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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Crowday (talk | contribs) at 13:13, 27 July 2007 (→In the interests of balance: Bulgaria's role in sending Macedonian Jews to Treblinka). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Lead section

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See also: WP:Lead section
For lead length see, #Size
Opening paragraphs
Further information: MOS:INTRO

The article should start with a good simple introduction, giving name of the country, general location in the world, bordering countries, seas and the like. Also give other names by which the country may still be known (for example Holland, Persia). Also, add a few facts about the country, the things that it is known for (for example the mentioning of windmills in the Netherlands article). The primary purpose of a Wikipedia lead is not to summarize the topic, but to summarize the content of the article.

First sentence
Further information: MOS:FIRST

The first sentence should introduce the topic, and tell the nonspecialist reader what the subject is, and where. It should be in plain English.

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checkY Sweden,[a] formally the Kingdom of Sweden,[b] is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.
☒N Sweden,(Swedish: Sverige [ˈsvæ̌rjɛ] ⓘ) formally the Kingdom of Sweden,(Swedish: Konungariket Sverige [ˈkôːnɵŋaˌriːkɛt ˈsvæ̌rjɛ] ⓘ) is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe.

Detail, duplication and tangible information
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Further information: Wikipedia:How to create and manage a good lead section

Overly detailed information or infobox data duplication such as listing random examples, excessive numbered statistics or naming individuals should be reserved for the infobox or body of the article. The lead prose should provide clear, relevant information through links to relevant sub-articles about the country an relevant terms, rather than listing random stats and articles with minimal information about the country.

Example:

checkY A developed country, Canada has a high nominal per capita income globally and its advanced economy ranks among the largest in the world, relying chiefly upon its abundant natural resources and well-developed international trade networks. Recognized as a middle power, Canada's strong support for multilateralism and internationalism has been closely related to its foreign relations policies of peacekeeping and aid for developing countries. Canada is part of multiple international organizations and forums.
☒N A highly developed country, Canada has the seventeenth-highest nominal per-capita income globally and the sixteenth-highest ranking in the Human Development Index. Its advanced economy is the tenth-largest in the world and the 14th for military expenditure by country, Canada is part of several major international institutions including the United Nations, NATO, the G7, the Group of Ten, the G20, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and the Organization of American States.

Infobox

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Although the table can be moved out to the template namespace (to e.g. [[Template:CountryName Infobox]]) and thus easen the look of the edit page, most Wikipedians still disapprove as of now, see the talk page.

The contents are as follows:

  • The official long-form name of the country in the local language is to go on top as the caption. If there are several official names (languages), list all (if reasonably feasible). The conventional long-form name (in English), if it differs from the local long-form name, should follow the local name(s). This is not a parameter to list every recognized language of a country, but rather for listing officially recognize national languages.
  • The conventional short-form name of the country, recognised by the majority of the English-speaking world; ideally, this should also be used for the name of the article.
  • A picture of the national flag. You can find flags at the List of flags. A smaller version should be included in the table itself, a larger-sized version in a page titled Flag of <country>, linked to via the "In Detail" cell. Instead of two different images, use the autothumbnail function that wiki offers.
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  • Below the flag and coat of arms is room for the national motto, often displayed on the coat of arms (with translation, if necessary).
  • The official language(s) of the country. (rot the place to list every recognized or used language)
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  • If the data on the population is recent and reliable, add the largest city of the country.
  • Land area: The area of the country in square kilometres (km²) and square miles (sq mi) with the world-ranking of this country. Also add the % of water, which can be calculated from the data in the Geography article (make it negligible if ~0%).
  • Population: The number of inhabitants and the world-ranking; also include a year for this estimate (should be 2000 for now, as that is the date of the ranking). For the population density you can use the numbers now available.
  • GDP: The amount of the gross domestic product on ppp base and the world ranking. also include the amount total and per head.
  • HDI: Information pertaining to the UN Human Development Index – the value, year (of value), rank (with ordinal), and category (colourised as per the HDI country list).
  • Currency; the name of the local currency. Use the pipe if the currency name is also used in other countries: [[Australian dollar|dollar]].
  • Time zone(s); the time zone or zones in which the country is relative to UTC
  • National anthem; the name of the National anthem and a link to the article about it.
  • Internet TLD; the top-level domain code for this country.
  • Calling Code; the international Calling Code used for dialing this country.
Lead map

There is a long-standing practice that areas out of a state's control should be depicted differently on introductory maps, to not give the impression the powers of a state extend somewhere they do not. This is for various types of a lack of control, be it another state (eg. Crimea, bits of Kashmir) or a separatist body (eg. DPR, TRNC).

Sections

Further information: Wikipedia:Summary style and Wikipedia:Too much detail
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A section should be written in summary style, containing just the important facts. Undue weight can be given in several ways, including but not limited to the depth of detail, the quantity of text, prominence of placement, the juxtaposition of statements, and the use of imagery. Main article fixation is an observed effect that editors are likely to encounter in county articles. If a section it is too large, information should be transferred to the sub-article. Avoid sections focusing on criticisms or controversies. Try to achieve a more neutral text by folding debates into the narrative, rather than isolating them into sections.

Articles may consist of the following sections:

  • Etymology sections are often placed first (sometimes called name depending on the information in the article). Include only if due information is available.
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  • Geography – Details of the country's main geographic features and climate. Historical weather boxes should be reserved for sub articles. Sub-article: "Geography of X"
  • Economy – Details on the country's economy, major industries, bit of economic history, major trade partners, a tad comparison etc. Sub-article: "Economy of X"
  • Demographics – Mention the languages spoken, the major religions, some well known properties of the people of X, by which they are known. Uncontextualized data and charts should be avoided. (See WP:NOTSTATS and WP:PROSE) Sub-article: "Demographics of X".
  • Culture – Summary of the country's specific forms of art (anything from painting to film) and its best known cultural contributions. Caution should be taken to ensure that the sections are not simply a listing of names or mini biographies of individuals accomplishments. Good example Canada#Sports. Sub-article: "Culture of X".
  • See also – 'See also" sections of country articles normally only contain links to "Index of country" and "Outline of country" articles, alongside the main portal(s).
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  • External links – Links to official websites about the country. See WP:External links
Size
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Main pages: Wikipedia:Article size and Wikipedia:Summary style § Article size
Articles that have gone through FA and GA reviews generally consists of approximately 8,000 to 10,000 words as per WP:SIZERULE, with a lead usually four paragraphs as per MOS:LEADLENGTH.
  • Australia = Prose size (text only): 60 kB (9,304 words) "readable prose size"
  • Bulgaria = Prose size (text only): 56 kB (8,847 words) "readable prose size"
  • Canada = Prose size (text only): 67 kB (9,834 words) "readable prose size"
  • Germany = Prose size (text only): 54 kB (8,456 words) "readable prose size"
  • Japan = Prose size (text only): 51 kB (8,104 words) "readable prose size"
  • East Timor = Prose size (text only): 53 kB (8,152 words) "readable prose size"
  • Malaysia = Prose size (text only): 57 kB (9,092 words) "readable prose size"
  • New Zealand = Prose size (text only): 62 kB (9,761 words) "readable prose size"
  • Philippines = Prose size (text only): 62 kB (9,178 words) "readable prose size"
Hatnote

The link should be shown as below: Avoid link clutter of multiple child articles in a hierarchical setup as hatnotes. Important links/articles shoukd be incorporated into the prose of the section. For example, Canada#Economy is a summary section with a hatnote to Economy of Canada that summarizes the history with a hatnote to Economic history of Canada. See WP:SUMMARYHATNOTE for more recommended hatnote usages.

checkY== Economy ==

Main article: Economy of Canada

☒N== Economy ==

Main article: Economy of Canada

See also: Petroleum industry in Canada and Agriculture in Canada

Further information: Economic history of Canada and Early Canadian banking system

Charts

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As prose text is preferred, overly detailed statistical charts and diagrams that lack any context or explanation such as; economic trends, weather boxes, historical population charts, and past elections results, etc, should be reserved for main sub articles on the topic as per WP:DETAIL as outlined at WP:NOTSTATS.

Galleries

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Galleries or clusters of images are generally discouraged as they may cause undue weight to one particular section of a summary article and may cause accessibility problems, such as sand­wich­ing of text, images that are too small or fragmented image display for some readers as outlined at WP:GALLERY. Articles that have gone through modern FA and GA reviews generally consists of one image for every three or four paragraph summary section, see MOS:ACCESS#FLOAT and MOS:SECTIONLOC for more information.

Footers

As noted at Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes the number of templates at the bottom of any article should be kept to a minimum. Country pages generally have footers that link to pages for countries in their geographic region. Footers for international organizations are not added to country pages, but they rather can go on subpages such as "Economy of..." and "Foreign relations of..." Categories for some of these organizations are also sometimes added. Templates for supranational organizations like the European Union and CARICOM are permitted. A list of the footers that have been created can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries/Templates/Navboxes, however note that many of these are not currently in use.

Transclusions

Transclusions are generally discouraged in country articles for reasons outlined below.

This section is transcluded from Help:Transclusion. (edit | history)
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Further information: Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits

Like many software technologies, transclusion comes with a number of drawbacks. The most obvious one being the cost in terms of increased machine resources needed; to mitigate this to some extent, template limits are imposed by the software to reduce the complexity of pages. Some further drawbacks are listed below.

Lists of countries

To determine which entities should be considered separate "countries" or included on lists, use the entries in ISO 3166-1 plus the list of states with limited recognition, except:

  • Lists based on only a single source should follow that source.
  • Specific lists might need more logical criteria. For example, list of sovereign states omits non-sovereign entities listed by ISO-3166-1. Lists of sports teams list whichever entities that have teams, regardless of sovereignty. Lists of laws might follow jurisdiction boundaries (for example, England and Wales is a single jurisdiction).

For consistency with other Wikipedia articles, the names of entities do not need to follow sources or ISO-3166-1. The names used as the titles of English Wikipedia articles are a safe choice for those that are disputed.

Resources

Notes

  1. ^ Swedish: Sverige [ˈsvæ̌rjɛ] ⓘ; Finnish: Ruotsi; Meänkieli: Ruotti; Northern Sami: Ruoŧŧa; Lule Sami: Svierik; Pite Sami: Sverji; Ume Sami: Sverje; Southern Sami: Sveerje or Svöörje; Yiddish: שוועדן, romanized: Shvedn; Scandoromani: Svedikko; Kalo Finnish Romani: Sveittiko.
  2. ^ Swedish: Konungariket Sverige [ˈkôːnɵŋaˌriːkɛt ˈsvæ̌rjɛ] ⓘ

Featured on Template:March 3 selected anniversaries (may be in HTML comment)

The second Bulgarian empire was in fact an romanian-bulgarian empire.(Who made this ridiculous statement? Where are the facts? --Lantonov 10:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Macedonia and Bulgaria

I do not understand why Macedonians hate Bulgarians so much. I have to say, as a representative of the general Bulgarian public, that we Bulgarians do not have anything against Macedonians. The general opinion in Bulgaria is that Macedonians are in fact Bulgarians, given that they fought for their unification with Bulgaria only 100 years ago in the dumb ass Balkan War and then in the stupid World War 1. It appears that this statement is extraordinary ofensive to the people of FYROM and my question to any person from this country who reads that (beacause it appears that quite a lot are reading it) is: Why are you so offended? Why are you not flattered by the fact that another nation wants to find historical roots with you and embrace you? Isn't it flattering rather than offensive that Bulgarians want to be recognized as one with the great Macedonian nation!? Your hatered seems very revealing to me. It is as if Macedonians are running from some ugly truth, which is none of my concern or, in fact, none of the concern of most peacefully living Bulgarians. We are not worried about history and we really do not care about the big controvrsy about it. What I am concerned about is all this hatered. I will take the liberty to represent the Bulgarian opinion on this matter: Macedonians, We do not hate you! We have nothing against you. But I have to say it gets tiring to listen about historical problems delivered to us with this extreme hatred. To those of you who are sensible: just forget about it and live in the present! We do not care, why should you? And maybe if you redirect all this hatered into something constructive Macedonia will truly become a greater country(if any more greatness than the present is possible).


I suggest that Bulgaria stops using the term Macedonia for anything else than the country Macedonia (also Macedonia or RoM, not FYROM) as this might misslead. Arnegjor 10:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Svetlo, Macedonia will always be to the Macedonian people, just am "sorry" for u that ur brain has been washed away, its a common thing in bulgaria

Well, officially you are still F.Y.R.O.M, you haven't won the name yet Svetlyo 13:13, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm from Bulgarian Macedonia and since the end of Yugoslavia I have to change the name of my region, cause some other people 

want to monopolise something that they don't have (less than 50%) and historically don't deserve.

At least they can give the opportunity for others to use the name Macedonia. How can I describe my region? Macedonia (Pirin), bordering Macedonia? Am I Macedonian, or not? And then if Macedonian I'm not Bulgarian? I can be Bulgarian Macedonian and they can be Slav Macedonians and Greeks can be Macedonians but they don't want to and you support them, they want to monopolise the name. I suggest that we change the name of the country to FYROM Svetlyo 19:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

We use the term "Republic of Macedonia" simply to distinguish the country from all the other places called Macedonia. It doesn't imply endorsement of that name - see Republic of Macedonia#Note. The reason we don't use "Republic of Bulgaria", "Republic of Greece" etc. is because those country names aren't the subject of confusion with other names. See Republic of China for a comparable example. -- ChrisO 19:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You see how tricky it gets with the name Republic of Macedonia? Go get another name Svetlyo 00:44, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Svetlyo. Besides, Macedonia belongs to Bulgaria anyways so give the land back!

I personaly don't know about a country named "Macedonia" i know of a province which belongs to Bulgaria named Macedonia.

Most sources point that Macedonia was part of Bulgaria before the Ottoman Empire but it is no longer. The only opinion that really matters is the Macedonian people’s. Nobody can force them to call themselves Bulgarians unless by exercising the Ottoman way of conversion which we Bulgarians know all too well. Therefore I must sadly disagree with some of the former statements.

Well the Serbs forced the Bulgarians in what is now Republic of Macedonia to think they are Macedonians when they failed to force them to think they are Serbs. And this was achieved after decades of terror. Tell me why you concider yourself as a Macedonian? Isn't it better to think more seriously and come to the conclusion that you and the population of Macedonia is Bulgarian.

OK I red all you guys said, and I must call in most parts bullsh*t. Let me tell you just one thing. Was Alexander or the people of Ancient Macedonia Slavs? NO.

You are very smart you should know – he he! What so ever with Alexander? Europa from the legend – who was a Thracian girl – gave her name to the whole continent. But she was Thracian – ohooo – Therefore FOLLOWING YOUR LOGIC – NO ONE IN THE CONTINENT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED TO BE EUROPEAN, BECAUSE NO ONE OF COURSE IS THRACIAN??? Maybe only Bulgarians could be Europeans – because they can be regarded as Thracian descendants? SO WHAT YOU SAID IS AT ALL BULLSH*T!

Conversion of bulgarians to Islam

If the Ottoman empire had tried to proselytize the ethnic Bulgarians to Islam over a 500 year period, there would be no christian ethnic bulgarians left. Instead the majority of ethnic bulgarians are orthodox christians, the only muslims are the Turks and Tatar minorities, while only a small minority of muslims is ethnic bulgarian.

Why are there not more ethnically bulgarian muslims? why did the empire not try to make more bulgarians muslim? Is it because Turks and Bulgars are ethnically related? --Kahraman 11:01, 28 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarian and Turks are NOT ethnically related. In a few words the cristians in the borders of the Ottoman empire were forces to pay much bigger taxes (including the Blood Tax, which consisted of giving every first-born son to become a soldier in the Ottoman army), so it was better for the empire to have the majority of people with different religions.

As far as official school history goes, Islam conversion was used by the Ottoman Empire on strategical places only. The effect was strengthened by forced migration of Christians to Islam territoryies and vice verca. Not just in Bulgaria, but all their conquests.
Unlike the two Roman Empires, the Ottomans allowed different religions. They considered that a full-scale conversion would generate too much stir-up.
Crowday 12:43, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]



At the NATO summit i Prague 21-22 November Bulgaria was invited to join NATO

Someone who knows/cares about Bulgaria might like to review/merge the content in Bulgarians ... Martin

Why is "Bulgaria" termed as "small"? I am not Bulgarian- and I am not taking offense at all, but it seems rather odd considering Bulgaria is not particularly "small" in the context of many of the world's nations.

We tried to discuss this at the Bulgarian Wikipedia, but only three people participated in the discourse. You're right, we are not a small country. --webkid 09:30, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"...Khan Asparuh and his Bulgars migrated into the Balkans, where they assimilated the minor Slavic, Thracian inhabitants..." - I would say they were assimilated by the Slavic inhabitants, at least Turkic (or at least Altaic) language of Bolgars was completely lost as well as most of their cultural heritage... Essentially the most influential things brought by Bolgars were their military organization and the name of the people still in use today Vassili Nikolaev 09:11, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Romanization of Bulgarian names

What is the correct Romanization of Република България ?

  • Wikipedia says Republika Bulgariya
  • Encarta says Republika Bǎlgarija and apparently this is also used in the maps from the European Union website.

Probably there are two different versions of transliteration, but which is the official one ? Bogdan | Talk 19:33, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there are two different systems of transliteration - the first one uses diacritic symbols from Czech or Croatian (I don't remember exactly), the other one uses only the letters which exist in the English alphabet. The one which should be applied is the second one - the first one is practically never applied, at least not in Bulgaria. VMORO 14:33, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

In general, is there a standard accepted way of transliterating Bulgarian names from their original alphabets? Right now it's a mess, for instance:

  • ъ is sometimes u, sometimes a (I've seen ǎ and ŭ as well),
  • ю is sometimes iu, sometimes yu,
  • ц is sometimes ts, sometimes c,
  • х is sometimes kh, sometimes h

What I'd like to see is something like Transliteration of Russian into English. Markussep 8:20, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I collected some transliteration schemes here: Transliteration of Bulgarian into English. I think the United Nations system (with the Czech/Croatian diacritics) is not practical for Wikipedia. The BGN/PCGN and the official Bulgarian system are quite similar, except for х (kh vs. h), ц (ts vs. c), ъ (ŭ vs. a) and ь (' vs. y). Apart from the fact that the a's in Varna and the a in Tarnovo will not be distinguishable, the official Bulgarian system looks OK to me. Opinions? Markussep 10:36, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Are you entirely sure that ц according to the official Bulgarian system is transliterated with c? As, as far as I remember, it should be represented with tz... VMORO 21:53, Jun 12, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not 100% sure, I didn't see it on a Bulgarian government site. My source is this, it says "Bulgarian Council of Ministers". Tz seems strange though, a bit German. It's "c", see this ID card. Too bad they don't have a transliteration scheme there. Markussep 06:36, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Three other sources (the Bulgarian embassy in Washington, something that looks official too and another reference) say ц is ts, and refer to a law from 1999. Could be it changed from "c" to "ts". Markussep 13:29, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, on my ID card it is "tz", but basically you can just choose the kind of transliteration for your ID card for yourself. I expressly wanted to spell my name that way, because I think this is the most understandable way for all the nations (in English "tz" is spoken just like in German and so on) and in my eariler international pass (when I was too young to say personally what kind of transliteration I would like) it was also "tz". In many web pages containing bulgarian transliteration I also found "tz", look at this for example. I think the "c" spelling is totally wrong, it is used only by Bulgarians in the chat rooms for shorting the words when there's no cyrilic font, just think about it, it can be spoken as "s" or "k" or "tz" in the different languages.
I really don't know which of these is official, but that's what I think about and use. --Tzeck 20:26, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That's funny, that you can choose your own transliteration. Was this before or after 1999? To me (I'm Dutch) "tz" is a bit strange because in Dutch (French, Polish, Czech likewise I think) it would be a voiced consonant. In German and Italian, "z" by itself would be the same as ц. You're right that "c" is ambiguous in many languages. I would prefer "ts" then. BTW I did the Google test for "Vratsa" (only English language pages), that was ts:tz:c = 91k:44k:7k. "Berkovitsa" ts:tz:c = 17k:12k:360. Markussep 20:53, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Ok, this is the transliteration of Bulgarian according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs [1]:
А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ь Ю Я

A B V G D E ZH Z I Y K L M N O P R S T U F H TS CH SH SHT A Y YU YA

As you can see, the variant used is "ts" - although I think that "tz" also can be used. May be Tzeck has right that it can be optional. Anyway I agree with him completely as the present transliteration system is based solely on English and I have noticed that English speakers tend to pronounce "tz" as a voiceless affricat [ts] whereas "ts" brings about horrific problems and an unsecure prononciation somewhere around the voiceless fricative [s]. You shouldn't think too much about how the letter combination can be pronounced in different languages as the transliteration system is based solely on the English pronounciation; it is anyway impossible to invent a transliteration system which is universally valid for all languages, right? The problems come from the fact that before 1989 there were two transliteration systems. One used French as a model ([u] for example by "ou") and the other one diacritic signs. Afterwards there was a complete chaos and everyone transliterated as they wished. Well, enough for the lyrical digression - I think we should follow the offical system of the MIA (the same as the one you found for the Bulgarian Embassy in D.C.). VMORO 23:54, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)
Here is the point - this is an English speaking Wikipedia and it doesn't matter if some letter could be spoken otherways in other languages different than English. And, Markussep, I forgot to make mention about the "ts" spelling, that I also find alright, but as VMORO said the most English sreaking people use "tz", that's the result of my personally "investigations", too. However, I find both of them ("tz" and "ts") usable for the Wikipedia (I just prefer "tz"), but not the "c".
The transiteration in Bulgaria is optional only for some difficult letters like this and I think when you say nothing about than it will be "ts" on your ID card. And that was in year 2000, but I don't think it was otherways before 1999. When I made my card I was thinking about going to Germany, but in German the most correct spelling of my name begins with "z" . But in England (and by any English speaking man, and there are many of them in the world) it will be pronounced totally wrong, as the bulgarian "з", not "ц". When it begins with "tz" there will be no problems pronounsing it right in both languages (the too most popular, not to forget). Well, I'm maybe influenced by these too languages and the fact that I had the idea to go to Germany, but still I think "tz" is the best choise for the English Wikipedia, "ts" the second. --Tzeck 14:36, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If I remember my primary school lessons correctly, "ц" should be transliterated as "ts" just because they use to describe it as the union of "т" and "с". As for "х", I believe it should be "kh", based on my experience with Armenian. In it there are three Hs:Խ, Հ, Յ ; each with a different pronunciation. The one corresponding to the bulgarian "х" is "Խ", which is transliterated as "kh". Unfortunately my knowledge of linguistics is very limited and I can not describe the pronunciation of the sounds in question so that we can agree on a transliteration. However, I can tell you for certain that the pronunciation of the bulgarian "х" is stronger than that of the english "h", just like "Խ" is compared to "Հ". I hope I was of help. mattriculated 21:13, 09 Aug 2006

How about using this Ministry of Interior transliteration as the standard in Wikipedia for Bulgarian names (except where there are common English names like Sofia)? We can make it a naming convention. Markussep 08:34, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

In the interests of balance: Bulgaria's role in sending Macedonian Jews to Treblinka

When Bulgaria occupied Macedonia during World War Two, Bulgarian officials rounded up the Jews of Skopje in the city's main tobacco factory. From there they were handed over to German officials who sent them to their death in Treblinka. For this reason, I am not sure that it is balanced for this article to include the unqualified statement that Bulgaria was not involved in sending Jews to concentration camps. I can provide sources for my comment should these be requested. (This comment is by no means motivated by any sort of anti-Bulgarian sentiment. Please do not understand it as such.) User: MJ. April 6, 2005

Giovanni : Please, cite your sources if you want to be taken seriously! This applies to everybody advancing a theory, especially in public!

by yavor: I'm a Bulgarian, and it is true. I studied it a few months ago at University (History of The Bulgarian State and Law). Bulgarians did not have a choice and were forced to hand over the Jews. Many Bulgarians do not know this, because we don't study it at school. But what you do not know is, that when they were going to hand over those in Bulgaria (without Macedonia), there were massive protests of Bulgarians and The Government could not oppose. Those Jews were saved. If you want to know more (yavor@abv.bg)

I second Yavor. It is a historical fact that nobody declines. As they are Macedonian, it does little to do with Bulgarian Jews not being send to the deathcamps. Unless all Macedonians say that they are Bulgarian, but this is quite impossible to happen nowadays.. Crowday 13:13, 27 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarians are descendants of the Moesians

Bulgarians did not come from anywhere in 679 because the truth is they've been living in the same region even before Christ for Bulgarians are in fact Thracians. Bulgarians is the new name of the Moesians (plus some other Thracian tribes). It is not really known why they started to call themselves Bulgarians but one possibility is that they got their name from the Romans as being federates of the Roman Empire for some time. It's possible that at one point around the time of Attila they mixed with one part of the "wandering thracians" or Schythians called Huns as Attila's son Irnik is said to be the second prince of the Bulgarians as stated in "List of Bulgarian kings". 83.228.61.152

I am sorry, I didn't mean to laugh but I couldn't resist! Bulgarians are mix of Pro- Bulgars, Slavs and Tracians. Me 00:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Giovanni : Please, cite your sources if you want to be taken seriously! This applies to everybody advancing a theory, especially in public!

It fascinates me how User:83.228.61.152 was able to fit so much pseudo-history in one short paragraph. He must have practised. Alexander 007 07:09, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It amuses me how somebody can actually believe said "pseudo-history" mattriculated 21:16, 09 Aug 2006

Bulgarians are a mix of Thracians, Slavs and Bulgars. Around 679 the Bulgars came from the northeast and mixed with the Slavs and the minority of what was left from the Thracians tribes

Revert

I have reverted the following anonymous contribution:

"Recently, there have been voices calling for a change of the parliamentary system into presidential. Although probably the majority of citizens would support such a change, it seems unlikely that the deputies and the parties in the parliament would support it since it could limit their power."

I don't believe this paragraph adds any substantial, objective information, no sources, references or numbers are given, plus it seems rather insignificant to mention this type of recent opinions on a country-page.

Guus July 1, 2005 16:55 (UTC)


Who knows this town?

In the WikiProject Wikipedia:Nuttall_Encyclopedia_topics, we hit on the city "Tirnova",

Tirnova is a fortified town of Bulgaria, 35 m. SSE. of Sistova. It is the seat of the Bulgarian patriarch. It was formerly the State capital.

Sistova seems to be a town in Moldavia, like the webpage of Tirnova The source is from 1907, so much has changed. Thanks--J heisenberg 12:16, 31 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Tirnova? No, Tarnovo or Turnovo, it's hard to spell it right to pronounce a letter that does not exist in English. Its Veliko Turnovo, like stated below. No such town Tirnova exist or existed. Me 00:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's probably ment the town of Tarnovo, spelled aslo as Turnovo (or Veliko Tarnovo), an old Bulgarian town in North Bulgaria with reach and long history, and it has been also the capital of Bulgaria indeed (until 1393) and also one of the most famous historical persons from Tarnovo is the Patriarch Evtimiy. So I think this article is some kind of mistake and should be removed or edited, if there is such town. --Tzeck 16:23, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, that helped a lot --J heisenberg 17:15, 1 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Sistova seems to be Svishtov in that case. The names should be Romanian, at least they sound such to me, plus the Moldavian context. --TodorBozhinov 18:41, 22 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The names are actually the Turkish versions of the names of the towns, it is not only Sistova (Svishtov), but also Plevna (Pleven), Shumla (Shumen), etc. VMORO 08:50, 27 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

War with the USA?

Is it true, due to some technicalities in peace treaties, Bulgaria and the USA were officially in a state of war from World War 2 until the 1980s? 153.104.16.114 23:52, 26 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Not again those urban legends ... I've heard this for at least 3-4 other countries. It was the Cold War and Bulgaria was part of the Warsaw Pact, nothing more. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → Talk

De-Facto Bulgaria was IN war with the USA during WWII as ally to Nazi Germany. But USA soldiers or whatsoever never participated in combat versus Bulgarians.

Yes they did. The USAF bombed Sofia and few communication centres in the province; some American planes were shot down by the Bulgarian air force in the process. Apcbg 21:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In which province? Списаревски 14:34, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
The website Bulgarian Aviation gives the following statistics on the air war in Bulgaria's airespace from 2 March 1941 until 9 September 1944: 117 Allied (RAF and USAF) planes shot down, 65 of them by Bulgarian fighter planes; 329 British and American pilots taken Prisoners of War, and some 200 killed. As for the geographic distribution that site gives few details, mentioning Sofia and Ferdinand (present Montana). Air battles occured mostly when Allied air formations bombed major Bulgarian cities and railway stations. Apcbg 20:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was poking fun at the Francophone usage of "Province" and I am also interested because my grandparents have told me stories about how they used to cover the windows with books when bombers were coming and such. There is still often no info on important facts about Bulgaria and generally non-US related things on the Internet.

Bulgaria and James Bond

"Bulgaria is getting the latest addition to the James Bond franchise, Casino Royale, before several countries including Australia and Japan." First of all, this seems like something much too trivial to have its own section in the article. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, what does it even mean? Nicholai 20:07, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


I guess it means Casino Royale (2006 film) will be released in Bulgaria before Australia and Japan. This seems to be true according to this but I wouldn't expect movie release dates to feature in country articles.


--Mr link 21:50, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Alrighty, I think I'll be taking it off then. (Hopefully I'm not overstepping my bounds. I'm new to this Wikipedia thing...) Nicholai 23:59, 13 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


You are definately overstepping your bounds. Stop pushing your luck.


Mr link 23:59, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Somebody impersonating me. What a strange feeling of importance this gives me.

--Mr link 00:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Shut up you filthy Bulgarian.

--Mr link 20:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Well...I do hope you're joking, I'll just assume so... Nicholai 14:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]


Area

The area listed ( 111,001.9 km² ) and rank (102nd) do not match with the List_of_countries_by_area. I presume these should be the same but most country articles do not agree with the figures listed in List_of_countries_by_area.

--Mr link 21:11, 21 November 2005 (UTC) Filthy??? Zdr i az sam Bulgarin :P[reply]


Idiot... Zdrasti na vsi4ki Bulgari!

% of Roma

The figure given of 4.7% of total population ins wrong... It is much more.

Official data is used. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → Talk 20:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Of course the figure of 4.7% is wrong. The Roma minority in Bulgaria is around 10% out of around 7.5 million citizens in Bulgaria.

Roma minority is around 5 to 6 %, but the turkish is around 12-13% as the latest statistics. --Eliade 19:34, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

4.7% are those that consider themselves to be Roma. Many Roma although consider themselves to be Bulgarian or Turk, and even have Bulgarian surnames. They speak Bulgarian with a pecular accent some Turkish and Roma words thrown in or Turkish with some Roma words. Many Roma words have entered Bulgarian slang. Some of them have fully assimilated and you cannot tell them apart from the Bulgarians or the Bulgarian Turks. -dimitar ouzounoff


There was a documentary on B-Tv - i think called "Reporters" (roughly translated) that looked at a possibility that the actual percentage of the Romany demigraph is unknown. The documentary mentioned that alot of marriages within this sphere were below the legal age and that alot of children born into these relationships are keep away from national listings, such as Birth Certificates, Identity Cards, and passports, out of fear that the couple might find themselves in trouble. The programme did go on to say that even though this is not agood thing, the effect on the number of Romany individuals living in Bulgaria is not as significant as one might think.--Whiskey Blues123 02:57, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

1990s Turks issue

Some reference should be made about the government campaign against the turks...

This is done in the History of Communist Bulgaria article, and I personally don't consider it notable enough to be mentioned in the general Bulgaria article. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → Talk 20:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
May be mentioned in article Turks in Bulgaria. The campaign it was not only in the Communist Bulgaria. --Timurberk 22:23, 25 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarian Orthodox Church which was founded in 870 AD under the Patriarchate of Constantinople and has been autocephalous since 927.?????

Heeeeeeeeeey! Slow down! It was in 1870's when you got you Bulgarian church! Before, there was only the beautifull and very romantic thing called Ottoman rule + Church of Constantinopoli!

Ummm... false. Read the article first. Our church was restored in 1870, but founded in 870 and autonomous since 927. Besides, I don't really think the Ottoman rule and the Patriarchate of Constantinople are that beautiful and romantic, whatever this is supposed to mean. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → Talk 20:07, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you do not know what the terms romantic and beautiful are supposed to mean, how can you refute them when applied to state institutions? Perhaps you mean that these terms are not 'suitable'. No, they are not; though they must have had some romance and beauty.Politis 13:43, 26 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The greek guy - you can read a bit more history before you write in bold !!! And I don't think the city you are mentioning is Constantinopoli ... Istanbul is closer ... or Tsarigrad if you want.

Generally I think the article is very good. I have only one question - Why it doesn't say on the left banner what year Bulgaria was christianized? I mean, this is an important information, being the first slavic country to aqcuire the Christian religion. If you look at the polish page it's widely anounced. --Stoyan.stoyan 16:07, 22 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The answer is 864 :)

A piece of advice, read Mercia Macdermott, theres quite alot of information describing the Helanisation of Bulgaria during the Ottoman rule. As for the formation of the Bulgarian Church as an independant body there are quite a few sources, such as Steve Runciman etc. I use these two Authors becouse they come from the "Western" school off thought.--Whiskey Blues123 03:03, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, thank you so much! I would never ever guess the year of Christianizing! With all the due respect, the question was why it is not mentioned on a visible place since it is an important and interesting fact of our history? But seriously, thanks for the answer! ;))) Stoyan.stoyan 01:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Jewish

How many Jews are living in Balgarija an in Sofija? What language is spoken by them? Perhabs they are Aschkenasim-Jews!? Simon Mayer

Most of Bulgaria's Jews, as far as I know, are Sephardim that traditionally have spoken Ladino, although it's not a language you would commonly hear nowadays. It is hard to determine the number of Jews, but here is a brief list of important people of Jewish origin that are connected to Bulgaria. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 11:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgaria did more to protect Jews from the Holocaust than the vast majority of European nations.

Bulgars where an ancient turkish tribe

Why do Bulgarians use the ancient name Bulgaria which was a turkish tribe in the area you live today?

Why do Russians use the name of the Scandinavian Rus' people? Why do the mostly Celtic and Latin French use the name of the Germanic Franks? It's just how things happened through the course of history, I wouldn't say it's uncommon for a people to adopt the name of another people, given the many examples. Besides, Bulgars had an important role in the early years of Bulgarian history, before they mixed with or (more likely to me) were even assimilated by the local Slavs. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 22:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The ancient name Bulgaria was a turkish tribe??? What, uh, uh!!! Bulgaria is a name that comes from the bulgarians, people from the Volga region in todays Russia or Ukraine.

...who according to the two prevalent historical theses were either of Turkic or Iranian origin. - Bulgars --89.190.200.137 22:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The country has the name Bulgaria - from its very beginning in the VII century. Both Danube Bulgaria (this one) and Volga Bulgaria (the other one you mention) are direct descendants of the Old Great Bulgaria which was geographically between them. Both was found by two brothers - the second and the third son of Kubrat (The first stayed in Old Great Bulgaria). Its name is Bulgaria because it was founded and consisted of Bulgarians from the verry beginning. YES the language became to close to slavic langwages due to slavic presance and literature but this so coled "asimilation" is i'm afraid - highly doubtful! Especially since it became obvious that proto-Bulgarians ware radar Iranians then turks, so they ware much closer to ‘slavic’ then previously believed! I repeat – Bulgarians WARE NOT a turkish tribe – they came in Europe in II century, long before the turkish tribes!


Hang on people, the Avars who settled in Bulgaria were Turks. By Turks I do not mean the Turks of Modern Day Turkey, I mean the Steppe peoples from Asia that rode fast moving horses and sacked many a town on the way to Byzantine held Danube territory in the 7th century.Tourskin 06:17, 22 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

POLL: Introduction for Republic of Macedonia article

Given ongoing discussions and recent edit warring, a poll is currently underway to decide the rendition of the lead for the Republic of Macedonia article. Please weigh in! E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 01:04, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zdrasti Bozhinov! Moje6 li da dobavi6 taka nare4enata "Gallery" kum tazi statia (kakto pri Romania, Turkey i Serbia naprimer) ? Ne 4e iskam da prili4ame na tqh, no ako priemem, 4e stra6no mnogo hora izpolzvat wikipedia to za6to togava da ne si napravim malko reklamka (snimki ot 4ernomorieto, vazrojdenski seli6ta i drugi prirodni zabelejitelnosti) ?Samiat az neznam kak se pravi tova i zatova se obra6tam s tazi molba kum teb.

Да, и аз си мислех за нещо подобно и наистина има нужда, снимките са перфектни за илюстрация и дават представа за страната повече от много текст. Ще се заема да отсея разни хубави снимки и да си сложим една галерийка. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 14:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Готово! Ти ако в Уикипедия си намерил други хубави снимки, за които смяташ, че имат място в статията, като са достатъчно качествени и изобразяват познати и известни обекти или характерни черти на България, се чувствай напълно свободен да ги добавиш към галерията, тя е затова :) → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 16:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Може да вземете купища качествени снимки от www.photo-forum.net. Просто пуснете тема, в която казвате че търсите снимки на характерни за България места, който ви трябват за wikipedia. Мисля, че ще получите помощ ;)

Мисля че снимки може да се вземат и от тук: http://imagesfrombulgaria.com С висока резолюция са, снимките са само от България, хората от сайта ги дават свободно - под Creative Commons 2.5. Имат повече от 23 000 снимки на България - мисля, че са идеални за целта.

Summary in English

A proposal to add a photo gallery to the page as in other country articles. It was shortly fulfilled by me. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 16:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Great job at adding the picture gallery Todor! I think it's a good start; my only suggestion would be to add more visually appealing pictures. Also, to include pictures of places unique to Bulgaria. Let me know what you think. Thanks! --Kassabov 07:08, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, don't hesitate to add images that you've found on Wikipedia and that are released under a free license to the gallery! The ones I've picked out are some of the more appealing ones, I believe, but also feel free to remove some in order to prevent the gallery from getting too large. Be bold! → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 11:05, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Bulgaria

Hello! WikiProject Bulgaria, devoted to better organizing, maintaining and developing the network of Bulgaria-related articles, is currently gathering members in order to be started. If you're interested in participating, add your name to the "Interested Wikipedians" subsection of the proposed project's section in the list of proposed WikiProjects. → Тодор Божинов / Todor Bozhinov → 17:22, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarian sport

Where can I find a home page for Bulgarian sport? I would like to write more articles on Bulgarian sportspeople, but there is no point of reference I can find. --Cryout 15:40, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

tons of great bulgarian weightlifters here: http://www.chidlovski.net/liftup/l_athlete_listingCountry.asp?cdescription=Bulgaria

I don't know how common torture is in Bulgaria, but this story about police torturing nurses for 174 days suggests that it's a problem. The webpage says its information comes from "Troud", which it says is Bulgaria's biggest newspaper. Is Bulgaria's human rights record discussed anywhere? or where should links like this go? Gronky 22:53, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, hello? This article is about torturing Bulgarian nurses in Lybia  /FunkyFly.talk_   22:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, thanks. Glad I asked. Gronky 17:29, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Bulgaria has no negative human rights record I know of after the forcing some Turkish population to leave or change their names in the late 1980s. All abuses are handled at the court in the Hague - and Bulgaria fully accepts its responsibilities. Indeed, it is Bulgarian citizens abroad whose rights are occasionally abused. --Cryout 13:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But the name forcing happened after turkish terrorists bombed a train and killed 7 people - mothers with their children. 88.203.248.170 11:43, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Empire !?!?!?

Doesn't anybody have a problem with the term EMPIRE used everywhere in this page !? I am Bulgarian and love and respect the history of my country, yet it has never been an Empire. Yes, Simeon might have assumed the style of "Emperor of the Bulgars and the Romans", but we had Hans, Tzars and Knjazs' ruling the country through its history!

http://www.bulgaria.com/history/rulers/

This is the first and only place I've seen discussion of First, Second etc. Bulgarian Empires!

Evgeny Kolev / Евгени Колев — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.90.4.2 (talk • contribs) 17:21, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I know, "Empire" is the established historical term in the English-speaking part of the world. --Daggerstab 18:06, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Evgeny, the title tsar itself means "emperor". It is a contraction of the Roman title caesar. The lesser one that cowprresponds to "king" is "kral", as you might know. The medieval Bulgarian state was never ruled by a "kral". How do you understand the difference between an empire and a kingdom in this context and in general? Todor Bozhinov  → 19:38, 3 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This can be found in the [http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/empire?view=uk%7COxford dictionary under empire: (1) an extensive group of states ruled over by a single monarch or ruling authority; (2) supreme political power. I believe the relevant explanation is (1). Then, there is my general understanding, which is somewhat supported by Wikipedia's article on empire: a supranational or superethnical political entity that is ruled by a monarch (with absolute power). In this sense Bulgaria has been an empire for short period of time: maybe under Simeon and then around the years of Ivan Asen II. However, this doesn't turn Bulgaria into an empire for the genral case (so First, Second or Third Empire is meaningless). Now, we should also remember that the Bulgarian use of "tzar" has little to do with "emperor". To say the least, our current Tzar Simeon II was never a ruler of more than one (major) nationality within the borders of the Kingdom of Bulgaria. I will not change the terms before I get some response in the near future. However, it is my firm belief that they have to be changed. --Cryout 06:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Emperors are autocrats with absolute power elected by the people represented by their electives. For example Julius Ceaser was elected Emperor by the Roman Senate [2] or Napoleon Bonaparte was (at least technically) elected by the French Parliament.
Since the etymology of Tsar is from ceaser some confuse Tsar with Emperor, however the term Tsar clearly changed its meaning in Bulgarian (more about this here [3]) and should be translated as King, respectively Tsarstvo is Kingdom.
In contrast, the Serbian language (along with the closely related Croatian, Bosnian, and Slovene languages) translates "emperor" (Latin imperator) as tsar (car, цар) and not as imperator, whereas the equivalent of king (kralj, краљ) is used to designate monarchs of non-imperial status, Serbian as well as foreign, including Biblical and other ancient rulers.
Since Tsar in Bulgarian is the hereditary title of the ruler of a sovereign state appointed by god, the article is incorrect and should be edited to use King or Tsar and Bulgarian Kingdom. 66.194.227.150 16:30, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pronounciation in IPA

Correct me if I am wrong but I think there is a typing mistake in the IPA pronounciation of Bulgaria as written in IPA: /ˌbɤlgarˈia/. The IPA letter ɤ is pronounced closer to G - this letter describes a consonant not a vowel! Please correct it, because I am not sure which one has to be used (according to me the correct pronounciation is ˌbəlgarˈia). Am I right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.69.167.63 (talk • contribs)

Take a look at the articles on IPA and Bulgarian language. --Daggerstab 17:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many countries (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ...) cite the IPA transcription of their names in square brackets. I gave up before finding any pages of countries that use slashes. As the transciption here looks narrow enough, I suggest that we use brackets too. --Cameltrader 17:59, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it seems that some (European) countries do, in fact, use slashes — Montenegro, Romania, and the Ukraine. I leave it as it is, but something else still looks not quite right: why not put the stresses before the syllables instead of immediately before the vowels? --Cameltrader 13:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

fishing in Bulgaria

What type of fish can I catch in the river Yantra? I am going to visit Veliko Turnovo and hope to fish there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.128.84 (talk • contribs)

According to the website of some hunting lodge, a certain reservoir at the Yantra (called Skalsko) is stocked with sheatfish, carp, and chub, among others. Unfortunately, I'm not a specialist and half of the fish listed on the website don't seem to show up in my Bulgarian-English dictionary, so I don't know the names in English. Todor→Bozhinov 19:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

,.

Genetic study source

Could somebody point me to the source of the genetic phenotype results presented in the history section of the article? --Cryout 04:00, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Second oldest capital?

Are you sure Sofia is second oldest capital in Europe? I'm not. --Tzeck 08:54, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also against in saying that Sofia is the second oldest capital in Europe, where are Athene, Rome? --Eliade 19:32, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In Greece, Italy? Sofia is as almost as old as Rome, which was traditionally founded in 753 BC (7th 8th century BC), and Sofia's history dates back to the 7th century BC. As for Athens, it's the first in that list :) I'm also against mentioning that 'second' thing, but 'one of the oldest' is more than perfectly acceptable, if even a bit modest (but we Bulgarians are modest people, generally). Todor→Bozhinov 20:21, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Education missing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgaria#Education why? --Eliade 19:59, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, somebody inserted the heading and decided not to write anything under it, that's why. It's not because we don't have anything to boast in that sphere, that's for certain :) Like, the oldest academies of the medieval Slavic world, etc.

Can someone tell me who removed the sections about John Atanasoff, the Pravetz and military aeronautical achievements of the Bulgarians? I am curious, is someone here unhappy about Bulgaria's achievements. If you don't believe thees things, do the research yourself. Furtherstill, you can look at the genotype studies done in recent years and you will see that 60% of Bulgarian phenotypes are Eastern Mediterrenean in origin, which is directly descended from the Thracians. Recent studies in BAN, also show that the Bulgars originated in the Hindu Kush and were not Turkic in origin. In fact, they were as previously stated of Aryan Persian descent. And Aryan has nothing to do with blond hair and blue eyes, as the real aryans were dark. If you want to re-invent Bulgarian history or simply ommit facts, such as the computer industry developed in the 1970s, or world firsts such as those made by Bulgarian pilots in the Second Balkan War then you obviously have complexes that make you fear the truth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Monshuai (talk • contribs)

No, I'm relying on the established historical facts. Recent studies don't convince me, and let's not mention a controversial topic like the Bulgars' origin (I don't say they were Turkic). You're the one reinventing or revising, since you're trying to make recent theories look like established facts when they're not, and this is close to WP:OR. Also, the history section was getting too long, you may like to expand the relevant articles (Bulgars, First Bulgarian Empire, Military history of Bulgaria during World War II, etc.) instead. And place cite your sources when claiming things such as 'oldest country in Europe', 'second in the world after the USA to develop a personal computer industry', etc. Also, do you really think John Atanasoff's medals are relevant in the history section of an article so general as this one? Consider that. Todor→Bozhinov 10:51, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, is there no one who can contribute to the Education paragraph? --Eliade 07:19, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dunno might be good if someone could write about the effects of communism on the broader education. Since i'm born and educated in the UK, I've only ever heard people boast about it. Also migt be good to mention the success of the Mathmatical and Computar technology spheres. Guess these are some suggestions i hope :). --Whiskey Blues123 03:48, 13 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

History section

OK, first of all Mr. Bozhinov, you don't have the ultimate right to decide what should and should not be in the history section. Second, your perception of what is subjective or invented is yours alone, and if you want sources, I'll give you sources. I'm leaving for Shanghai on Thursday, but in approximately five weeks I'll be back with those additions and their respective academic sources. Would you prefer them in MLA or APA? :) BTW, I'm not going to go into your education vs. my education, but if you prefer I'll be more than happy to tell you what I do and thus likely imply to you that my knowledge and authority on history is well regarded in national circles. Furthermore, what you do not seem to realize is that history is one lie built on top of another, and the way in which you portray Bulgarian history supports some of the lies built from imperial propaganda that spawned in classical Europe just two centuries ago. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, than I'll be happy to enlighten you on this issue. It is thus critically important to portray Bulgarian history from our perspective with our studies and interpretations at the forefront, because after all we are its agent and trans-generational carriers. There is already too much anti-Bulgarian propaganda due to multiple failures on our part in international relations and in particular due to the volatility and strategic importance of the region where our country is located. I will however say that what I write is an integral part of the modern curriculum in Bulgarian schools and universities. If you feel you have the authority to go against that curriculum and the way in which it interprets history, versus what is likely a history you learned in communist days from Mother Russia and its scholars, then you have a psychological inadequacy that is exacerbated by delusional visions of personal grandeur Mr. Bozhinov. However, if you accept the material as it was, with a list of sources, then I will gladly reconsider my last statement. And parenthetically, the oldest country in Europe refers to Bulgaria being the only one with a national identity of the so-called 'Bulgarian sovereignty' since 681 (despite repeated invasions from external entities). Our culture goes back much further than this date, but only since 681 have we called ourselves Bulgarian (as a reference to a people of multiple cultural origins and not only Bulgar), whilst the general central geographic area of the country has remained the same. No other country in Europe can claim the same status as applied to the last 1325 years; thereby this perspective is correct as based on the modern understanding of nationality (identified by the majority of the united populace as belonging to an internal collective) and geographic cohesiveness. On the other hand, if you have been influenced by Western Europe's interpretation on the matter as expressed in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), then you probably feel that no country existed in the modern sense before this date. That said, the historical subjectivity born from the said treaty is rather West-Euro centric and does not take into consideration the developments of nationhood in other parts of the world, which came much earlier than its own entrance into the world of lawful international politics.

Once again, you leave me no choice but to prove you wrong, and your comment on recent studies not convincing you is beyond the issue. You are not the one who even needs to be convinced as you do not hold the key to Bulgaria's history, and as far as I know, in no way are you a prominent individual within our society. If I'm wrong about that please correct me, and then I shall also gladly tell who I am and what my position in our society is. I will write again what you removed, and therein it will be your futile job to prove me wrong in order to try and establish your opinion as one that carries higher ground. So in fact, it is your comments that don't convince me, and I must be brutally honest with you, as I feel I need not be convinced by someone who thus far has given me a negative impression of their intellectual capacity. I realize this may lead to a nasty argument, but do remember that I added to what was written and only removed the 'turkic' connection from the article as this has been proven to be incorrect. You on the other hand feel you have the clout to simply remove everything someone has contributed... So why should we not talk about our Bulgarian achievements and someone like Atanasoff. This is about as much as most foreign people will read on the Bulgaria section, and it certainly is beneficial to our country to showcase facts that elevate the status of the nation beyond its miserable current international reputation, or lack thereof. What you don't seem to realize is that this article is also a virtual advertisement for Bulgaria. Please don’t convulse and then try to explain that history does not have a commercial implication. That’s not what I’m stating, as history is always written in the best interests of the victors. It’s time we write in this way too, as no one else will go out of their way to emphasize those facts that place a little more light on our civilization, both from collective and individual achievements. Do you even know the meaning of socio-cultural marketing? If you don't, I suggest you research the masters at this game, primarily the USA, England and recently China.

I truly hope that you are not the kind of thickheaded fool that I have visualized upon my first impressions. Indeed, I am sincerely optimistic that some part of what I said will permeate into your psyche, thereby giving you the opportunity to see the value of what I just wrote along with what I had written two days ago in the main article. The best way to resolve this issue is through intellectual dialogue and a unified national spirit... So as you say, "consider that!"

Please refrain from personal attacks. Now, if you're willing to provide very serious referencing for the things you believe in, and acknowledge they're not the accepted and universal history of Bulgaria, then they might be suitable to include. I'm not any authority on the subject or anything like that, I'm only one Wikipedian following Wikipedia principles, guidelines and policies, and they say "no original research" and "neutral point of view". New theories may be true, but they also may be wrong — time will tell. Until then, the history of Bulgaria is as established by the authoritative sources and books on the topic. When you add content here, you're supposed to follow the rules — no matter what your education is and anything else, you're just a Wikipedian.
Also, I haven't removed Atanasoff from the article, he's part of the Culture section already. Note that this article is supposed to be a concise summary, with the vast majority of the actual content being located at other, specific topic-related pages (like, for example, First Bulgarian Empire or Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria). This is one of the reasons I've removed your additions — they were in the inappropriate article, and content like this, generally considered to be controversial, is as a rule removed until (or if) it can be made neutral and perfectly referenced. So it's your turn now. Todor→Bozhinov 17:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

May I ask you Mr. Bozhinov, what are these authoritative and established books that you have been reading? I'm curious, because the most authoritative Bulgarian books say different things then what you have presented thus far. In consequence, I'm led to believe that your identification of authority is something external to the Bulgarian academic environment. Bulgaria does not write the history of other nations, and if we were to do so, then their populaces would contest many facts due to disagreements in the matter of perspective and the consequent interpretations. After all, history is simply an interpretation of a past reality as inflated and deflated by internal and external sources. What is left is never "universal." If your reference books are not written by Bulgarian historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists, then I suggest you give your ancestral academia a chance. If by "universal" history you mean the history written about Bulgaria in western literature then I would advice you to reconsider this stance. Tell me, do you feel Ethiopians are best suited to write and interpret the "universal" history of Sweden, or likewise the Swedes to do the same with respect to Malaysia? How about Englishmen and Americans writing about Bulgaria and vice-versa? Would you call it universal history if the way in which Bulgarians interpret western Europe was published in their history books? What if a Bulgarian historian wrote an entire chapter in the Encyclopaedia Britannica about how the Bulgars inflicted one defeat after another on the Crusaders, who acted in barbarous ways everywhere they went and were in no way upholding the ideals of Christianity? Do you feel that Britannica's chief editor would even dare allow such material? Is that a part of your so-called "universal" history and if not, why not? Is it because Western literature somehow chooses to omit such facts by blinding its readers with what are always naturally slanted versions of reality? Even if three people see the same event, they will always interpret it in a slightly dissimilar fashion. Now multiply that over thousands of years and you get the point. Taking this to nth degree, if a fact is maximally proven, then the way in which it is interpreted will eventually make it contestable anyway. In today's world, this same western literature is arguably the most influential in the world due to capital resources that are the pillars of its propaganda mechanisms, upon which much of history is based. In reality, just because something is said to be 'established' and 'universal' from the western perspective, does not mean it is so in other parts of the world. Based on this, I have a feeling that you don't live in Bulgaria...

This is not about personal attacks, but it's about someone who claims objectivity in the face of a subjective world. Perhaps you have academic potential, and your ability to identify truth from fiction may yet develop, but you must sink you psyche into the depths of Bulgarian literature, both ancient and modern. Then and only then, will you have the chance to truly see the meaning of neutrality. Knowing the issue from one side of the equation leads only to a disequilibrium that is anything but neutral. Please think carefully about what I have said. As stated, I will re-write all those things previously mentioned according to the guidelines of Wikipedia. Further still, I will include those things that I believe are most beneficial to the presentation of Bulgaria in the main article. Have a great day and thank you for understanding.

Somebody called Aldux keeps deleting the paragrapph about the Ottoman rule of the Bulgarian lands without giving explanation. It certainly is a very important part of Bulgarian history and I'm wondering what her motives are.

Simple; your edits are pov and I haven't seen a single source presented. So I don't see why they should stay. And when sources are presented, remember they have to be WP:RS.--Aldux 10:52, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aldux is some kind of a maggot that unfortunately has an editing control over the Bulgarian history in Wikipedia, even thought the site is supposed to be a free site. A few months ago, I had the same problems with him (maybe her) and I am sure that s/he sleeps in front of his/her monitor and watches over our history. Whenever the e-mail comes in s/he changes the info back immediately. I swear, there is only a few minutes difference between somebody else's posting and the inevitable change from the infamous Aldux. I don't know what he looks like, but I traced his name back to Italy or Belgium.

turkish is definitely an official language of bulgaria, see this source

please do not blindly revert! See http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=BG --ElevatedStork 19:54, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Republic of Bulgaria. Narodna Republika Bulgaria. 7,517,973. National or official languages: Bulgarian, Turkish. Literacy rate: 90% --ElevatedStork 19:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Turkish is "official" in the sense of being officially locally recognized (Turks only live in compact groups in the south and northeast, and largely not elsewhere in the country, so they have local recognition of the language). The national language and the only language official in the entire country is Bulgarian. Besides, the literacy rate is 90% to 98%, although I don't see the connection and why you've bolded it :) Todor→Bozhinov 21:48, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The constitution has something else to say.   /FunkyFly.talk_  21:49, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
According to the constitution[4]:
in English, this is[5]:
No mention of Turkish, Chinese, Swahili or Samoan. Supposedly, regionally recognized languages are treated with a separate law, they're not important enough for the constitution, where the sole official language is only mentioned. Todor→Bozhinov 21:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I hate to be rude, but this funny quote from a ridiculous source is too much for me to take ... even on a forum. Here is the quote: Republic of Bulgaria. Narodna Republika Bulgaria. 7,517,973. National or official languages: Bulgarian, Turkish. Literacy rate: 90% . First of all, "Narodna Republika Bulgaria" is the former, communist, name of the country. Second, you only show the 90% literacy rate. Well, your source claims: "90% to 98%". Even if you take the average of this rather large band, it is 94%, and this number is still below the true value. Only then could we discuss Turkish being an official language in Bulgaria. Well, it is not. It is an important language, and one our official institutions respect and provide some services in (e.g. a daily newscast on public TV). So, please, please, please, don't provide these kind of data again. They are laughable, and what is worse - their rebuttal just now wasted 5 minutes of my life. --Cryout 03:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
You shouldn't have bothered, really. User:ElevatedStork is (or should we say was) one of the numerous sockpuppets of User:Bonaparte, a banned Romanian user known for trolling and nationalist editing. The anti-Bulgarian edits of this account of his are a sort of vendetta for what happened to User:Eliade, another account of his, who insisted that the Vlachs in Bulgaria are Romanians but had no grounds to claim this. Todor→Bozhinov 12:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hohohoho. Don't be ridiculous. turkish is NOT and will NEVER be an official language in our country. --Gligan 14:13, 2 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]


for the one above, turkish is not an important language, please.....Делян 23:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Holidays?

Hey neighbors! I've been trying to find your national holidays, and can't see them in the article. I suppose Oct. 5th would be one. Can you point me to an article or section with all your holidays? That would also be a nice element to add in this article, until the next FA nomination... •NikoSilver• 20:08, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yasu, I'm not sure if an article exists about them here, but there's a list of Bulgarian holidays at government.bg. 5 October is not one of those, I'm afraid. I hope I can help later this week, but not tonight. --Cameltrader 21:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! I am copying the text below, in case someone wishes to add that info:
1 January – New Year’s Day 
3 March –  National Holiday (Bulgaria’s Day of Liberation from the Ottoman Rule)
1 May – Labour Day
6 May – St. George’s Day, Day of the Bulgarian Army
24 May – Day of Bulgarian Enlightenment and Culture and of Slavonic Alphabet
6 September – Bulgaria’s Unification Day 
22 September – Bulgaria’s Independence Day
1 November – Enlightenment Leaders Day – a day-off for educational establishments  
24 December – Christmas Eve 
25 and 26 December – Christmas
Easter – two days (Sunday and Monday); moveable holiday
Happy editing! •NikoSilver• 10:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Antarctica

Okay, so I'm thinking of removing the references to Bulgaria's Antarctic base and its participation in treaties regarding Antarctica from the intro, and possibly placing them somewhere else in the article. This sort of information isn't typically included in introductions to articles, and I see no reason to make an exception here. It's just not that important when considering Bulgaria broadly. Does anyone disagree? Adlerschloß 23:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently the country places some priority in its special involvement in Antarctica, along with 27 other nations that have a vote (and veto) in the governing of Antarctica. The website of the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry has a top entry Bulgaria - Antarctica together with Bulgaria - EU, Bulgaria - NATO, Bulgaria - UN, and Bulgaria - OSCE. Apcbg 05:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Today accession to EU on 1.1.07 approved

Material for changes in the article: speeches by Olli Rehn [6] and José Manuel Barroso [7] --Michkalas 15:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IPA transcription

I am not certain that IPA: [bɤlˈgarijə] might be the right IPA transcription of the name of the country, "България". The "я" in "България" is unstressed, while the yodized "ъ" \jə\" only occurs – if I am not wrong – in stressed sylables as in "вървя" \vərvjə\. Apcbg 07:41, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Just to make it clear, is "IPA: [bɤlˈgariə]" what you propose instead? --Cameltrader 08:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that the linguists ought to offer the educated judgement on this one, mine is just an opinion. The version IPA: [bɤlˈgariə] doesn't appeal to me either. Perhaps in this article should appear a more formal transcription like IPA: [bəlˈgarija], as it is indeed pronounced on some official occasions, recitings etc. In common speech the pronunciation varies with the ending possibly IPA: [-iɤ] but unlikely IPA: [-iə]. But again, this is just an opinion. Apcbg 09:38, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Once, there was a lengthy discussion in Talk:Bulgarian language#Vowel_Chart on similar issues, and in particular the distinction between ram's horns (/ɤ/) and the schwa (/ə/). In my amateur opinion, the schwa is the only vowel closest to ъ. Maybe there was a mistake in the chart then, because I've seen the ram's horns in two different places on the chart (one of them closer to "o"). But you definitely have to mark the difference between the stressed and unstressed "a" — Bulgarian is quite different from, say, French, in which stress doesn't noticeably modify tenseness, openess, etc. Such ambiguities are not uncommon, and I was also thinking about proposing a special template for Bulgarian IPA transcriptions, so that we can easily fix them all, once we have a policy. But anyway, we need experts... --Cameltrader 10:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Italics in Cyrillics

A guideline on whether or not to italicize Cyrillics (and all scripts other than Latin) is being debated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting)#Italics in Cyrillic and Greek characters. - - Evv 16:13, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Municipalities

I think it is high time to create articles for all or at least some of the municipalities of the country. BUT it would be nice if someone downloads a map of municipalities of Bulgaria, so that their location can be showed, as it is for the serbian municipalities. I cannot download anything so please help. --Gligan 18:37, 16 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Err, not sure about that. We can't determine exactly which municipalities are notable and which aren't in most cases. Also, the way I proceed with municipalities is write about them in a section on the town article, just as it is with Serbian municipalities (which you gave as an example), because I don't ever think most of them would ever grow larger than a list of places + population/area data (i.e. they wouldn't ever take up more than a paragraph or two). You can see my idea for dealing with this at Sredets or Pleven.
Now, there's also these municipalities which lack a municipal centre (like Dobrichka municipality, which includes the villages around Dobrich, but the city itself is a municipality of its own. Other peculiar cases include Rodopi municipality and Maritsa municipality of Plovdiv Province, Tundzha municipality of Yambol Province... there could be more. These do deserve an article of their own, just because we can't effectively assign them to a specific other article as a section in the same manner as those which have an administrative centre.
Do you like my idea? Todor→Bozhinov 12:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

All right, sounds good. I like the your idea for Sredets, it should be therefore applied for the other cities and towns. In the Bulgarian version there are maps of the regions with municipalities, I wonder is there a way to be downloaded in the English version? I tried but without success. I think it would be useful for the articles for provinces to have those maps (up to now only Blagoevgrad Province has one). --Gligan 16:59, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's perfectly possible, but the names of places on the maps are in Bulgarian and need to be transliterated. I can deal with it, I think :) I'll also include a "munimap" (or something) parameter in {{Infobox Province of Bulgaria}}, so we could have it in the infobox. Todor→Bozhinov 09:11, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oldest European country?

Nai starata strana v Evropa? Malko ste se poizhvurlili mai a? Gurciq ne e li po stara? Da ne govorim che 5 veka ni e nqmalo na kartata. Prosto ne razbiram kvo se ima predvid s takova izrechenie? (Posted by 81.242.188.29)

You may wish to see the maps
The state of Byzantium existing at that time was not Greece. Apcbg 20:47, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly... neither was Byzantium Greece nor can be the ancient poleis considered a single state. And I think you should drop this pessimism and stuff, we should be proud of what we are, not deny it without even considering it. Todor→Bozhinov 16:49, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

EU

Welcome to the European Union!

Congratulations! – Alensha talk 22:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot. And Happy New Year! Bulgaria deserves its place into the EU - especially because of the further work it is still ready to do in order to help the continental integration. Having said that, I am not sure that the EU is something that defines our country so much as to be the centre-piece of the map that shows Bulgaria's position in the world. I mean that Bulgaria has to be in the centre of its own map and independent of the international organizations that it is a part of - e.g. NATO, EU, UN or even FIFA or Unicef. Yes, the EU is an enormous matter, but it still stands far below Bulgarian as the identity of the citizens of our country. --Cryout 01:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Todor→Bozhinov 12:41, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dobro došli! :) I'm a slight euro-skeptic but I still think that in the short term at least, joining the EU is a very positive thing for Bulgaria. A very happy New Year, friends! K. Lásztocska 18:02, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, the EU stands far below Bulgaria, and Bulgaria deserves to be there. May the New Year bring joy and prosperity to the Bulgarian People!!! --Gligan 19:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am thinking of removing the gallery at the end. One reason is that there are already 17 (!) other photographic images inside the article. Another is that the gallery takes up space and makes the article look empty, while pretty long - this is space for more descriptive text. Finally, the place for such a gallery is in Commons and each of these pictures is accessible inside its topical article. --Cryout 16:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any idea how could I delete a image I have uploaded. Currently the image is in the gallery - catholic church in Ruse. I mean, not just to remove it form the gallery, but to delete it form the site?

The Trivia section contains errors and false statements

This are a few examples of errors or false statements that an be found in this article:

1. Quote: "• Founded in 681, Bulgaria is the oldest contemporary country in Europe. ". This statement can be considered true only if one wants to forget about the dissolution of the Bulgarian Empire from XIV century till the last decade of XIX century, and the Ottoman occupation of the whole Bulgarian teritory. Many other contries have been unified for some period of time during the history, but their union did not stand till the modern times. This is why I found this statement at least disputable.

2. Quote: "• In its modern history Bulgaria never lost a flag, captured by an enemy army. ". During The Second Balkan War Bulgaria had lost at least 3 major battles. The war ended desastously for Bulgaria, they lost a lots of teritories to Greeks, Serbians,Ottomans, and Romanians. Moreover, on the last phase of the war the Ottomans and the Romanians have entered on a Bulgaria that had most of its troops on the Serbian front. This lead to one of the most rapid defeat of a country in history, as the Romanian army marched trough Sofia, the Capital City of Bulgaria, in less than 13 days (27 June/10 July 1913). It is at least hilarious to pretend that the Bulgarian army didn't had a military garrison in Sofia, and that they didn't surrender themselves. Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Balkan_War, or any other appropriate source.

3. Quote: "• Bulgaria has not been in a war since 1945, and has not been involved directly in any of the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s. ". Bulgaria was a part of Warsaw Pact, and the country had participated in the invasion of Checkoslovakia during the Praga Spring in 1968. Please take any history book that was not written by the communists to check this fact,or visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praga_Spring. Since 1990 Bulgaria was a participant in the economical embargo imposed to ex-Yugoslavia (Bulgaria has a common border with Serbia), and has particpated to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. No more comments about the above statement.

This being a free encyclopedia does not mean that one can write anything he thinks about the subject and deform the historical truth any way he wanted. I'm sorry, but this is a communist manner to impose things. Maybe the site admin will check out for this facts, because it is strange to see such statements on Wikipedia. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bogdan0407 (talk • contribs) 23:23, 22 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Dear Bogdan, should you wish your points to be taken seriously, please substantiate and source them. Namely,
1. Please produce your examples of European countries with dates of establishment given in any popular web reference source (e.g. CIA World Factbook) as being earlier than 681 AD;
2. Please produce your references to Bulgarian regimental or other military unit flags in Romanian or any other museums (like there are Russian (from WWI) etc. regimental flags in Bulgarian museums);
3. Please produce your references to sources on any post-1945 war (including the Afghanistan or Iraq War) citing Bulgaria among the war parties.
Unless you succeed in producing such sources, your comments above are but your original research for what that's worth. Apcbg 23:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Apcbg, first of all I want to tell you that I am not a historian, I am just a person who is interested in history. As for your observations:

1. I did not provided any example of another country because it sounds strange to me that the Bulgarians are saying they invented the national state in Europe. After I read a little bit more about this, I found that the Bulgarian Empire (both of them) was/were located exactly on the actual teritory of Bulgaria (and partial over the actual Romanian teritory - the IIend Empire). OK. But this does not mean that we are talking about the first Eurpeean State, the ideea of STATE, as is it percived today has appeared much later, in the XVII - XVIII century. So, all I am saying is that Bulgaria cannot be considered a COUNTRY or a STATE in 681 - it was an EMPIRE, a political structure of that time, and that the "national conscience" did not appear for the first time to the Bulgarian people in 681 AD, before appearing to all the other nations in the world. It is just a question of definition of words. It seems that your acception of the term "NATION" or "STATE" or "COUNTRY" has the tendency to be more extent than the modern "western" acception. In this case, please let me provide with earlier "countries": Italy - the romans (ancestors of actual italian people) lived on the actual Italian teritory since V century BC; Macedonya: now an independent country, existed as a small (not so small during the Great Alexander rule) greek populated independent country long before AD, and they occupied almost the same teritory as the actual Macedonian State. They don't qualify for all time first "countries"? Why? Please enlight me.

2. Sorry, as much as want to provide you right now an example of a Bulgarian military flag from a museum in Romania, Tukey, Serbia, or Greece, I cannot. As I already told you, I am not a historian. I promise I will try to find you a good example in the following weeks. My problem is that the person who posted this information had not cited his source either. So, it is very hard for me to believe that in the context of those impressive defeats, the entire Bulgarian army had succesufully guarded all their flags. If you have any source about this things please share it with me. Please see: http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/waf/bulgaria/bulg-national-history.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dobro_Pole for a possible flag loss.

3. It seems that you agree with the Bulgarian intervention along with the soviet forces in Prague Spring of 1968, as well as for the economic embargo against former Yugoslavia. For war participation, mea culpa, Bulgaria did not participate in the Afghanistan war, I was a little carried away. However, Bulgaria was a part of the military coalition in IRAQ: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq , even if it has withdrawn his troops in 04/2006. QED.

Answers:
1.Bulgaria was an Empire, but it was populated mainly by Bulgarians, it was not an Empire because it ruled over many peoples, but because the Bulgarian rulers wanted to have the title of the Byzantine emperor, and after successful wars they received it. If the concsiousness of the medieval Bulgarians was not a truely Bulgarian one, we would have never liberated neither from byzantium nor from turkey. I have not heard of contemporary European state founded earlier. The example of Macedonia is ridiculous because the population of ancient macedonia was hellenistic, while of contemporary is Slavic (Bulgarian), the cont. state simply bares the name of the ancient region.
You cannot say that Japan was founded in the mid 19th cent. when it introduced a modern style of government, it existed for centuries; you cannot say that France suddenly became a state when this deffinition was introduced in the 16th cent, it existed from 978 when Hugo Capet was crowen; the same is with Bulgaria.
2.In the Second Balkan War we DID NOT lose a single battle. In Bregalnitsa the serbs were defeated (though the serb sourses tell sth else), the greeks were surounded in Kresna Gorge, and the romanians were not defeated because there was not a single soldier against them. The war ended before the romanian army enter Sofia (they never did, they were at 30 km) => the garrison (if there was one I am not sure) did not surrender to anyone. --Gligan 09:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Bogdan:
1. If you look at the map of Europe as of 700 AD you would see that surely Bulgaria was not the only European state at that time, nor was it the first one; however, none of those European states survived except Bulgaria. The Frankish Kingdom evolved in several modern states (including France, Germany, Holland etc.); Byzantium was still Roman Empire, and for the Byzantines themselves it always was; they called themselves Romans (ρωμαϊ) and their empire Roman not Hellenic (Greek). Of course the dominant language and culture was Hellenic yet the concept of that empire was not ethnocentric but claimed universality and exceptionality based on special religious ‘mission’ (similarly to the Ottoman Empire later). The Bulgarian Empire followed no such ‘universality’ pattern; even if multinational it was clearly ethnically dominated by the Bulgarians, e.g. like the medieval Hungarian Kingdom in Central Europe was Hungarian dominated while comprising a number of other ethnic groups too. Ancient Macedonia differs from the present Republic of Macedonia geographically, ethnically, and culturally. It comprised the territory of present Greek Macedonia proper; its people, originally related to the Greeks, were Hellenized few centuries BC so their true successors today live in Greece rather than in Skopje or in Bulgarian Macedonia. The changes in the geographical notion of Macedonia (region) in the subsequent over two millenniums, after Ancient Macedonia was annexed by Rome, were changes made by other peoples, not by the ancient Macedonians themselves.
2. You are basing your allegations regarding Bulgarian battle flags on arguments from ignorance and incredulity. The story of all such flags (since the 1878 liberation) was well documented, and the flags safely preserved in Bulgaria. Regarding the flags of military units that were in danger of being taken by the enemy at the end of WWI (there were 12 such flags I believe), none of these was lost. To commemorate the heroism of the Bulgarian officers, sergeants or soldiers who carried those flags across enemy controlled territory back to Bulgaria a special award was established in 1922, “For the Salvation of a Flag: 1915-1918”. Just a couple of examples. As you mention Dobro Pole, one of the units fighting there was the 19 Shumen Infantry Regiment, the flag of which was saved and brought from Dobro Pole to Bulgaria by Lt.Col. Marin Kutsarov; the flag of the 15 Lom Infantry Regiment was saved by Col. Vasil Shishkov, Lt.Col. Hristo Mladenov, Capt. Petko Kapitanov, Lieut. Strahil Mitov, and Sgt.Maj. Dono Velkov; etc. etc.
3. Here we consider wars (the article speaks of participation in wars) not springs or peacekeeping missions. The Iraq War ended with the fall of Saddam Hussein, following the end of that war Bulgaria participates in a UN-sponsored peacekeeping mission invited by the internationally recognized government of Iraq; Bulgaria is not at war with Iraq (whether declared or not) and has never been.
Once again, this is not a discussion forum; I provided the above information as an exception, having neither the time nor the obligation to do your homework; it’s up to you to educate yourself why no other European state has its (widely accepted) date of establishment before that of Bulgaria, who captured whose battle flags, who took part in what war etc. If you are "just a person who is interested in history" as you say, then you might as well pursue your interest, having in mind that history does not value arguments from ignorance and incredulity. Best, Apcbg 11:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Apcgb, thanks for your answers. I want to say that if what you are saying is the truth, and I am not saying that it is not, I am really impressed with the fact that Bulgarian army didn't lose a flag in its modern history, my respects. As for the military participation of Bulgaria in Iraq, I have to say one more thing. "The Multinational force in Iraq, also known as the Coalition" was not a blue helmets mission, was not a UN mission. Please check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinational_force_in_Iraq , and you will see that the Bulgarian forces were part, and still are (as "troops guarding Camp Ashraf in Iraq") part of the coalition, not UNAMI (UN operation in Iraq).

Thanks again for your answers.

Dear Bogdan, please read carefully before responding, and deal correctly with your sources too. Nobody says that the Multinational Force in Iraq is a UN force; I wrote "UN-sponsored", and your quoted source confirms that indeed the Multinational Force in Iraq (of which Bulgaria is a part) operates "under a United Nations resolution". Indeed, Resolution 1511 (2003) "authorizes a multinational force under unified command to take all necessary measures to contribute to the maintenance of security and stability in Iraq", and Resolution 1546 (2004) "reaffirms the authorization for the multinational force" — and these UN resolutions are no mandate for war against anyone either. Best, Apcbg 09:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

answers and tips - version 2:

1. From what I know, there is no other country, whose name has not changed for so many centuries. The previous arguements in favour of the theory were generally true.

2. !!! When Bulgarians were going to be defeated and could not save their flags, they burned them. :)

3. Hm... better not comment :)Quote # 1,232,654,787,685,645,323,434,325,435 "God this has lots of Quotes"

These links:

Were added by an IP address registered to the World Bank Group (doingbusiness.org is a World Bank Group domain). In keeping with our conflict of interest and external links guidelines I've moved it here for consideration by regular editors of this article who are unaffiliated with the site.

My personal opinion is that all three links are too much and don't provide enough context for linking directly from this article. Though the links look like they could be useful in more focused circumstances and might be good sources. -- Siobhan Hansa 13:44, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First use of airplanes in warfare

According to Aeronautica Militare#History "In 1911, during the Italo-Turkish war, Italy employed aircraft, for the first time ever in the world, for reconnaissance and bombing missions.". According to our article, "The Bulgarian Air Force was the first in military history to use airplanes in combat, bombing Turkish positions at Adrianople during the First Balkan War on 16 October 1912." Can someone clarify this issue, please? --Daggerstab 15:52, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would seem that the Bulgarian Air Force was the second, the Italian Air Force being the first; numerous sources like [8],[9],[10],[11] etc. testify that the first air bombardment was carried out on 1 November 1911, when Lieut. Giulio Gavotti threw four grenades on an enemy camp at Ain Zara (Libya) in the course of the Turco-Italian War. Apcbg 17:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good work - you have corrected the statement in Aerial warfare, too. Thanks! --Daggerstab 19:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
One more correction is due I believe. As explained in the sourced article Radul Milkov, and corroborated by web sources, the first bombardment by the Bulgarian Air Force was made not by Lieut. Radul Milkov and Lieut. Prodan Tarakchiev on 16 October 1912, but by the Italian volunteer pilot Giovanni Sabelli and Maj. Vasil Zlatarov on 17 November 1912. Apcbg 20:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

632 0r 681 ???

Can we consider Old Great Bulgaria as the same state like contemporary Bulgaria? In my opinion no because the population itself differs, in Great BG it was only by Bulgars, while in Danube BG they merged with the Slavs and formed the Bulgarians; it is the same with Volga BG, it cannot be considerred as our state although its population was Bulgar; the territories were different; from Great BG emerged two seperate states so I think it should be considerred as one of the several BG states, for example Prussia cannot be considerred as Germany, it was found in 1871. What do you think? --Gligan 10:36, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes we can, at least as much as we consider modern Bulgaria a state that has evolved from Asparuh Bulgaria. In terms of territory Asparuh Bulgaria overlapped more with Great Bulgaria than with modern Bulgaria; it resulted from the expansion of the former to the south of Danube River. The larger portion of Asparuh Bulgaria was situated north of the Danube, and south and east of the Carpathians and along the northwest coast of Black Sea, which were Great Bulgaria's territories. The minor portion of Asparuh Bulgaria situated between the Danube and the Balkan Mountains (Moesia) is the only territory in which it overlaps with present day Bulgaria. Similarly in terms of population, in all those territories it was mixed Bulgar and Slavic people as well as others (dozens of ethnic groups from the Great Migration, also Romanized and Hellenized native population in the cities etc., which subsequently assimilated); it is well established by archeology that the Bulgars lived together with Slavs in the territories north of the Black Sea, while Bulgars and Slavs, both separately and jointly migrated and settled on Byzantine territory south of the Danube on a number of occasions already in the 6th century. The merger of the Bulgars and Slavs into a single ethnic group speaking a common language was a process of change that did not happen to differentiate Great Bulgaria from Asparuh Bulgaria, it happened more than a century later to reach its final stage maybe in the second half of the 9th century. As for Volga Bulgaria, it was an offspring of Great Bulgaria indeed, yet unlike Asparuh Bulgaria that country had no direct territorial or possibly state continuity with Great Bulgaria; it was established on an entirelly new territory, according to some historians that happened not in the 7th century but much later. Still later they changed in a more radical way, and today the languages they speak (Tatar, Chuvash) derive from none of the original languages spoken in Great Bulgaria (Bulgar and Slavic). And finally, unlike the successor state of Asparuh Bulgaria, the successor states of Volga Bulgaria have not even kept the name 'Bulgaria' today. Apcbg 14:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It depends on what we consider to be the western border of Great Bulgaria. On most of the maps and till now officially it was the Dneper river (as it is on the map above), while the same river served as an eastern border of Danube Bulgaria so in this case there is no coincedence. I have read the new theories that Great Bulgaria could have reached the Dnester or even the Danube, and if this is true we can accept that Danube Bulgaria is simply extention to the west of Great Bulgaria and both states are one whole, but the question here is "Is it true, are there any proofs for this?" Lastly, if both states were one and the same, why then we say Old Great Bulgaria instead of simply Bulgaria? --Gligan 15:28, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The map you quote is apparently based on a Byzantine source describing certain Bulgar territories at Azov Sea, Don and Kuban Rivers. However, that source did not specify the western borders of Great Bulgaria. Speaking of those borders ask yourself the question, border with whom? Who was the western neighbour of Great Bulgaria? Before becoming independent, the Bulgars were under Avar domination, or rather a partner/component in a joint Avar-Bulgar state. The Avars were based in Panonia, and eventually retreated there following their defeat at Constantinople in 626. While there is no archeological evidence of Avar population east of the Carpathians after that, there is such ample evidence of the Bulgar population in the steppe region north of Black Sea between the Carpathians to the west and Caucasus to the east. For instance, detailed archeological data presented in the monograph by Rasho Rashev, Die Protobulgaren im 5.-7. Jahrhundert, Orbel, Sofia, 2005 (in Bulgarian, German summary), confirms the Bulgar culture in the 5th-7th centuries not only on the territory around the lower course of Dnieper River (present Herson Oblast), but also well to the west of the Dnieper, in the lower course of Southern Bug River (present Mykolaiv Oblast). On the map Europe in 600 AD you may see Bulgars shown in few regions including the territory between Danube and Dniester Rivers. The map The Pontic steppe region, c. 650 AD shows Great Bulgaria as extending west of Dnieper River. By the way, there is no reason why in time of peace the head of state of Great Bulgaria should be buried on the border rather than near some important centre of the state; and Khan Kubrat’s grave in Mala Pereshchepina is even wrongly shown on the map you quote (it is actually located further to the northwest in present Poltava Oblast). (One plausible explanation of Kubrat's burial at that particular place would be that the Bulgar tradition was to have two state capitals, a 'winter' and a 'summer' one; and it could be that the 'summer' capital of Kubrat was in Mala Pereshchepina area.) Why Old Great Bulgaria? Because that is the documented name. It exists both in Byzantium documents in Greek, and in its Latin version ‘Antiquitus Vulgaria est Magna’ (Anastasius Bibliothecarius). Of course, ‘Old’ was added subsequently by authors who were not contemporaries, so the actual name was more likely just ‘Great Bulgaria’. Apcbg 18:25, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
All right then, you are very convincive and i will accpet that because I want to believe this and your evidence is good. But what about the official possition that Bulgaria was founded in 681? Do you think other people or officieals will accpet this? --Gligan 18:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well this is by no means my original research, but what apparently is becoming established among leading Bulgarian historians at least. There is really no serious reason to object the date 632 AD. As for the "official position", that is presently moving towards the possible acceptance of the date 165 AD — not as the founding date of the state of Bulgaria but as the beginning of Bulgarian statehood. This is supported by such historians as Prof. Georgi Bakalov, Vice-Rector of Sofia University, and Prof. Georgi Markov, Director of the Institute of History at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. That idea was presented at a high profile conference held at Sofia University in March 2005, with the participation of the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov (himself a historian). It was announced at the conference that this understanding of the early Bulgarian history would be included in the school curricullum. As for 632, Prof. Markov maintained that "Danube Bulgaria was not a new state formation built with the collective effort of Bulgars and Slavs, but a continuation of Kan Kubrat's Bulgaria" (Kan is the form considered more authentic for the Bulgar rulers than Khan.) Apcbg 19:29, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bulgaria was founded in 680-681.
  • Old Great Bulgaria had been founded in 632.
  • There are difference between the two.Great BG had been situated north from the Black Sea and its people had been bulgars.

Bulgaria is in the Balcans and the ancestors of modern Bulgarians are Bulgars and Slavs.

  • The article is about modern Bulgaria so the year 681 is more accurate.

Все пак аз живея в България и знам кога е била създадена!Xr 1 18:31, 24 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Europe v Bulgaria

See [12] :-)(animation). But, dear Bulgarian friends, it could be Athens (or Rome, Moscow, Dublin, etc,) on a bad day :-( Politis 14:47, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It would have to be a bad day to be Sofia too :) It's funny, but most things are far from the truth, and others have nothing to do with the country (e.g. the neighbourly rivalry thing). Todor→Bozhinov 16:22, 28 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Oh my, was that suppose to make fun of Bulgaria? It could easily be New York. In fact New York came to my mind when I saw that. The music sounded French to me but then again I'm not French or Bulgarian.Tourskin 19:45, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

San Marino and the oldest European states

San Marino is a very old European state, with a fascinating history indeed, yet one should compare equal qualities – in this case the dates of founding as independent states. Yes according to tradition, San Marino was established in 301 AD. However, nobody says that it was an independent state in 301 AD, nor in 632 AD for that matter. As seen from a more detailed narrative of the San Marino history (a San Marino source), “Until 1300 San Marino was a feudal possession of the bishop of Montefeltro, whose diocese, a part of the Papal State was centred at San Leo.” San Marino was originally established as a community of Christians fleeing from persecution, developing (as evidenced from a 1243 document) as an autonomous commune with their own rules, represented by two Consuls (today called Captains Regent), but “still under the feudal authority of the bishop of San Leo”. In the 14th century San Marino succeeded in breaking its feudal dependence; its independence was formally recognized by Pope Pius II in 1463, reaffirmed by the Pope in 1631, and successfully defended with two brief interruptions during the centuries. Therefore, San Marino may possibly qualify as Europe’s oldest distinct ethnic-territorial entity, however countries like Bulgaria or France were founded much earlier as independent states (in 632 AD and 843 AD respectively). Apcbg 09:24, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Population growth

"Bulgaria has had the slowest population growth of any country in the world since 1950, except Saint Kitts and Nevis (due to their high emigration rate)."

Does this mean:

  1. Every year since 1950, Bulgaria had the lowest population growth compared to the growth other countries that year; or
  2. For some year, Bulgaria had the lowest population growth compared to the growth of any country of any year since 1950

(1) seems more plausible, although both seem hard to believe. What about war-torn countries, such as Rwanda or Chechnya? Disregarding reality checks, (2) may be understood considering the reference to the 1990s which is near the sentence.

Also, which population growth was low due to the high emigration rate -- the Bulgarian or the one of Saint Kitts and Nevis? Certainly Bulgaria has not always had a had emigration since 1950, so this too supports (2) above. -Pgan002 08:40, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first one is absolutely imposible, because in 50s and 60s the population growth was quite normal and steady. Up to 1985 the population was constantly growing.
The second might be true but I doubt it because for example in Cambodia there were dramatic population drops during the rule of the red khmers.
There was emigration from Bulgaria only after 1989, I do not for St Kristofer and Nevis. I do not know who has written all this, but I think you should remove it because it is unsoursed and difficult to believe...
The only thing that makes sense is that perhaps if you compare the population from 1950 and 2006; its change in Bulgaria is the smallest of all. --Gligan 13:01, 7 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Location maps available for infoboxes of European countries

On the WikiProject Countries talk page, the section Location Maps for European countries had shown new maps created by David Liuzzo, that are available for the countries of the European continent, and for countries of the European Union exist in two versions. From November 16, 2006 till January 31, 2007, a poll had tried to find a consensus for usage of 'old' or of which and where 'new' version maps. Please note that since January 1, 2007 all new maps became updated by David Liuzzo (including a world locator, enlarged cut-out for small countries) and as of February 4, 2007 the restricted licence that had jeopardized their availability on Wikimedia Commons, became more free. At its closing, 25 people had spoken in favor of either of the two presented usages of new versions but neither version had reached a consensus (12 and 13), and 18 had preferred old maps.
As this outcome cannot justify reverting of new maps that had become used for some countries, seconds before February 5, 2007 a survey started that will be closed soon at February 20, 2007 23:59:59. It should establish two things: Please read the discussion (also in other sections α, β, γ, δ, ε, ζ, η, θ) and in particular the arguments offered by the forementioned poll, while realizing some comments to have been made prior to updating the maps, and all prior to modifying the licences, before carefully reading the presentation of the currently open survey. You are invited to only then finally make up your mind and vote for only one option.
There mustnot be 'oppose' votes; if none of the options would be appreciated, you could vote for the option you might with some effort find least difficult to live with - rather like elections only allowing to vote for one of several candidates. Obviously, you are most welcome to leave a brief argumentation with your vote. Kind regards. — SomeHuman 19 Feb2007 00:11 (UTC)

Trivia cleanup

  • Viktor Antonov, the art-director for the computer game Half-Life 2 is Bulgarian.
  • Bulgarian Beach on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica is named for Bulgaria.

Are these really that relevant? There are other pieces of trivia that seem to me to be of dubious relevance to the article, but let's discuss these for now. I think other kinds of facts would be more suitable for the section.

I already removed this as it seemed to be the most irrelevant piece of trivia:

  • Two-time Academy Awards winning American actor Tom Hanks spoke in Bulgarian in his role as Viktor Navorski in the movie The Terminal.

Krum Stanoev 14:57, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

population

according to 2001 census, population of Bulgaria is 7,973,671 wikipedia is error!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 125.132.78.94 (talk) 06:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I agree...besides on the National Statistics institute site (which is as external link ) the population for 2001 is 7 928 901 ..so it;s noway possible that we are 9 mln. now....somebody shpud change this!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.130.117.149 (talk)

Someone should mention our Chess Masters especially the champion from last year!

88.203.248.252 17:35, 11 March 2007 (UTC) one bulgarian girl[reply]

Ethnicity of Bulgarian-administered Yugoslav and Greek territories during WWII

I see some recent reverts/controversy on that subject. According to some Bulgarian data, 2/3 of the population there was Bulgarian as of 1941. However, the situation was quite different in Vardar Macedonia on the one hand, where the population was mostly Bulgarian (more so that the Albanian-majority districts in the west were not included), as opposed to eastern Aegean Macedonia and Western Thrace, where the pre-1912 Bulgarian relative majority had shrunk to tiny minority as a result of (1) massive exodus of ethnic Bulgarian refugees after the two Balkan Wars and WWI, partly regulated by the Mollov-Kafandaris population exchange agreement between Bulgaria and Greece; and (2) a population exchange of even larger scale between Greece and Turkey following the 1919-22 Greco-Turkish War. As a result of that radical demographic change, the ethnic Greeks apparently formed a significant majority in the Bulgarian-administered Greek territory during WWII. Apcbg 10:46, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, which is why it is inconceivable to describe the Bulgarian-occupied (its "administration" was illegal) Greek territories as "inhabited mostly by Bulgarians". ·ΚέκρωΨ· 11:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But before the awful represions by the greeks after 1912-1918 Western Thrace was populated mainly by Bulgarians who were after the WW1 forced to flee to Bulgaria and many who did not were killed. This is why in WW2 we only returned what was ours and these lands were to be settled again by the refugeees who the greeks expelled.
And, the occupied lands of Yugoslavia (mainly Macedonia) WERE inhabited by Bulgarians and they were not expelled. You remove "Bulgarian-populated" even to those lands.
And what does illegal administration mean??? It might have been illegal for the greeks but NOT for the Bulgarians. Western Thrace was one of the many injust and unreasonable territorial changes made after WW1. Why did the greeks need it? For us it was precious because it gave Bulgaria outlet to the Mediterranean, and for Greece it was just a territory without any significant value, and it is still much inderdevelopped even today. And please, don't even try to tell me that the majority of the population used to be Greek before 1912 because it is ridiculous.
I will not change the edit, but you will change it in an approprite way. I know that in 1940s Western Thrace was no more inhabited by Bulgarians, but Macedonia was, so you should leave Bulgarian-populated land for Yugoslavia. --Gligan 12:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"We only returned [sic] what was ours"? You've got to be joking. Are you laying claim to Greek territory now? As for the "awful represions by the greeks", you might wish to read up on the treatment meted out by the Bulgarians to the Greeks of Eastern Rumelia, not to mention the atrocities committed against the Greeks during the World War II occupation of East Macedonia and Thrace when Bulgaria was a Nazi puppet state. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 12:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I can't claim Western Thrace now, though I would like it to be in Bulgaria; but I understand the difference between what I want to and what is possible. What was the treatment of the greeks in Eastern Rumelia? There were not so many greeks there: only in Plovdiv and in some towns along the Black Sea coast. You know perfectly well that 100 ago the vast majority of the population lived in villages, and in Eastern Rumelia there were almost no greek villages (in fact I have never heard of any, but still there might have been a few). We have always respected our neighbours but they never responded with the same; there is now a village on the coast called Irakli, which is inhabited by Greeks who fled from their country to settle in Bulgaria, why did they choose Bulgaria if it was famous with represions against the greeks?

And about the atrocities against Greeks in WW2: these people were not killed because they were Greeks, but because they sabotaged the Army. Thousands of Bulgarians have been killed too throughout the whole country because of the very same reason. In the war there used to be guerilla movements not only by Greeks burt also by Bulgarians who opposed the government and in wartime this is considered treason and the penalty is death.

While the Greek repressions against the Bulgarian population were exactly because these people were Bulgarians, and this repression was much stronger between the two world war than in any war. --Gligan 13:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You may "like it to be in Bulgaria", but your pitiful attitude demonstrates precisely why you never deserved it in the first place. Over and out. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 14:26, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK Gligan, you may like it and its 70% Greek majority to be in Bulgaria, but don't you think it sounds unreasonable? Today is a big day for Bulgarian-Greek relations [13], there's little reason to feel bitter. Western Thrace is a totally different situation to the Western Outlands: there is not and never was a Bulgarian majority in Western Thrace, yet there was and still is in Bosilegrad and Tsaribrod.--Domitius 14:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's all the Balkans need, another irredentist movement against Serbia. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 15:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop the off-topic debates, all of you. Not a political noticeboard here. Anything related to what should be in the article, based on sources? Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Transliteration

Could a transliteration for the name of the country be agreed on, because fly-by anons keep changing it. One doesn't like "y" and removes it, another incorrectly reinstates it... for easy reference: Romanization of Bulgarian and Britannica calls it Republika Bulgaria.--Domitius 20:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Error in a figure legend

The figure "Death of Samoil" is in fact a picture of a wedding. On expanding the picture, another legend appears (the right one?) that says that this picture represents the wedding of Samoil's daughter. Please correct !

Also, Samuil is the more accepted name rather than Samoil.

Thanks, the legend is corrected.

Images

Hello editors,

You are welcome to use any of my images from http://community.webshots.com/user/onebulgar. If you wish larger formats of the images which were taken by me, please let me know and I can certainly send you the full size image(s).

Thanks, Pete —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.34.115.200 (talk) 09:09, 5 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Dates of formation

The list of dates in the info-block in the upper right corner is a mess! First of all the dates are not the officially known or thought at school. They are what some believe was true (as opposed to the official position). Then, little explanation is given on which dates and why are chosen. This is very judicious. For example, it can be argued that the Bulgarian state created in 680 (and recognized by Byzantium in 681) was very different from Great Bulgaria. For one, Bulgaria in the Balkans was ethnically mainly a Slavic state, while Great Bulgaria was a Middle Eastern country (Turkic, or whatever you want it to be). Wikipedia is *not* a place to debate the facts. It is instead a place for the facts themselves. Finally, the will to believe that modern Bulgaria was founded in 632 doesn't make that a fact! --Cryout 22:05, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Middle Eastern, Turkic? Wow, you seem to have quite an old-fashioned perception of the Bulgars. Plus, AFAIK the bulk of the modern Bulgarian historians accept that Old Great Bulgaria was the same state as the First Bulgarian Empire, and not a new one; i.e., it just moved to the southwest due to Khazar pressure. The integration of the Seven Slavic tribes and the Slavicization of the nobility was a consequence of the larger number of the Slavs and their significance as partners of the Bulgars. Todor→Bozhinov 13:59, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Couple points to add. First, a look at the map of Asparuh Bulgaria would show that the newly conquered lands south of the Danube were the smaller part of the state territory, and the territorial overlapping between Great Bulgaria and the First Bulgarian Empire was over 50%. Second, the partnership between Bulgars and Slavs had had a long tradition already, with Great Bulgaria itself having a mixed Bulgar-Slavic population; moreover, Bulgars and Slavs used to carry out some joint invasions of the Eastern Roman Empire in previous centuries too. And third, see Prof. Georgi Bakalov for a concise modern account of the early Bulgar history including the formation of the Bulgarian state. Apcbg 20:40, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I claim that I understand and appreciate the modern view on Bulgarian history. I have watched the whole bTV series "The Bulgarians" and have followed other popular sources of information with great interest. I am fully aware that the date of formation of the Bulgarian state, as we know it today, is a debatable issue on more than one point: who can be called Bulgarian; how close are the Proto-Bulgarians (Bulgars) and today's Bulgarians; how were Asparuh and his nobility perceiving their movement to the South, not forgetting that Asparuh was leading only one of the ttribes of the Bulgars at that point. Note, then, that if the beginning of today's Bulgaria is decided to be 632, then Volga-Bulgaria is nothing, but an exclave that our forefathers lost during the 13th century. I for one know that there were in fact few connections between the Bulgarian states that sprung up after the fall of Great Bulgaria. Therefore, Asparuh and his brothers did indeed led their tribes in order to creates new states, which were all named after the beloved Motherland, but were different. This is a major contradiction, which makes the assumption that Bulgaria of 632 and Balkan Bulgaria of 681 are the same thing very close to senseless. Finally, I will not take on myself to change the dates, since I am no professional historian. I will wait until I find what international organization or the Bulgarian government have adopted as an official position. --Cryout 00:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is a different point I want to make and that's why I start a new paragraph: History is not what you want it to be; instead it is a series of facts that followed the irreversible arrow of time. However, many people will rewrite it as the centuries roll. Many self-proclaimed scientists will try to push new ideas that are based on little evidence, but large consensus. Then the facts are lost, hypothesis are accepted without any tests and eventually we get to the point, where dates are changed at swing of someone's will. That hurts real science and molds the minds of the people in dangerous politicized ways. I really don't care when Bulgaria was established. I will love my tribe in any case. However, I will never "choose" one idea over another, just because it sounds better to my nationalistic ears. Indeed, it is great that modern Bulgaria is a continuity of Great Bulgaria. However, let's not forget that Bulgarians are probably, more than anything else, Slavs in their ethnic origin. Then, they are obviously Turcik in their cultural origin. And, yes, if the latest hypothesis are correct, our Proto-Bulgarian ethnicity also has important Indo-Iranian roots. In conclusion, please keep your minds open and don't take one's words for granted before you have considered the reality. Peace. --Cryout 00:45, 10 April 2007 (UTC) P.S. Za boga, zashto gi vodim tezi razgovori na anglijski. Kakto kazvat "staromodnite" hora, shte ni se smeyat chuzhdentzite![reply]
The dates of formation shouldn't go back to pre-medieval times. See Turkey - that article also can mention things all the way back to the Gokturks :) But it only goes back until the last continious entity (strictly speaking - the Ottoman Empire. People who are interested in having more background info should check those articles. In any case the history section covers this issue, so no need to crowd the infobox and confuse the reader.
Articles for several other European countries give at least 3 dates of formation. Most Bulgarians, in particular, would definitely claim that the state was established in 681. That would be the de facto date, I presume. 1878 would then be the de jure year. The inclusion of the other dates is a matter of personal preference. That's why I don't care which ones are included, as long as the commonly accepted ones are there. --Cryout 03:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dates of state formation go as far back in history as they do. In the case of Bulgaria, it's early Middle Ages. In the case of Armenia or Iran though, it's Antiquity. Turkey is one of the successor states to the multiethnic Ottoman Empire in which the Turks, albeit a dominating people, were not a majority; similarly, Byzantium was not Greece, and Rome was not Italy. Even if the early Turkish history is included, it would go to the Battle of Manzikert (11th century), and then it was not a single state but for few centuries there were a multitude of Turkic state entities in Asia Minor until eventually amalgamated into the Ottoman Empire (the last of them subjugated even in the 15th century with the help of by then vassal Christian armies from the Balkans ...). Apcbg 06:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Etymology

There should be an etymology section right after the intro, can someone who knows the subject write it? Baristarim 15:40, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I'd personally evade this topic... the name of the Bulgars is so ancient and lost in time, there are so many theories regarding its origin, explaining it by means of so many and so different languages that there's no way a neutral and concise overview can be written. Gosh, there are even books dedicated to single theories about it! :) Todor→Bozhinov 17:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that there is some consensus that Bulgar comes from Balh and Balhara and means 'white' or 'noble'. At least I haven't seen any serious arguments against that or some alternative, more consistent etymology. --Lantonov 07:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Map in info box

The map in the info box that shows european countries and EU members says that those coloured camel only are EU members; this implies that bulgaria is not, as it is coloured orange. this needs to be changed as bulgaria (according to the article) is an EU member. i tried to do it but couldnt figure it out. Trottsky 14:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Текстът "The Beautiful Antique Towns" /за Трявна/

Въобще не му е мястото там! Махнете го! (82.199.193.217 20:50, 2 June 2007 (UTC)yavor)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:John Atanasoff.gif

Image:John Atanasoff.gif is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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Addressed, but could be improved by uploader with more specific information. Robert K S 08:26, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New European vector maps

You're invited to discuss a new series of vector maps to replace those currently used in Country infoboxes: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries#New European vector maps. Thanks/wangi 13:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Bulgarians, Macedonians and region of "Macedonia"

Obviously this matter is very controversial, but people are making it more complicated than it should be

As a person with Macedonian background (that is a slav from RoM), i have absolutely nothing against Bulgarians (or Greeks for that matter). I definitely see the near-identical nature of the two countries, and that's not a bad thing !

I acknowledge that after WWII there was active attempts by the Yugoslav government to distance Macedonians from Bulgarians, especially linguistically. Obviously there were political reasons for this.

THe similarity is testamount to the common origins and subsequent development of the two peoples. Both are descended from Slavic tribes that arrived to the Balkans, both are Christian Orthodox.

The region of Macedonia was part of the Bulgarian 'empire' before being incorprated into the Serbian empire in c. 1400s AD. (Then fell to the Turks). MAny significant contributions to the Bulgarian empire came from Macedonia. Eg ohrid. THe peple that lived there are the descendents of modern Macedonians. Whatever they were called in Medieval times, whether Bulgarians/ Macedonians/ even Serbians, doesn;t change they fact that it IS them and they existed. And, certainly back then, they were all Slavs, not very differentiated, so proabably all the same anyway !

So because the concept of Macedonian identity is only a new thing, it doesn't mean that they never existed, or had no history. In fact, nationality is a NEW construct in every conutry. It's just that most countries have a rather less complicated, some would say rich, history. (ie the historical time-line is more clear cut). You can;t say the people from medieval Ohrib or Monastir were Bulgarian or Macedonian. Most were uneducated peasants, and only new one thing- they were slavic orthodox. This was their 'nationality'

THe only thing I object is to the idea of some Bulgarians that Macedonia 'belongs' to Bulgaria. For the above reasons, macedonia (ie the area of RoM) belongs to the people that have always live there. If they want to be independent and known as macedonians, then that should be supported. If they beleived they are bulgarian, then i;m sure they would vote to be part of bulgaria. But, as time has shown, it seems that unity is not a quality that us southern slavs possess.

With all the differences and wars, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians and Bulgarians are very similar. Much more so compared to say English and Scottish (who are actually different ethnically). France was made up of Franks, Burgundians, Alemanni, etc. All different. What was lacking in the Balkans was a ruler strong enough to unite all the south slav tribes

THe Greek objection to Macdedonia being called Macedonia is laughable. HAving the name FYROM is a f*%$ing joke. By being called macedonia, no one is going to claim that we are now Alexander the great's successors. That is what the greeks are hung up about. Furthermore, they claim tha Macedonia is greek. As i've said before, a region belongs to the people that live in it. No one should claim ownership over a people just because they ruled it over 2000 years ago !

Anyway, the Greeks never even considered macedonia to be greek before Phillip conquered greece, they considered them as northern barbarians, more Thracian than anything. But now modern greeks are in hysterics claiming how greek macedonia is. As if it will bring back the old glory of ancient greece.

Even if Macedonia WAS greek 2000 years ago, it is not greek now, at least not ALL greek. Greece is a very different country now. New people have arrived. In medieval times, macedonia was lergely inhabited by Slavs. Even until the 1950s even Greek Macedonia had a very large slav component, that is until the Greek government forcibly expelled and/ or Hellenized slavs.

So if MAcedonia is anything, it is SLAVIC.

Gradeshnitsa Tablets

The history section says that Bulgaria is the "home of the world's oldest known writing system, engraved on the Gradeshnitsa Tablets." The source cited is a single book (aimed at the general public) which seems rather poor support for such an extraordinary statement. In fact the wikipedia article on Writing credits the Mesopotamians for inventing written script, as do most people. The statement also doesn't appear in the History of Bulgaria page.

So this looks unsubstantiated and I propose to remove the phrase (or at least inject a great deal of doubt in it). Any objections ? Nberger 20:26, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nope - some time ago it said "one of the oldest", but someone must have changed it. With so many edits on the article daily, it is hard to keep up with all of them. --Laveol T 21:49, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Byzantine Bulgaria

So what happened to Bulgaria under Medieval Roman occupation?? This article doesn't deserve featured status if over 100 years of history is just ignored.Tourskin 19:27, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I added some stuff, but its mostly concerned with what happened to Bulgaria rather than what was happening within Bulgaria itself, if u know what i mean.Tourskin 19:44, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
But the article in not featured: ) Anyway, it is good that you have added something for that period. --Gligan 11:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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