diplomats, especially criticism of the USSR. The author comes to the conclusion that the diplomatic missions of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria in Ukraine were part of a fairly well-established system of Soviet-Bulgarian relations in general, the study of which continues.

The year 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Ukrainian-Bulgarian diplomatic relations’ establishment. The independent shape of bilateral relations between the two countries founded back in 1918 and fruitfully developed both under the rule of the People’s Republic of Ukraine and Pavlo Skoropadskiy’s Ukrainian State has been dramatically interrupted by the Russian Soviet takeover of Ukraine. The present article touches upon the various aspects of contemporary Ukrainian-Bulgarian relations in the following spheres: that of politics and international relations, that of economic cooperation and that of social and cultural coexistence. The article as well outlines the following newly emerged elements of cooperation between Bulgaria and Ukraine under conditions of the Russian aggression against the latter: humanitarian collaboration, social reintegration and rehabilitation of the Ukrainian military and those living in the temporarily occupied territories. The article also accentuates of the external menace to the Ukrainian-Bulgarian relations, i.e. the national minorities’ harassment and the attempts at the quote unquote “People’s Republics” formation. It is concluded that the most fruitful and comprehensive sphere of collaboration between Ukraine and Bulgaria in 1991 – 2018 has been concentrated in the domains of economy (investments, trading goods and services) and of the social and cultural life. On the other hand, it is the national and cultural identity issues of Bulgarians in Ukraine that might bring about the internal unrest in Ukraine should the Russian Federation decide to “rock the boat” and make a point of the “self-determination of Bessarabia”.

Socio-economic conditions of refugees’ settlement in Bulgaria in the 1920s.The influx of immigrants into Bulgaria during the first two decades of 20th century was aresult of the two lost armed conflicts and border shifts between 1913 and 1918. These changesin turn resulted in disruption of the socio-political and economic situation within the country.The government was unable to efficiently overcome the consequences of high immigration,which aggravated the already present social and economic difficulties and threatened the internal stability of the state. On the other hand, in spite of the grave political and economiccrisis, certain measures were undertaken to counter the negative tendencies, with state supportfor the agricultural settlement. The partial success of the above was possible due to theagriculture reform introduced in 1924 and financial credits from abroad (1926, 1928). Theoutcome was sufficient for the Bulgarian government to deem the settlement action a success, an enhancement of the country's internal stability and appeasement of the general public. Nevertheless, a number of pressing issues remained, resulting mostly from a lack of systemic support to the immigrants and their families. The refugee integration process was hindered bythe lack of a secure economic foundation and the differences among the particular socialgroups.

On the basis of archival sources and studies of Bulgarian historians, the peculiarities of changes in production relations and productivity of the agrarian sector of the Bulgarian economy in the context of European integration are revealed. It is analyzed which sectors of agriculture developed, and which, on the contrary, were in a state of stagnation. In the process of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union, the agrarian sector of the economy needed modernization of the management system and the reform of production relations.In the Bulgarian countryside, during the period of 1990-2007, a process of reforming agricultural production relations was taking place, accompanied by the conditions of European integration, which, in turn, led to the need for transformation of all spheres of agriculture in the country. One of the most important was the agrarian sphere. During the period of 1944 – 1989, the transformation in the agrarian sector of agricultural commodity production was rather controversial: the imperfection of land reform, namely land privatization, intensive process of agricultural co-operation, led to the creation of gaps in the development of all spheres of the agrarian sector. With the integration of Bulgaria into the European Union, the issue of harmonization of the agricultural production sector with the requirements of the European Union in the field of intensification of agricultural development and promotion of trade with the European Union with agrarian products became important. Given the current state of European integration processes in Ukraine, a comprehensive study of the historical conditions of the agricultural reforms in agriculture, which will allow us to analyze the problems and determine the prospects for its development on the path of integration into the European economic space, is relevant.

The article analyzes the main international acts, treaties, conventions governing commercial shipping in the Lower Danube in the XIX – early XX centuries. Considerable attention is paid to the periodization and peculiarities of international diplomacy regarding commercial shipping on the Danube. The measures of European states for the introduction of a single legal regime and guarantees of safety of navigation on the Danube are considered. The attempts of the Russian Empire to establish political, economic and legal hegemony in the European international shipping trade are analyzed. The process of creation of the European Danube Commission (hereinafter – EDC) and its place in the deployment of international shipping in the region is studied. By the middle of the XIX century most often used bilateral diplomacy aimed at strengthening the presence of European countries on the Danube. Britain, Austria, and Russia actually imposed their conditions on the Ottoman Empire regarding shipping and trade relations. The Russian Empire almost monopolized its presence on the Lower Danube with the Peace of Bucharest (1812), the Peace of Andrianople (1829), and the Ackermann Convention of 1826, much to the displeasure of leading European countries. Therefore, from the middle of the XIX century efforts of European countries (including Britain, France, Austria) were aimed at ousting Russia not only from the Danube, but from the Budzhak region and the creation of an international commission (EDC), which would regulate commercial shipping. Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-1856 and the loss of the Danube part of Budzhak temporarily drove it out of the Danube region. The legal alternative was the activity of the EDC, which was clearly regulated by international treaties and conventions. In addition to regulating the shipping regime, the EDC dealt with the issue of quarantine, arrangement of shipping channels, legal regime in the area of responsibility. Even the victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 failed to restore Russia’s full presence. The agreements of 1878–1883, according to which Russia regained the Danube part of Budzhak and the Kiliia estuary, became a certain compromise, and the powers of the EDC extended to the entire Lower Danube. Until 1918, control over waterways continued to be exercised by the European Danube Commission, which in turn also did not take into account the interests of the newly formed Danube states (Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria).

An article is dedicated by 100-year anniversary of establishment of the Republican commercial and industrial unitary company “BELPHARMATSIYA”. The article presents brief historical information about administrative-territorial structure of Belarus, socialist transformation in pharmacy in difficult military, political and economic conditions: formation of pharmacy management bodies, nationalization of pharmacies in Minsk, formation of self-accounting pharmacy administration in 1922 and its reorganization in subsequent years. Specify difficulties in work of pharmacy administration due to lack of medicines, pharmaceutical personal and overcoming them. Reflected clandestine activities of pharmacists in the years of Great Patriotic War.

The author analyzes in his paper the economic and trade relations between Germany and the Soviet Union in the period of 1918–1944. During this period trade relations with Germany constituted a continuation of relations between Tsarist Russia and Germany before World War I. The German-Soviet Economic Agreement of October 12, 1925, formed special conditions for the mutual trade relations between the two countries. In addition to the normal exchange of goods, German exports to the Soviet Union were based, from the very beginning, on a system negotiated by the Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin under which the Soviet Union was granted loans for financing additional orders from Germany. Trade with the Soviet Union, promoted by the first credit-based operations, led to a dynamic exchange of goods, which reached its highest point in 1931. In the early 1930s, however, Soviet imports decreased as the regime asserted power and its weakened adherence to the disarmament requirements of the Treaty of Versailles decreased Germany’s reliance on Soviet imports. In addition, the Nazi Party’s rise to power increased tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union. In the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union made repeated efforts at reestablishing closer contacts with Germany. The Soviets chiefly sought to repay, with raw materials the debts which arose from earlier trade exchange, while Germany sought to rearm, therefore both countries signed a credit agreement in 1935. That agreement placed at the disposal of the Soviet Union until June 30, 1937 the loans amounting to 200 million Reichsmarks which were to be repaid in the period 1940–1943. The Soviet Union used 183 million Reichsmarks from this credit. The preceding credit operations were, in principle, liquidated. Economic reconciliation was hampered by political tensions after the Anschluss in the mid-1938 and Hitler’s increasing hesitance to deal with the Soviet Union. However, a new period in the development of Soviet-German economic relations began after the Ribbetrop–Molotov Agreement, which was concluded in August of 1939.

Abstract: On the study of the period of the Republic of Estonia at the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences Institute of History in 1946–1950 A decision adopted on 30 October 1944 in Moscow by the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the Communist (Bolshevist) Party of the Soviet Union (hereinafter C(B)PSU CC) launched an extensive process of sovietisation in the Estonian SSR. The ‘great struggle’ against so-called bourgeois nationalism began, and one of its thrusts was aimed at vilifying the pre-war Republic of Estonia and rooting it out of society’s consciousness. History started playing an important role in this ‘struggle’. This was already stressed at the Estonian Communist (Bolshevist) Party (hereinafter EC(B)P) CC plenary meeting held in early December of 1944, where Moscow’s decision was discussed along with the first measures for launching the sovietisation of society. At the meeting, a programmatic speech was given by Hans Kruus, the founder of historical science focusing on the Estonian nation, who began to serve the Soviet regime in the ‘June coup’ of 1940. In 1944, Kruus was a close associate of Nikolai Karotamm, the leader of the Estonian SSR at that time, and he led the sovietisation of historical science, and more broadly of the whole system of scientific and academic research in Estonia. Hans Kruus formulated the aims and tasks of historical science in Soviet society and also considered it necessary to study the period of independent statehood. He understood perfectly that the assessment from Marxist positions of the legacy of the era of independence was essential for educating the ‘new Soviet man’, but also for making the Soviet regime as palatable as possible for society. For this reason, Karotamm and his ‘team’ paid a great deal of attention to involving writers, scientists and other people known in society to a greater or lesser extent in carrying out the sovietisation process. Kruus stressed the need to eliminate the ‘remnants of misconceptions’ left by the ‘era of bourgeois Estonia’, but this did not mean casting the era of independent statehood into the trash bin of history. The task of historical science was to give the ‘bourgeois Estonian state’ Soviet content. One of the first practical tasks in sovietising historical science was to work out a Marxist periodisation for Estonian history, which was supposed to be founded on the theory of social-economic formations. Artur Vassar was the historian who dealt the most with questions of periodisation, completing his system by 1947. Additionally, Abe Liebman, the head of the Chair of History at the Estonian republic’s EC(B)P CC Communist Party School, and Gustav Naan, who at that time was studying at the C(B)PSU CC Higher Communist Party School in Moscow, worked out their own periodisation system. These two competing systems were combined into a single unified system through the mediation of Ivan Käbin, the EC(B)P CC Propaganda and Agitation Secretary, and it was published in the magazine Eesti Bolševik[Estonian Bolshevik] in September of 1948. The publication of the Soviet periodisation system in 1948 was an important landmark in the sovietisation of historical science, since the main periods of Estonian history based on social-economic formations were introduced to the public for the first time. Although this periodisation system was later refined and expanded, it remained the basis for future historical works and provided the framework for the study of history in the Estonian SSR for many years to come. Naturally, the aim of the regime was also to sovietise the organisation of science. The central undertaking in this process was the founding of the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences in 1946. Here as well, the key figure was Hans Kruus, who became the Academy’s first president and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. Various academic institutes began operating as sub-institutions of the Academy of Sciences. These institutes had the leading role in academic research, unlike institutions of higher education, which were expected to prepare students for research and academic degrees and not to contribute to research as their primary task. The Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences Institute of History (directed by Richard Kleis) became the central research institution for historical science (together with archaeology and art history). The compilation of Marxist survey works on Estonian history, which were also supposed to provide a complete overview of the period of the independent Republic of Estonia, became the primary task of the Institute of History. Its primary aim at that time was to write an Estonian history textbook, but the undertaking failed. Thereafter plans were made to produce a two-volume Lühike Eesti ajalugu [Brief History of Estonia]. The manuscript for the first volume was ready to be printed by the end of 1949. The institute also started compiling a new three-volume Soviet-style general treatment of Estonian history. The manuscript for the first volume was supposed to be completed in 1948, the second volume in 1950 and the third volume in 1951. Hans Kruus was the executive editor of both publications. In studying the period of the independent Republic of Estonia, chief attention had to be paid to the labour movement, though initially there were also more substantial studies of the period of independent statehood planned in the Institute of History. Namely, Hans Kruus planned to write the book Eesti kodanlik riik 1918–1920 [The Estonian Bourgeois State 1918–1920], which was supposed to provide a ‘general popular-style overview of the class nature of the bourgeois Estonian state, its economic foundations, the struggles between cliques that developed in it, and foreign policy’. After a few years, Kruus abandoned this theme and set a new objective for himself to write the book Kodanliku Eesti välispoliitika 1918–1940 [The Foreign Policy of Bourgeois Estonia 1918–1940]. Yet even this undertaking did not come to fruition since the political conditions had already been significantly altered by the end of the 1940s. The campaign against so-called bourgeois nationalism was picking up steam and it did not leave those who went along with the Soviet regime in 1940 untouched. From late 1949, Hans Kruus became the primary target of this campaign, which led to his expulsion from the Communist Party, the dismissal from the posts of Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the Academy of Sciences, and eventually to his arrest in October of 1950. The organisation of historical research disintegrated with the fall of Kruus, and most of the projects connected to his name were cancelled. His stigmatisation as a ‘bourgeois nationalist’ led to the more substantial themes concerning the period of the independent Republic of Estonia being squeezed out of the work plans for the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences institutes by 1950. One of the main points in the accusations levelled against Kruus became the reprimand that ‘having taken it upon himself to study the bourgeois dictatorship’, he actually did not do anything to launch this research, but rather organised ‘the work in the Estonian SSR Academy of Sciences Institute of History in such a way as to prevent the study of this period in the future as well’. The entire era of independent statehood was turned into a marginal period of research. A few narrow themes were permitted in its research, such as the labour movement, the activities of the Communists, agrarian conditions, and opposition to the Soviet Union in foreign policy. The negative attitude towards the independent Republic of Estonia achieved its apogee in the first Soviet, more precisely Stalinist, a general survey of Estonian history published in 1952.

'The Industrial Revolution' is simultaneously one of the most under-examined and overly-simplified concepts in all of social science. One of the ways it is highly under-examined is in the arena of the ecological, particularly through the lens of critical world-history. This paper attempts to analyze the phenomenon through the lens of the world-ecology synthesis, in three distinct phases: First, the history of the conceptualization of the Industrial Revolution is examined at length, paying special attention to the knowledge foundations that determine these conceptualizations. Secondly, I sift out what I believe is the dominant model throughout most of modern and now postmodern history, which I identify as the techno-economic narrative. I then present the main critical world-historical challenge to that argument (that the Industrial Revolution was a unified, linear, two-century phenomenon) by outlining the critical interpretations of Fernand Braudel, Immanuel Wallerstein, Giovanni Arrighi, among others, leading a view of industrialization that is over the very long term, or what Braudel referred to as the longue durée. This long-view form of critical historical analysis is unabashedly Marxist, so there is some foray into various pieces of the Marxian canon, pieces that are often left untouched or at the least under-utilized in many politico-economic analyses of environmental history and politico-ecological narratives as well. Thirdly, I attempt to bring this new long-form view of industrialization more firmly into the ecological, but filtering the basic presuppositions of the 'techno-economic' narratives and the Marxist 'critical world-historical' narratives through the presuppositions of Jason W. Moore's world-ecology synthesis. What we arrive at through this filtering process is a very different view of the Industrial Revolution than we are used to hearing about. This is Part I of a much larger research process, one that I intend to bring into the present and future by looking at the development process of the BRICS as the next extension of the Industrial Revolution. What this paper is most concerned with is re-igniting what I think is a valuable debate among theorists, economic historians, and Marxist ecological thinkers, the debate about what exactly this phenomenon was, is, and will be. My small contribution is to re-define it in relationship to its really-existing history, including its antecedents and possible future expansions.

Defence date: 29 April 2005
Examining Board: Prof. Dr. Peter Bartl, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München ; Prof. Dr. Peter Becker, European University Institute ; Prof. Dr. Georgi Markov, Bălgarska Akademia na Naukite, Sofia ; Prof. Alan S. Milward, Cabinet Office London (Supervisor)
First made available online 7 December 2016

This chapter focuses on the circumstances of displacement, the reception and settlement of refugees, and the state’s attempts to address the political, economic and social shock of accepting thousands of refugees from the lost territories. It outlines the centrality of the refugee issue to the development of the modern Bulgarian state particularly after the Balkan wars. The chapter focuses on three main episodes: before 1912, when a quarter of a million refugees already fled to Bulgaria whose population was around 4.5 million in 1912; between 1913 and 1918, when 120,000 refugees settled in the country; and in the years 1919-25 during which time Bulgaria witnessed the influx of an additional 180,000 refugees. Some consideration is given to prevailing social and economic conditions, such as the impact of refugees on urban and rural life in Bulgaria, and to the role of refugee relief organisations. Attention is also devoted to the international repercussions of the refugee crisis.